Monday 12th, Tuesday 13th & Wednesday 14th May

I GOT A JOB, but it only lasts for 2 1/2 days but its Money. Coby Philips my agency who i signed up with on Friday told me this job would be easy as, all i needed to do was ring up people to confirm bookings with guests for a function an international company was hosting. That sounded simply. Yeah right, the job turned out to be more of a sales position with sometimes cold calling. The company was called Enterprise Ireland and they deal with companies who wish to import/export into other countries. The function was more like a conference going all day on the 29th May in Dublin, so my job was meant to be calling companies who they haven't yet heard an answer from on a database and confirm yes or no to coming. At this stage in the process this should of been the 4th time the companies have been contacted by Enterprise Ireland so they should of been up to speed with what the day is all about.

There was so many problems with this system that 70% of the people on the other end of the phone had no idea what i was talking about. They were meant to receive 2 information packs via mail and 2 emails but most addresses were wrong so no one knew anything. Even the information on the booklet wasn't clear in explaining the day. Basically, well i shouldn't say basically because nothing was basic. The way i understood it was the day was held in conjunction with Boots (boots over here is a chemist/phamacy/beauty store, very popular). and it gave small businesses a chance to become a supplier for this large chain. I was the 3rd person who done this job & i swear the girl before me just wrote random comments like "will email back their response" but when i called back to chase up their response it was the first they had heard about it.... Go figure?????

In the database there was about 600 companies from ireland and a huge range of different types & only about 120 where relevant to Boots, so it was just pot luck if you got a company that would be in their field. They were all in categories saying furniture, fashion, giftware, jewellery, non food products. Clearly i stayed away from the furniture & fashion but with the giftware & non food products that ranged from anything really. I had one guy say i am a carpet supplier why are you ringing me?. It was a bit of a job really. To make it worst the irish couldn't understand my aussie accent, so kept having the repeat everything. Turned out to be bit funny in the end.

The last 2 hours on the Wednesday i just pretended to send emails and call people. 2 things that really pissed me off about the system was i was leaving an office number for people to call back and was the same number i was calling from which was fine but on the 2nd day i found out when i was on the phone it goes straight to message bank and no-one knew the code to listen to the messages. The light was flashing so god knows how many people phoned back but couldn't listen to the message. I then started to leave David's number (the director of the conference) Heaps of people were phoning back but when he spoke to them he was talking about all these great points that he could of told me about and made the day sound so much more attractive. I was sitting next to him for 1 1/2 days before that and he never once said oh you can say this & this to make it sound better. I found out in the end by just listening to him that it does benefit companies like carpet supplies who should have nothing to do with Boots because they have a choice to supply to other major retails.

After 2 1/2 days i got 10 people say yes and as i was leaving David said "you did good, we are way ahead of schedule". They needed 70-100 to confirm but i was up to 46 and they only have another 8 days.

I know i am trashing this company but i found it interesting the way it was ran. Just one more thing i had a special email set up on the first day with my name and wednesday afternoon i wondered if anyone would check it after i left but no, they were going to close it down so the 30 replies i was waiting on won't mean anything and all the work was for nothing really. I will put in a good point that the office was very modern and the people were friendly. Its all experience i guess, good or bad its still experience AND I GOT PAID. So now i am jobless and just waiting for Coby Philips to phone with another temp job.