Word: southwestern
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Over 5000 college and graduate students repeat variations of this set sales pitch 13 hours a day, six days a week, 13 weeks each summer. As dealers for Southwestern, a Nashville-based publishing and bookselling company, they go door to door in small towns all across the country selling Bibles and encyclopedias. For some, the monetary rewards are great. Last year the average first year dealer made $1240.46, and the company's top salesman raked in $15.500 The company's recruiters also stress the benefits of the arduous sales experience, both in personal development and business training. But the program...
Placement officers at some of the 500 schools across the nation, where Southwestern representatives recruit, generally approve of the opportunities the company offers certain students. However, most of the college officials simultaneously object to the actual recruitment practices carried out on their campuses. Particular criticism centers on recruiters use of misleading advertisements and vague sales pitches to attract students...
...company justifies its recruiters' actions, saying it wouldn't be able to draw students to introductory meetings any other way. According to one college official who sat in on a training session at Southwestern's sales school in Nashville, the company's president asked the group of 200 students how many would have joined the program if they had been told immediately they would be selling books door to door all summer. Only 10 percent raised raised their hands...
...Southwestern recruits over 5000 students from over 500 colleges around the country. James Simpson, director of public relations at Southwestern, said yesterday. Students attend a five-and-a-half day sales school and then are sent to a town somewhere in the country. None of their expenses are paid and the students make all of their money form commissions, he said...
...Harvard is one of very few colleges to not let us recruit." Simpson said, He added be did not understand why Harvard invokes their policy. But "Southwestern doesn't want any hastles," Simpson said, adding. "If a school doesn't want us there, we don't go there...