Pros
Aspects of estate agency are nice, working with nice customers etc
Cons
The company is abysmal. The management are basically con artists who will sell you a dream at your interview. Their job adverts allude that you will be earning 30-40k salary, in the interview they make the commission structure so hard to follow that again you believe the earning potentials to be as high as 40k a year. In reality you start on 17-18k basic and you will struggle to make more than that. As it is in fact less than minimum wage they give you a “top up” which could be around £400. But when you manage to scrap a £50-£100 commission a month it just eats into your minimum wage top up which means earnings pretty much always end up the same? Connells don’t realise this gives you no real incentive to actually achieve commission. The amount of work you’d need to put into achieving top commission is absolutely impossible, there’s physically not enough time in the day to do everything they expect of you. The only real incentives you’ll get is an area manager holding meetings every two weeks to tell you you’re not doing enough and you need to do more in order for her to get her end of year bonus! Really motivating! Even managers will fix their figures etc just to keep higher managers off their backs. Constant hounding from area manager about targets and little care actually for the job in itself, they just want you to sell anything for their gain. Top managers even suggest things like not conducting viewings on Saturdays or not to spend any time sales chasing as “it’s not making them money”. They want you to abandon any customer service and care. It’s essentially a pyramid scheme, the people at the bottom slave away working 8:30-6pm and weekends to feed into the people at the tops pockets and you will not reap the rewards or your hard work. There are some people on decent salaries but they offer everyone different salaries making an unfair working environment. You don’t have a yearly salary review, but if you do want to increase your salary just hand your notice in and they will 99% of the time try and get you to stay by offering you a slightly better salary. Everyone on decent salaries has been there for 6+ years just to earn around 22-23k. Don't waste your time! People at the top don’t realise what the teams in branch have to deal with on a daily basis. It’s poorly run and having worked in numerous different industries the abuse you get from customers is by far the worst I’ve ever received. All management do is tell you “you need a thicker skin”. They’re right you do need a thick skin for the job, but you definitely don’t have to deal with the daily abuse if you’re earning less than minimum wage. Plenty of companies out there who will pay you a decent salary to begin with and treat you like a human.