Pros
The company had recently acquired a competitor and was going through anticipated challenges of integration. The culture at that time was up and down at best. My direct report was simply outstanding to work with. Autonomy was an earned privilege. However, once earned, it was exemplary. Unfortunately for TriNet, he too moved on to a competitor. The company focus is on white collar small and medium sized businesses. The vast majority of clientele is defined as small businesses rather than mid-market. The sales process, at least initially, is often driven by benefit offering value (read price and plan richness). It was far from uncommon to have to wage internal battle in order to extend a competitive benefit offering in order to advance the sales process to what the business offering, in theory, is all about: all-encompassing human resource outsourcing. With that said, small businesses are notoriously reticent to embrace human capital strategic plans. This is, of course, why many small businesses stay small. It is also what drives the sales process to be so innately correlated to benefit offering competitiveness. If the benefit offering competitiveness is not clearly evident, there's less than a 5% chance of closing that deal. The moral of the story is that this is a challenging service to sale. Quotas are strictly enforced. That said, a competent and driven professional should succeed annually. In doing so, one can expect to earn between 100k & 150k. Most probably earn closer to 85k to 90k. Just expect bumps and bruises along the way regardless of what tier one would fall within the provided range. They usually only consider recruiting B+ to A players (though would never verbally state anything below A). The service side professionals are top notch. At least when I was there, that is. I expect that to have not changed as it is and integral aspect of the company foundation.
Kontras
It is difficult to feel like anything but a glorified insurance salesman of health benefits. A successful rep will sell millions of dollars worth of health insurance premiums annually...and not earn a dollar of commission front that. You are only paid commissions based upon the contractual service fee, which is based upon headcount... which is significantly less than what an actual insurance salesman would earn in commissions at that level of insurance premium revenue produced. That is beyond frustrating. That said, the base salary is on the high end for the industry. It was evident to all that executives were positioning the company for an IPO. Shrewd strategic business decisions followed, quite predictably. The company did indeed go public and seems to be doing pretty well. However, the difference between working for a private and a public company need not even be compared. At our regional office, top leadership was abysmal. Soon after I left for greener pastures, the company fired him and a couple of his cronies. I can only imagine this boosted morale and productivity greatly.
