Over the course of my year at Hibu, I was surprised at how the company was actually ran and managed. This was my first "9-5 job", and the interview process made it seem very promising.
They have you go through three weeks of training before you get to go out "in the field" and start making calls and visiting businesses. The three weeks of training are extremely tedious and require your constant, uninterrupted attention on Zoom all day. There are some small breaks throughout the day for lunch or just to take a breather. However, these "15-30 minute breaks" quickly turned into "Okay you guys have 10 minutes to eat lunch and we'll see you back on Zoom." Or my favorite saying one of the trainers had, "You guys get your quick three and then you're back to me." Our 15-30min scheduled breaks had turned into 3-5 minute scrambles to use the bathroom, eat a granola bar, let the dog out, and get back to the computer as fast as possible.
They do have a LOT of material to go over during these three weeks, so it's understandable as to why they feel the need to speed the process up. However, when I've been doing nothing but sitting at my desk in the same position from 8am-1pm, watching someone read from a training script, I'd definitely like more than just 10 minutes to eat lunch and reset my focus. Many days I was only able to scarf down a PB&J before the trainers were back on Zoom telling everyone to return to their seats.
This company is entirely a revolving door business. My training class had between 20-30 people. The other two training classes happening at the time also had 20-30 people. Within 6 months of my training class being sent out in the field, only 3 remained at Hibu. Within one year, not a single person from my training group remained.
After training you are put onto a designated "team". Each "team" has roughly 6-10 employees, depending on how many people they've hired recently. There is a designated manager overlooking each team, and a regional manager overlooking several teams from a particular region.
You will quickly see how micro-managed the company is after being put on one of these teams. Every single day your manager will constantly text, call, and video call you to "check your progress" and "see how things are going". You are expected to sell and hit certain dollar amounts every single month. If you don't hit these dollar amounts, you are then written down to receive extra involvement from your manager. They will schedule 8am-5pm "call sessions" and will sit there and watch you make phone calls for the ENTIRE day EVERY day. (Literally from 8am to 5pm, Monday-Friday) In principle, this seems like it would be helpful, since they can listen in to your calls, provide feedback, etc. However, it quickly transitions into you feeling like they're constantly breathing down your back, listening to every word you say, etc. It's exhausting. This was a major turn-off for myself as well as the rest of my coworker friends that went through training with me.
Once I made my first sale or two, I expected this feeling to be alleviated. I thought I had finally figured it out and was good to go. However, I was in for a reality check.
As time went on, I started to see that they don't actually provide what they're promising to their customers. Their "marketing" is so terrible that I wouldn't even call it marketing. The "ad campaigns" they create are just stock images with some keywords thrown in the titles and descriptions. It's as if the people creating the ads have never seen a good advertisement ever. On top of that, they don't communicate well with their clients and are rather rude when they do actually speak with them. They will never take blame or admit mistakes. In my experience, the client was always manipulated by the verbiage of the marketing team. This went on for the entire 6-months of each clients locked-in contract. During my time there, 95% of clients would be unsatisfied and discontinue services the second their contract was over.
You might be thinking, "Why didn't you leave sooner if you realized all of this?"
The higher ups in the sales department were very good with their words, and constantly told us, "We only have bad reviews online because we don't pay off Yelp or Google Reviews like our competitors do." or "Anyone that has had a bad experience with us, only had one because they didn't follow our recommendations." They constantly avoid blame, and will do absolutely anything to squeeze the most money out of each client.
With ALL of this going on behind the scenes, obviously it is EXTREMELY hard to sell Hibu's services to any given business owner. So many times I was told by business owners:
"I searched Hibu up and saw that you guys only have 1.2 stars on Yelp. The reviews are awful."
"My friend worked with Hibu and y'all screwed his marketing over."
"We already tried you guys in the past and you just took our money!"
and many more comments like these.
So as you could imagine, constantly dealing with these comments and reviews makes you wonder as the sales rep. It makes you feel guilty for trying to sell these "services" to business owners. To be honest the main reason I quit was because I thoroughly believed that if I did make more sales, I would only be screwing over those business owners. Some people at Hibu are okay with that, and they go on to be top sellers at the company, get their promotions, bonuses, etc. Morally, I couldn't do it.
The higher-ups are your absolute best friends if you're selling well, but once your numbers start to drop, they just become helicopter micro-managers. When I hadn't made a sale in a couple weeks I was told by my regional manager that I wasn't putting in enough effort. I was making over 400 calls and visiting over 50 businesses per week. As I said before, it is EXTREMELY hard to sell for a company that is KNOWN in the industry to be scummy and has 1.2 stars on Yelp. My regional manager told me I should be waking up and starting my calls at 5:30am and not finishing my day until 8pm since I wasn't hitting my numbers. If they're only paying me to be there from 8am-5pm, absolutely not. They have little to no regard for a work-life balance, which is ironic because they preach how important it is to them in training.
I really want to emphasize, I am NOT writing this to bash the company. I haven't worked at Hibu for over a year now, so this isn't some petty disgruntled employee review. I am purely trying to showcase the reality of working here. As you can probably see from many of the other reviews, they coincide with many, if not all, of the points I made. If you're fine with being glued to your seat from 8am-5pm each and every day, being hounded by your managers non-stop, and having to sell "services" that don't work, this is the job for you.
