KC | Chapter 14

The sweltering summer was so stuffy it was hard to breathe. Chen Xi bought a bottle of iced cola and stood by the roadside drinking it in big gulps. Sweat on his forehead wound down to his chin and dripped along his rolling Adam’s apple. His shirt had long since been soaked through with sweat, hanging sticky and clammy on his body. Chen Xi lifted the hem of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his forehead, revealing half of his slender waist.

A summer college guy, full of energy and vitality, but this scene could only be seen from afar and not up close, because once you got closer, you would hear the filthy words he was cursing.

“Today there were second-round interviews at two companies. When I met the higher-ups, they didn’t even ask me any questions. After looking at my resume, they just rejected me. If there was something wrong with the resume, HR should have told me. After messing around through two rounds, I don’t even know what these crappy companies wanted me to do.” Chen Xi was on the phone with Wang Xin, and his mouth had a thick northeastern flavor, cursing as badly as he could, in huge contrast to his delicate-looking face.

“Those damn higher-ups didn’t even say to wait for notice. They just told me on the spot, ‘You are not suitable for our company’ and things like that. Damn it, if I’m not suitable, why didn’t you say so earlier? Why the hell drag me out in this hot weather to interview for nothing?”

The person on the other end said something. Chen Xi replied, “No, I spoke pretty well. I wasn’t nervous either. At first the HR and department supervisor both talked pretty well with me, but when it got to the higher-ups it just fell apart. Ghost knows what happened!” Job hunting had hit wall after wall, and Chen Xi was already furious. The stuffy weather had directly lit the powder keg and blown it up.

Two young girls in their twenties were whispering and sneaking glances at Chen Xi from a distance. When the two of them walked closer and heard him, they were instantly dumbfounded and went silent. If Chen Xi could curse a little less, or if what he said wasn’t so awful, maybe he would have had a girlfriend long ago.

Chen Xi cursing under his breath, he went into the subway station. A blast of cold air hit him, and the powder keg burned down a little, his temper no longer so explosive.

“Going out in summer is such a torment, it’s anti-human.” Chen Xi lined up to go through the subway security check. There were a lot of people here, so he still had to care a bit about his face. Once he took the curse words out of his speech, he returned to normal: “I won’t talk to you for now, I’m getting on the subway.”

Going out for interviews on a workday was nice. Even though there were no seats on the subway, it was not as crowded as on weekends.

Chen Xi had been resting these past few days and his mental state was great, his back no longer hurt and his legs no longer ached, his energy was so abundant that he even wanted to contact clients and make calls. When he was in college, weekends were full, with meals and games and all that, but now weekends just felt like there was nothing to do. Playing games had no energy, the friends he could gather for meals were getting fewer and fewer, and the older he got, the more boring life became.

Holding the subway handrail, Chen Xi could not figure out where the problem was with his interview setbacks.

Compared with other ad companies, Lanhai’s hiring standards were higher. Before, when I had no experience, I could still come to Lanhai to do sales, so now that I have 3 years of sales work experience, I actually cannot find a job?

These two ad companies were always recruiting for sales positions. The colleagues who had previously been screened out at Lanhai got in very easily. Why is it that after always meeting performance targets, the current Lanhai employee, me, they don’t want?

Has the threshold for doing sales gotten this high now? With my 3 years, am I actually getting worse at life as I go?

I took 5 days of annual leave and couldn’t even find a job. Really, nobody beats this.

Chen Xi thought about it over and over but could not understand, so he opened his phone to check his fortune. Aries today, 2 stars for fortune, 4 stars for love, 1 star for money, 1 star for career, 1 star for health.

Holy crap, so the problem was here after all!

Can that damned love fortune not switch places with career and money fortune?

Today’s fortune was bad, no wonder.

After resting a few days, I’ll fight again next week. I don’t believe I still can’t find a job!

As the annual leave neared its end, Chen Xi finished the “last bowl of instant noodles” on the bed and mindlessly scrolled on his phone.

His WeChat had 4000+ friends, 80% of them were clients, competing media, and friends related to his work. Chen Xi usually rarely scrolled Moments. He only liked the Moments of a few specific clients to maintain the relationship. After liking a few key clients, Chen Xi glanced at Moments casually and saw several friends switching careers to do WeChat business and sell things.

Was WeChat business really that easy to do?

Chen Xi was just about to research the job of “WeChat business” when he happened to scroll to something posted by Wang Jingjing.

「Jingjing: Looking forward to your arrival.」

The picture was a stroller.

Wang Jingjing was pregnant.

Lin Yiran’s wife was pregnant.

Fuck!

He suddenly remembered that when he first met Wang Jingjing 3 years ago, what left the deepest impression was her waist-length jet-black hair.

Lanhai’s product line was messy and complicated, and it required salespeople to have strong learning ability and execution ability, so 3 rounds of interviews were arranged before hiring, handled respectively by HR, the department manager, and the system director. HR was responsible for confirming the applicant’s past work experience, and Chen Xi, as a fresh university graduate, passed the first round very easily. The business manager who interviewed Chen Xi in the second round had resigned last year. Chen Xi now could not quite remember her name, and only remembered that the two fellow job seekers who attended the second round with him both failed.

After Chen Xi passed the second round interview, in order to be more fully prepared, he searched job-hunting websites for interview-related information about “Lanhai Group sales”. Netizens had all kinds of opinions.

Lanhai’s business covered three provinces. The pass rate in Jicheng was a bit higher. In Yucheng and Beishi, the sales interview pass rate was less than 30%, and after the interview there was still a half-month onboarding training period. After the onboarding training came a three-month probation period. It really was the kind of thing where you didn’t know until you searched, and once you searched, you were shocked. Even if you barely passed the first three rounds, the half-month onboarding training after that still did not pay any money. Chen Xi could not understand why even being a sales rep required layers of selection. Wasn’t this just a job you could do if you had a mouth?

Since things had come to this, retreating was useless. Chen Xi searched all night for several related scripts for handling sales interviews, memorized them five or six times, and after making sure he had them down cold, came to Lanhai the next day to attend the third-round interview.

The one responsible for screening new employees for the Yucheng Lanhai sales system was Director Wang Jingjing.

Wang Jingjing was not talkative, her voice cool and calm. When she spoke, a strong professional business aura hit him in the face. When she finished asking the first question, Chen Xi had not even reacted to what she had asked, and thought: Her aura is so strong, she must be very good at negotiation.

Wang Jingjing listened to him speaking while replying to messages. In the middle of it, she even got a phone call that she rejected. She looked very busy. Chen Xi was always distracted by her movements, his prepared answer completely in disarray. He answered several questions incoherently, and the more he said, the less confidence he had.

Wang Jingjing finally finished being busy and began looking at Chen Xi’s resume on the desk. Chen Xi’s heart lifted into his throat, and he thought: Does looking at a resume have to be this serious? Lanhai is just hiring a salesperson.

Wang Jingjing’s voice was cold: “Why do you want to do sales?”

The answer Chen Xi had thought of before was: because sales pays a lot, and I just graduated and need money; also, I want to train my speaking skills and improve my abilities. But Wang Jingjing’s aura was too strong, as if her gaze could pierce straight into the bottom of his heart.

Chen Xi’s tongue tied itself in knots, and his brain short-circuited, so he blurted out, “Because the person I admire is a salesperson.”

Wang Jingjing had interviewed many job seekers, and the answers were all the same. She had not expected the delicate young man in front of her to give a different answer.

“So your purpose in doing sales is to become a person like him?”

Chen Xi nodded, then shook his head.

“I want to become a dazzling person like him, but I want even more to change the client’s fixed perception of sales. I want to provide the most suitable product for people with needs, I want to cooperate with clients for mutual benefit and win-win, I want to spread excellent marketing ideas to the market. I want to be a good salesperson, a valuable advertising person.”

Wang Jingjing put down the resume in her hand, her voice still cool: “Lanhai does need sales, but it needs people who are more logically clear, more persistent, and stronger in learning ability. The previous few questions you answered were not really professional. I even couldn’t understand why you came here to interview and wasted both our time.”

“The ones before you who had stronger professionalism and previous sales work experience, all got passed over.” Wang Jingjing marked a few strokes on the resumes of the people before him.

Chen Xi’s heart went thump. He blamed himself for being suppressed by Wang Jingjing’s powerful aura and failing to say the prepared answer.

Wang Jingjing looked at Chen Xi, then the corners of her mouth lifted and her eyes curved with a smile: “But professional knowledge can be learned slowly after you join, and logical thinking can also be trained slowly later. What you have is the most important quality for sales, which is goal orientation.”

There was rippling light in Wang Jingjing’s eyes, and she could not hide her delight: “Your sense of goals is very strong. You clearly know what kind of person you want to become in the future. Your goal is also my goal, and the goal of all Lanhai salespeople. Sales is not easy to do, and there will be many setbacks in the future, but I hope you can always keep your original intention, remember today’s goal, and walk on firmly.”

“Lanhai needs you.”

After successive interview failures, Chen Xi thought of Wang Jingjing at this moment, and his chest felt like it was stuffed with a piece of cotton soaked in water, heavy and muffled.

If it had not been for Wang Jingjing 3 years ago, Chen Xi would not have had a job. She was Chen Xi’s patron.

When Chen Xi could not sign a single order and was in a low mood, Wang Jingjing had encouraged him more than once: “Come on, I believe in you.”

To be fair, when Wang Jingjing was on the job, she was a pretty good leader, a competent business director.

Chen Xi took a deep breath and blocked Wang Jingjing’s Moments.