How much does an account executive make?

What's it like to work at Yelp as an account executive?

• Pay seems to be below market, just wondering what makes this job so great that people will accept such low salaries (average is 33k) http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Yelp-Account-Executive-Salaries-E43314_D_KO5,22.htm To be clear: I'm not "hating" on Yelp - I find it genuinely interesting and feel there must be a deeper story here - probably a good one, and I'd love to hear it. I'm actually a big fan of Yelp both as a company and a service. Would love to know what the day to day is and what benefits make this an attractive option despite the market salary gap.

• Answer:

  Before I go into the details, I should tell you that I worked at yelp for just over a year and left shortly after the company went public. Working at Yelp... Let me tell you. I would say that the benefit is that it's seen as a "cool" company. You talk to people and they know what Yelp is, they use it, everybody has it on their phone etc. Even my grandmother has Yelp. So that's the main benefit. Otherwise... It's a fairly miserable job. You start with a class of 20-40 depending on what city you're in. By the time you're through the 2 month training program 15-30% of the people that you started with will have quit or been fired. So you made it through the first 2 months?! By no means are you 'safe'. You still have tremendous pressure to make 80 phone calls a day and bring in business at lofty quotas and try to get money from business owners that often times don't speak english or have any idea what they're truly buying. You'll get hung up on dozens of times a day, your managers will metaphorically whip you all day to make more calls, and you'll get yelled at by business owners because they think their crappy reviews are your fault (although that's all a myth, Yelp doesn't alter reviews, nor are sales people allowed to write reviews). This job is a massive roller coaster of stress, especially if you're new to the working world. That's the bad though... If you succeed, the job will still suck, you won't be paid well but... You'll learn a lot. No I don't mean you'll learn a lot about the online advertising industry or how to run a local business or any technical skills. You'll learn how to hustle your ass off, you'll learn how to get things from people that don't even want to speak to you, you'll learn how to light a fire under your ass, and you'll learn how to work with serious intensity. Most importantly, you'll learn how to create money practically out of thin air. You can call somebody and 25 minutes later they're committing to give you thousands of dollars, that's a valuable skill to have. It's also a great brand name. Women (I'm sure this will get flamed as sexist) tend to have an advantage simply because business owners are more likely to talk to them and give them a chance. Obviously some locksmith from Queens is more likely to speak to a young woman who he imagines is attractive than some schlubby sounding frat boy that just graduated from Arizona State. At the end of the day, it's not an easy job, and it's definitely not for everybody. Update: Felt like I should add here since somebody recently asked me if I'd go back and take the job again. The answer is absolutely yes. It was an ass kicking, but eventually, you get good at it. My next sales job was making about 4x what I made at Yelp and I never would have been in contention for it without first working at Yelp.