Pros
Great opportunity, especially for a younger person without a lot of other real world work experience. Solid company with an incredible reputation and dedication to training. A long term relationship with New York Life can be exceedingly lucrative, providing the applicant's temperament is congruent with the New York Life process and ideology. NY Life is truly all about helping people.
Cons
The cavalcade of training pulls a lot from your productive time, and as a result, requires you to work like a dog on your own time. This is particularly hard for older, new employees coming into the organization. The "process" can be mired in minutia and micro-managing behavior by the trainers and some partners. New candidates would be well advised to speak with other NY Life agents in order to fully vett the real world dynamics of this opportunity. The training includes motivational methods that don't exactly resonate with some of the more mature new agents. If you do not submit to the system and quasi cult-like culture, you will not last long. Your success or failure is heavily dependent on having a great Partner who can relate to you and provide appropriate motivational methods. If you are recruited by a Partner who is not a good fit with you in ideological terms, then your life can get very tense. After your interviews, do not hastily sign on the dotted line, but take your time and do your homework on the person who recruited you. Some Partners revel in using mind ninja games to mold your way of thinking, especially if they sense you are about to wash out. This is because their compensation is partly based on the new agent's production and their retention rate is adversely affected. This mind ninja type of behavior only serves to accelerate the defection of strong willed agents who see through this type of behavior. Sometimes it takes a while to see through the veil of this quasi-brain washing activity, but eventually you come to grips with the fact that you are not aligned with the process and must move on. Some people who washout earlier during Fundamental Career School are typically more in tune with their true gut feelings and can make a quicker change for something that suits them better. This is not a bad thing. Not everyone is cut out for this work, and why be unhappy and keep fooling yourself.
