What is the hiring process like at Viking Cruises?

Great benefits, Remote work from home job, excellent equipment/computer/monitor/headset provided, The product is solid and easy to sell.

Abusive/sadistic/hazing culture with your supervisors and managers as the perpetrators and no help from human Resources. Even if you reach out to HR to discuss what’s happening to you, you will receive zero empathy. Their only concerned about protecting their friends that dole out the abuse to the poor call center sales agents suffering at this company. And the micromanaging down to every detail of every word you say on every call they record is at a level no one is prepared for. The head of the department threatened me and told me that I would never move up never transfer never get approved vacation never get to take a FAA and she has held true to it. I have been trapped in there for almost 2 years. I’ll because they took a booking away from me when I first started because of a policy, I followed from what I learned in class and they said that it didn’t apply to my situation even though it did and when I argued about losing the booking, this woman threatened me in front of my male supervisor, but of course he said nothing, Even if you report to the ethics line thinking that someone higher up will help you, they won’t. Learned the hard way that letting HR know if there’s a problem in this place it’s just a way of putting a target on your back so they can come after you and find something to get rid of you for. Because they change policies and procedures so frequently on almost a daily basis, you will be hard for us to keep up with everything and if you make one mistake, they can use it as way to start putting you on disciplinary action as justification. The commission structure is a joke. They hide it all through training, no matter how many of us ask, and only later will you find out that you have to hit 67% conversion rate which means if you get 100 calls in a month you had better Cel 67 of those calls or else. What you won’t know is it they are going to give you all the other calls and the call center through overflow, so you will get customer service calls that have nothing to do with sales and even though they tell you, it won’t count against you. it’s a big lie, it shows right on all the spreadsheets And charts that they send you every day showing that when you got a call and they just wanted to know when you close, or they call and get wrong number and hang up on you, every one of those calls count against you. Then there’s wave season, which is when it’s busy in January and February at the beginning of the year, but during the summer months, it often slows down and you have to rely on having a portfolio of people to call you back and book with you. It’s also luck of the draw as to what calls you get. So no matter what, if you get a lookieloo, who’s not ready to buy anything yet, it’s held against you. Additionally, they do not advertise (at least at this time), for the Travel Agent sales position publicly. They get people in a sneaky way by stealing them from the hiring process that’s ongoing for agents that wish to work and direct sales. Direct sales agents get to speak with a customers directly and sell to them and make the most money in the company. I applied for that job originally, but if they find out, you’ve been a travel agent or worked at another agency for Cruises or air, they have friends in higher positions that pass your résumé onto, the woman who has the travel agent sales department and then she may decide to call you separately. So if they see that they will stop you from becoming a direct sales agent because so many hundreds of people pass through there as the turnover at Viking is ridiculously high because so many people can’t survive the job. But Viking doesn’t care about this because they know they’re going to get enough people answering their ad every year during wave season and what you don’t realize is that they consider 75% of their hired salesforce to be expendable/replacable/not valued. Then they offer you that job and tell you that they’re not going to offer you the direct sales job you applied to. They tell you you’re welcome to reapply for that job if you want, but that this is the only job they’re going to offer you. If you take it, you will find out that there is no support for you to move up or around as you will get the worst schedule possible at the bottom of the barrel because you have no seniority, and your metrics will be impacted by the fact that you are at the last schedule of the day, so you get the least amount of calls because it slows down for the last two hours of the day so you will always be getting less than everyone else above you that’s been there longer, and you get the idea, I used to think that the founder had no idea that this was going on right in front of him, when he’s there , but after seeing what I’ve seen in this place, I’m actually starting to think that maybe they are well aware of it and are choosing not to care. They just lost a lawsuit recently, an employee had a class action suit against them, but it doesn’t seem like it made any difference. There are a handful of decent supervisors there, but I would say that over 65% are not very kind or experienced At treating employees with respect. I cannot recommend this company to anyone that loves travel or wants to be in sales, as I was not given the chance I deserved. I would tell almost anyone that unless you want to have stressful days every day, a horrible schedule with split days off and no hope of it changing for at least a couple years, Threats to your job constantly, and one of the oldest most archaic based systems to work on crashes regularly and interrupts your day as well as all all the other bad things I can’t list, I just would not recommend anyone to go through this. , Don’t walk away, you can find a work from home job where people treat you decently, that’s what I’m looking for right now. Steer clear, mateys!

Good benefits. Almost completely subsidized

Viking has the most toxic culture and was all around the most horrible company I have ever worked for. If you care at all about your mental health and overall confidence in yourself then I suggest to stay FAR AWAY from this place. The leadership here acts like they care and be nice on the surface but that is as deep as it goes....it is all completely a fake façade. They will systematically tear you down to the point you will not even recognize yourself anymore. If you do not fall into their ideal picture of what they expect then you will be immediately ostracized. They want exact carbon copies of themselves and appearances is the most important thing. Even as a manager you will be required to be in your desk from 9-5 even if your work is complete. There is zero onboarding process and they will say things like "ask lots of questions" but if you ask questions you will be spoken down to and treated as a nuisance. Leadership strives to come off as these amazing people but they make ZERO effort to know anyone below the director level and will actively try to intimidate you and make you feel like you will never be enough. The directors will act like they care but then micromanage ever single thing down to the exact color of a border....Viking is without a doubt the worst environment I have ever worked for and would highly recommend anyone to stay far away from this place.

They have great health benefits.

I recently had the unfortunate experience of working with Viking, and I must say it was far from what I expected. The level of micromanagement was suffocating. You are required to stay on queue all day every day and are also required to outbound non stop to customers. They have a department that watches over you daily and will reach out if you are gone more than 3 minutes. To make matters worse, the company was not honest in its dealings. Promises made during the interview process were quickly swept aside once I joined the team. Goals were frequently shifted, and expectations were misrepresented, leading to a toxic work culture where employees are left feeling deceived and undervalued. They won’t tell you how the commission structure works until you are in the last week of training. If you value your peace of mind and professional integrity, I would strongly recommend looking elsewhere. The constant hovering and lack of transparency make it impossible to thrive in this environment. Save yourself the trouble and seek out a company that values its employees and operates with integrity.

Healthcare was good. Liked the employees. Great Product

No work life balance. Low base salary. Customers repeatedly called in on the new sales line when they were existing customers or non-sales opportunities. This would count against your call to sales ratio which is one way your are paid on commission.

Healthcare is very inexpensive, you get a free cruise every year, Viking has a great reputation with guests, training was truly great ... but

Let me start by saying that I really wanted this job to work out. I love my job, the guests, and what Viking offers guests in terms of cruising. That being said, here's the truth about what it's like to work here. During training there is constant talk of how ethical Viking is, and if you're caught stealing clients, double booking, on and on and on, you'll be terminated. It's drummed into you ALL the time that you'll be fired if you don't adhere to their policies on integrity. You even have to sign a document agreeing to the ethical requirements to remain being employed by Viking. That's all well and good IN THEORY. I'm sure Tor Hagen and Karine Hagen have no idea that the document you sign stating you promise to be ethical, actually carries no weight for management. Because management is COMPLETELY UNETHICAL. They tell you that if the guest never mentions they have a booking, or anything of the sort, then you're good to go. Create a new booking. That way you’ll get credit for the booking, and their comp is based on how well you do. Better yet, don't even search for the guest in the CRM system because then you can claim you're innocent, you didn't see that the guest already had a cruise on hold. Or employees will create another guest profile and put the booking under the new number so they don’t get caught. So many ways to game the system, it's astonishing. Don’t be fooled like I was. When you're out of training and put on a team, you'll be supervised by someone who has NO integrity, and certainly no idea how to motivate people, but is great at micromanaging you, while focusing only on metrics, turning a blind eye to gaming the system and even supports how to game the system so she/he looks better. Their idea of support is giving you a 10 second "you're so great at this" then turning around and telling you how you screwed up the sale in numerous ways. When you're first out of training, you'll be “ignored”until you get settled in. Really? They’re too busy micromanaging their entire team. Then you start to see that the mantra "integrity is a HUGE thing at Viking" is a smoke screen. You'll see that integrity is an unknown word with management. Other employees will find a way to steal each other's bookings, create new profiles for a guest to cover up their dubious booking, and numerous other ways to cheat the system, management will come up with excuses, look the other way, and explain away why what someone else did is not wrong at all. The training department, which is really great at what they do! but really has no clue that once you're put on a team, you will soon see what Viking is really all about. It's such a shame because Viking has the ability to get 5 star ratings from their employees, the same that guests give Viking. Until the Hagens start paying attention to, and understanding, why SO MANY PEOPLE LEAVE right after they're out of training, the revolving door will continue. And Viking will continue to get poor ratings from employees. There is a reason why you're not told about the compensation plan until you're about 9 1/2 weeks into a 10 week training program. “Talking a good game” is what exists now, as well as talking out both sides of their mouth. INTEGRITY and ETHICS are just a game to be played, not truly lived by at Viking. To Tor Hagen, and his daughter Karine Hagen, for heaven’s sake, get this integrity issue fixed. You need to develop a compensation plan that doesn’t enable unethical employees to find ways to game the system, one that is further enabled by supervisors who allow this because their compensation also depends on their team’s stats. Your supervisors and upper management have created an internal fire storm, a massive integrity and ethical issue. Is this really the vision you wanted for Viking as an employer?