What It’s Like Working for a Psychic Hotline

What is it like working for a psychic hotline? Here's how my experience went, and some advice if you are curious about pursuing this path.

Did you know I had a brief stint doing tarot readings for a psychic hotline?

Not many people know this story, but I took a job on a phone line for a (very) brief period of time.

It was in my first year running my tarot business full-time. I saw an ad for a U.S.-based hotline and thought it might be a good way to cover my bases while I built my business.

The company itself seemed okay from the outside. They were hiring tarot readers and other diviners, and they talked about tarot the way I do: As an empowering tool to explore your options and tap into your potential.

“Psychic” has always been a loaded word for me. I don’t have a problem with the word itself; it’s the assumptions and misconceptions that come with it that make it hard to use.

But the recruitment process at the hotline I worked for seemed to reflect my own beliefs about tarot and spiritual practices. They said they believed tools like tarot could help people find purpose and meaning in their lives – which sounded perfect for me.

So I applied, and after doing an interview and two audition readings, I was hired.

I’ve heard different things about psychic hotlines and their recruitment processes.

Hotlines have been at the centre of fraud scandals in the past. I’ve heard of readers working for them who just sat on the line and read tarot meanings straight out of a book.

But I’ve also known established, experienced readers who worked on phone lines and online psychic chat rooms and apps. It’s a work from home job, which also doesn’t hurt.

Knowing that legit readers were out there doing this work made me realize that a phone line can be a viable path for professional readers – if you work with integrity and choose the right employer. (Just like any other job, really.)

The hotline I worked for, which I can’t name here due to a non-disclosure agreement I signed, did have a stringent interview and audition process. There were background and reference checks, and it took a few weeks to be hired on. There was nothing instant or overnight about it.

But working on the lines was not quite what I expected.

The hotline was open 24 hours, and I chose my shift to start on a Friday night.

I waited for about two hours before I finally got a call.

“Hi,” the person on the end said. “I have a question: Will I pass my exam on Monday?”

I don’t know what kind of question I was expecting on my first call, but this wasn’t it. “I’m going to shuffle my cards,” I said. “While I do that, why don’t you tell me why you’re wondering if you’ll pass?”

“Because then I’ll know I won’t need to study this weekend,” the caller said. “There’s a party I want to go to instead. Can I go to the party?”

Suddenly I felt like someone’s mom instead of their tarot reader. I pulled some cards. I can’t remember what they were now, but they did not look good.

“I don’t see anything in here about going to a party this weekend,” I told them. “I think you should stay home and study.” They sounded disappointed, but not surprised.

I logged in again the next day. My phone rang almost right away. “I need you to answer this question for me in one minute or less because I’m not paying anything extra,” the caller said. They were speaking so fast the words ran together.

The hotline had some kind of deal where the first three minutes were free, and then the callers would be charged by the minute after that.

“Okay,” I said. “But I need more than a few minutes to do a full reading. Can you tell me what it is you want to ask today?”

There was heavy breathing on the other line. “I think you’re deliberately speaking slowly just to milk me out of money,” the caller said. “I need you to connect to a guy named Gabe. Got that? Got him in your mind? Okay, good: Tell me if he’s finally going to commit to me.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let me shuffle my cards first.”

There was more huffing and puffing on the line. “I don’t have time for this.” The caller hung up before I had even cut my deck.

Yikes! I thought. Maybe that wasn’t the right kind of client for me, anyway. I’d rather talk to someone who’s a little more patient.

The next call wanted to know if I could predict when a UPS package would be delivered. “See,” the caller said, “I want to go grocery shopping, but I’m afraid the moment I leave is when my package will arrive. Do you think it’s okay for me to go out for a while?”

I’ve always been open to different types of questions in tarot before, but I also encourage people to make their own decisions. Tarot isn’t for everything, but I was quickly realizing that callers were using the hotline for the most basic questions – questions they didn’t need to pay $4.99 a minute to answer.

But the other thing that excites me about tarot is the opportunity to go deep. To explore, to find meaningful answers, and take my time with clients.

While a one-hour call on the hotline would have come out to about the same as my hourly private rate that the time, most callers wanted to be off the line as fast as possible, and didn’t seem interested in exploring their spiritual lives or passions.

The promise of the quick-fix is always a big draw for people seeking out readings and psychic work, and that felt especially true on the hotline.

There was also a lot of downtime.

What I thought would be a few steady hours turned out to be a lot of sitting around, waiting for the phone to ring. And I said earlier, I wasn’t getting paid for the time I wasn’t talking to anyone.

There is certainly opportunity to build a career out of hotline work if you’re willing to commit to it. The company encouraged readers to blog and offer other free content and perks to build up a base of repeat callers. But any content you create is unpaid, and becomes property of the company.

I chose to focus on my work instead.

A hotline job can bring in some extra income, but at the end of the day, you’re still helping someone else’s business grow.

Hotlines are also master marketers.

There is a lot of psychology behind marketing. One tactic is to market what people think they want, even if that’s not what you’re actually going to deliver.

Which I think is what a lot of hotlines are so good at.

A few weeks after signing on for this job, I was speaking at a college out of province. I was in my hotel room when an ad for the hotline came on TV. I hadn’t seen any of their cable ads because they advertised on U.S. channels that we didn’t get at home.

The ad was completely different from the recruitment pitch I’d received: “They told me names, dates, and places of the people I was going to meet – it blew my mind!” One supposed client exclaimed.

Or, my favourite: “All it took to find my soulmate was one phone call.”

Basically, the ad was a summary of all the problems I have with the word “psychic.” It played up all of the assumptions and myths I’ve always worked so hard to dispel.

And it marketed something that so many people want: Fast answers and an entertaining experience.

I had been fooled.

The company had a totally different way of marketing itself to readers through their recruitment process: They told me what I wanted to hear, while they were selling customers a completely different type of reading experience than I could provide.

My mistake was not doing more research. I had trusted how they presented themselves to me, and wrongly assumed their customer marketing would reflect the same values.

When I got home from my conference, I had an email from the company: “You haven’t logged in for any hours this week. We can’t keep you on if you’re not going to sign in.”

“That’s okay,” I wrote back. “I don’t think this is the right fit for me after all.”

I have to say, I gained a whole new level of respect for readers who make a go of it on hotlines. It takes some thick skin to do it, especially if they’re sticking to their ethics and integrity through the process.

Until next time,

Liz

Categories: : tarot business