Enrollment Consultant- Lack of growth opportunity, family/work balance, management completely disillusioned.
Pros
Young culture. The people that work here are really the only reason you will end up staying. Also a good opportunity to make a little bit of money without having a college degree.
Cons
Bonuses get smaller and smaller each quarter. You are promised great potential to make money based on commission, but it seems like the more people that this company hires, the less they want to spend on keeping them happy. Projections are astronomical and even for the best reps, it is very difficult to make the numbers that you need to get paid. Upper management is completely disconnected from the staff. They do not listen, nor seem to care about employee sentiment. They stomp around all day with scowls on their faces and it often times makes the environment incredibly uncomfortable. They claim to have an open door policy, and will put people on special projects that ultimately could help better the company, but none of the suggested changes are ever implemented. They push these quotes and "true stories" about all the children they have helped, but the truth is, this product is really only good for about 10% of the market that they target. The only success stories come from homes where there is a large parental support and willingness for the student to learn. K12 markets to low income families who are oftentimes more interested in a free computer and staying out of truancy court than anything else. Not only that, but the curriculum (which is actually very well developed) simply will not work for a low educated family who is having a hard time getting their child to go to a brick and mortar school, let apply themselves in a home based environment. They push enrollments on families where the adult in the home cannot even read, speak, or write in English, knowing that these students are destined to fail. Then, to top it off, they employ very few people who actually speak a second language. For instance, they market on Spanish speaking networks, and encourage those people to call, but when they do, there is no one to speak in Spanish to them. There is very little room to grow professionally, unless you want to be stuck in a call center environment forever. Yes, you can be promoted to a "lead" position, where you end up micromanaging a team, but the pay boost is not worth being berated in meetings with upper management and the stress of a failing company not making its numbers with no accountability for the people who control the major decisions. They expect you to work obscene hours during the busy season, July1st-Sept 31st. In fact, this is a black out period for taking any vacation, so you can kiss summer beach trips with your friends and family goodbye. It would be one thing to expect long hours if you were being rewarded financially, but again, the bonuses get smaller and smaller. They act like they're being nice by catering food for lunch every day, but it is really just a ploy to get people to work through their lunch break. If you are seen leaving the building, you are guilted into staying, or given dirty looks. Same thing with leaving at your scheduled time during those three months. You can be the top rep on the team and your manager will still make some smart comment in front of everyone else about how you leave at 5 every day. They monitor productivity and put way too much stress on some mathematical equation that makes no sense, as some of the top reps have the lowest productivity. This leaves reps calling numbers that they know don't work/really old, terrible leads, just to have talk time so they don't get called out in a report. Overall, if you're looking for a stepping stone, use K12 just as that.
