Rewarding work in bad working conditions
Pros
If you’re interested in human services it’s easy to get your foot in the door at a big agency like this one. It’s generally not a positive that they’re always hiring, but it can be an opportunity. There’s plenty of room for growth, provided you want to work 60+ hours a week for wages almost as dismal as mine were. People will talk to you about “the calling” a lot, which is a nice ego boost when once again you find yourself ugly crying into your flash sale yoplait while browsing zillow. You’ll also meet some great people, including a number of the people who talk about “the calling” a lot.
Cons
It’s easy to get your foot in the door because of constant turnover due to pay that is below the already low area market rate, godawful wage compression creating active incentive to leave as quickly as possible, and unresponsive, sometimes hostile upper management. Even though many of the staff are incredibly skilled, empathetic professionals, wages this low combined with work this challenging leads to also hiring and retaining emotionally underequipped college kids and middle school mean girls I wouldn’t trust to feed my goldfish, let alone care for other human beings.