Pros
If you enjoy a young, fast-paced culture where you'll be invited out to get drunk every weekend, you may like working at TEK. The salary (once you qualify for it) is solid. It is possible to make great money, but it will be a long time before you do.
Cons
They sell you a great culture, a professional career, and good earning potential. These are all half-truths. Culture: They repeat, ad nauseam, that the culture is so great to the extent people believe it. However, it was not at all uncommon for men and women both to be found in the restroom crying. In fact, I was told that was normal and to expect it (from others and myself) regularly. Also, they will haze you. On your first day, they'll "clap" you out. That's when you stand up to leave, and suddenly everyone begins clapping until you're gone. They do not tell you it's coming, so it's very awkward. Then, once you get your first start, you'll be forced to dance by yourself in front of your entire office. You'll also be hazed if you're promoted from a recruiter to an account manager. They don't care if you have anxiety, or if you're uncomfortable with it... you're doing it. They claim to care so much about their employees, and some people truly do. My DBO was one of the most genuine people I know. However, most people only pretend to care because they'll get something out of it. In fact, when I was struggling with my sister being in the hospital, I was told to simply turn off my phone during the day so that I wouldn't be "distracted" with phone calls from my family. Nope. Also, the work/life balance is non-existent. You are expected to work from 7:45 to 5:30 at a minimum, and also work through lunch. However, if you don't work from 7:30-6:30, you're basically told you will not succeed. No thank you. Professional: This one is easy. The job sounds nice, and you'll wear nice, professional clothes every day. However, it's more like being in a college fraternity house. Everyone just talks about getting wasted on the weekends and the level of swearing and other explicit language is some of the worst I've seen in any work environment. Earning potential: Yes, you can make a $50,000 salary (but you'll work 60 hours a week, so do the math on what that breaks down to hourly)... once your spread reaches a certain threshold. What they don't tell you is that this can take as little as 3-4 months, or as long as a year. It's somewhat dependent on you and the work you put in (back to working 7:30-6:30), but it's also dependent on things like luck, who your account manager is, if the account managers even listen to you as a new recruiter when you present them with candidates (they will not take you seriously and play favorites quite often), what type of positions you're recruiting for, and dumb luck. Before that, you'll make $12.25 an hour. If you aren't fresh out of college with your loans deferred and with parents paying for things, that is very difficult to live on. On top of that, you won't make any commissions for a long time--even once you ramp up to salary. You won't make any commission until your spread reaches $8,000, so don't be fooled. It'll be a long time before you see that big payout you're looking for, and you'll have paid for it dearly in the meantime. Also, the benefits are seriously terrible, for both internal employees, and contractors (worse for them). Opportunities to grow are very limited; yes, you can be promoted from a recruiter to an account manager, but past that, the bottleneck gets very narrow. Last, but not least, you're providing a service that most people you'll talk to don't want. There are a lot of recruiters and agencies out there, so most people you're cold-calling for jobs don't want to speak to you and are already employed. If they're not, they have a deep distrust of recruiters.
