Pros
If you work at the San Antonio main office you can use your badge to buy food or goods and it will be taken out of your next check. They have fun Christmas parties and fun events with free food for the family. The health insurance is ok. They give 16 hours of PTO to use to volunteer. Call takers in military affairs is a great way to do face to face work, gain marketing skills, and to travel for free. If you get hired into a salary type position, life is better.
Cons
This is for the departments that work with being on the phones all day everyday (hourly employees). They claim they are salary but they are not. No sick time. You have to use your PTO, so God forbid you get really sick and have vacation planned, depending on your manager you may or may not be able to take your vacation. If you get sick a lot you have to get FMLA because management will start to question you and even threaten you. Many employees are on FMLA for anxiety. Managers never take escalated calls and tell you to tell the angry members to wait for a call back in 24-48 hours or have you send them to voicemail, making them more upset. Call takers are the most unappreciated employees that are tied to their desk by a phone that rings non stop. They fail to notify you during the interview that if you fail to pass any insurance license exams, you are fired. Many call takers have bachelor and master degrees, it is very hard to get off the phones into a better position in the company. I would recommend you gain experience elsewhere and then apply to a higher position rather than starting at the bottom and being stuck in a dead end job. You can qualify for an internal job posting and have a masters degree but never get the chance to interview if you don't know the right people. If you have a funeral for immediate family, you only get 3 days excused from work, unless you're salary then maybe it is different. They don't give you a chance to gain new skills to put on your resume so after awhile it is hard to set yourself apart unless you are one of the lucky few to be taken off the phones to get paid to do side projects or decorate the office for back to school or holidays. No career development unless you are a lucky one to get time off the phone. You will quickly notice who is a manager favorite because all free time off the phone will be given to the same people, not giving others a chance to shine. Some managers have been there so long that they don't care about doing the right thing anymore. For an example, if you have a question or need help with a call, they will refer you to someone else so they are able to leave the office on time at 5pm. The managers rules are not consistent across the board. You will have some cool managers that have little rules and you'll have others that will be so strict you are pretty much scared for your job everyday. With the fact that USAA values the military then the rules need to be the same across the board for everyone. If it becomes very slow at work and you need to leave early, you have to use PTO, even if there is really no work, you are not allowed to take unpaid time. If you get sick, you can go to the clinic onsite but depending on how cool your manager is either they will adjust your time to show you had excused time off the phone or they will make you use your PTO. Employees have been there years and still not umbrella insurance trained but newer employees can do umbrella faster and unfair because it places them on a slower call setting. They offer rotations where you do more work for the same pay and after the rotation is over, you go back to being on the phones. Yearly raises for call takers are shown as a yearly amount, which may seem like a lot but if you calculate it, it is less than a dollar an hour raise. Training is not consistent so either you get old information or tips that are not necessarily correct.