Pros
-Refugee work is a very small and competitive field, Asylum Access is a great place to get into that field and get some initial experience. -Because they cannot offer competitive salaries, young, inexperienced go-getters can get a chance to prove themselves and get trained. -The organization is incredibly devoted to their mission and orients their work around their sincere respect for refugees as individuals with rights. -There are some truly great, hardworking and committed people working with Asylum Access in the US and abroad, who have an inspiring dedication to their work. -For many positions, staff can be incredibly flexible in how they structure their work, and are given a great deal of trust that they are doing their job, even if they are working remotely, from another country, or at odd hours.
Cons
-The organization offers low pay, and has a tendency to bring on new hires at an increased salary before bringing existing staff salaries up to market rate. -The organization is struggling to let go of the "start-up" mentality, and holds itself back in substantial ways as a result. There is a total failure to bring critical systems and infrastructure up to speed before increasing workload, and they are only digging themselves into deeper challenges down the road as a result. -Work and responsibilities are unequally held among staff, and many people are doing work that they do not have strong skills or experience in. This, combined with the scale and gravity of the refugee crisis that the organization is trying to address, often leads to a stressful and frustrating work environment where it often feels like you are simply moving from one crisis to the next, and not making progress on critical work and the improvement of existing infrastructure. -The organization is unable or unwilling to slow their growth to a responsible rate. This has led to reduced impact around their mission and a very embarrassing rate of staff turnover. -Because there is so much flexibility, and the staff is already scattered around the world, there is little sense of cohesion of the team, or accountability to one another. A few staff members exploit the inherent flexibility and do not seem to be actually working very much.