Pros
I worked as a participant service rep 2 years. Only collected 2 pro's. 1. Learning Experience -The learning experience is excellent. The industry is worth your time and effort. If you are looking to gain experience surrounding an HR environment, this would be a good start. Only a good start if you are struggling to find work or have no experience out of college. You will learn the background of the industry, transferable system experience, and skills that companies look for (multi-tasking, organization, time management etc). After a 4 or less week of training, you are on the floor taking phone calls ranging from easy to extremely difficult issues. All issues that will test your patience, customer service skills, and personality. 2. Resume Builder -This is a very well known company. If you are looking for a job to close an employment gap on your resume, this would be a solid choice. There is a lot of skills that you can exploit on your resume from this position. But beware, it comes at a price. Which I will get to in the Con's section. To close the Pro's section of my inquiry, I would also add the fact that schedules can be flexible. If and when you are trying to find other work, you are able to switch schedules with numerous people to accommodate scheduled interviews. Now to the fun stuff and the reason for the title.
Cons
My intentions are not to bash or express hatred towards the company or position. I truly believe I took the best out of opportunities given by the company and grew from it. But I will state a few issues I feel are worth mentioning. 1. Strict time management -You are given a very specific amount of time for everything. And by specific I mean to the millisecond. If you step away from your desk, they know. It is scary to think but true. You are judged you based on this statistic. Meaning they will look at your "wrap" and idle" (time not taking calls) and base your commitment, skill, knowledge, everything on. So be ready to slave yourself if you really want to make a career out of the company. And by slave I mean you have to play their game. There is no "I was in the bathroom pooping!". You either hit their marks, or see ya later. 2. Favoritism to the max -This is very visible. You will be rated on the same scale as someone who does much less than you do. For example, someone who takes 200 calls in a week vs someone who takes 6 (this happens). The person who takes 6 calls is most likely a favorite to a manager. I normally call this person "the Chosen One". These are the people that will gain much more experience and recognition off the phones accomplishing projects. The projects are a joke. For example, you could be removed from taking inbound calls and told to delete unnecessary spacing within documents (see what I did there). This kind of project can be spun to that persons benefit. They could manipulate the story behind the project and make it sound much more important than it is. On top of that, they are able to use that as an example of trust and responsibility. A lot has to do with gender. 3. Stressful work and environment -I will start this section by saying; if you enjoy pulling your hair out, grinding your teeth, and swallowing your tongue, by all means, work here. The issues you deal with are primarily generated by internal mistakes. Whether its someone in administrations or an uneducated, careless, lazy representative, you will be left to clean up the mess. You are on the front line of the battlefield and placed their to take a beating. The people calling in are irate, and have all the right to be. Remember, you are dealing with peoples health insurance and benefits. Benefits that are deducted from working peoples pay checks. The last thing they want to deal with on a Monday afternoon is the fact that their sick 12 year old kid can not get their prescriptions filled because of some mistake made by you (always your fault). With that, now mix in the prior two cons mentioned above. It is suffocation of the brain. You are only a number in a large corporation. The managers need to maintain a service level percentage and take little to no time to care about your complaints and concerns as an individual. In conclusion to my cons section, treat this as a resume builder. Work for yourself as that seems to be the departments motive. Gain your experience and come up with a plan to utilize it. The three main things I look for in a company are management, opportunity, and atmosphere. You most likely will be working the rest of your life or up to retirement, be happy while doing it. YOLO
