Pros
-working with the students -seeing students’ progress and improvement -witnessing students get accepted into colleges -when families value education and are pleasant to work with, the partnership can be great -if you have a good team (Program Lead and tutors), the work environment is positive -you will learn a lot, from education consulting all the way to business management/marketing -decent curriculum for SAT/ACT -there is some room for creative marketing (workshops, events) -when District Manager/Regional Director is not at the center, fairly independent environment
Cons
-strictly sales-oriented and revenue-focused. do not apply unless you are looking for a sales job as this will be 95% of your work -you will have zero support in any other aspect aside from sales (consensus is “google it”). even when you are sent to headquarters for initial training, it is solely about sales and marketing -being business-oriented and working hard to bring in revenue is not a bad thing. however, if this is the only focus of each and every day, this forces CDs to become desperate and ruin reputation/relationships by constantly pushing families to buy more hours. it is difficult for families to justify spending thousands of dollars on education especially when there is no instant gratification/when they still have hours remaining -upper management email will sugarcoat things by saying “we’re doing a favor to our families by pushing to enroll” when it really means “we have to make more money to prove ourselves to the company’s investors” -upper management will force you to work on your days off if it falls toward the end of the month -if you have threatening parents, do not bother asking for support from upper management. they will force you to work with them with the hopes of added revenue. your safety does not matter if it means the threatening parents brings in money -there is a reason why there is an extreme turnover rate on all levels and at all times. upper management have no idea why their employees are leaving, to the point where they created a “staff retention program”. ceo thinks it is due to “staff not being friendly to other staff”, which only proves that upper management have no idea why their employees are unhappy -company is adding layer after layer of upper management and their purpose is strictly to pressure whoever is below them. this eventually all trickles down to smothering the CD and PL -all of upper management (including the new ceo) lack background in education, meaning their focus is strictly sales and revenue -HR was developed only two years ago and still is an absolute mess. if you encounter issues and report it to HR, they will advise you, but when you follow up, they will never respond. if you finally manage to reach them, they will not recall what it was about -the company is constantly rolling out new things, forcing employees to adjust. however, they usually do not follow through with the changed initiatives, only making it chaotic for employees who are trying to keep up with constant changes -the success rate is highly dependent on the location of the center. company will argue that the location does not matter, but how could it not when the demographics/communities vary from location to location? a center with students aiming to go to ivy leagues will drastically differ from a center with students aiming to go to community colleges. beware of centers that have had a high turnover rate. this means the center has always struggled and you coming in will not change this fact -if your students have a lot of success stories, the company will not care (unless it is time to use this for nationwide marketing). company will dump useless reports, daily roleplays, marketing contests, and weekly national-call-back-days, and so you will most likely come to neglect your students and families in attempts to keep up. they love saying “no dead time” to force CDs and PLs to make non-stop calls, but they do not consider the time that is being spent meeting with families (unless it is to push for renewals, which parents will become angry over the constant sales pitch) and students (unless it is to force them for referrals, which students will become uncomfortable with you asking for their friends’ personal contact information) -if you land a newly opened center, there is additional incentive, but this will cause tension with the older center CDs who do not have this extra benefit -CDs ($40K - $47K)/PLs ($15/hourly, $35K - $41K)/tutors ($20-$25/hourly) are the backbone to the company but the pay is minimal given the amount of work -negotiate and fight for your pay, HR will resist and DM will try to entice you with incentive. keep in mind that incentive is never guaranteed and should be considered more like a bonus. -it is true that there is an unspoken racist and sexist hiring process. e.g., centers will prefer to hire asian males for math/science teaching positions, asian females for the more “nurturing” roles like CDs and PLs -PL experience will highly depend on the CD they work with. PL can be treated like a business partner if the CD values you (e.g., conducting meetings together so that parents also value the PL, marketing for the center by coming up with ideas together, etc). however, most CDs will treat PLs like personal assistants (e.g., making coffee, throwing out trash, cleaning center, delivering printed paper to CD) -hours for tutors are never guaranteed and can vary drastically week to week. if you are lucky enough to have a good CD, you will be compensated even if a student cancels a session same day. otherwise, most CDs will avoid charging for cancelled sessions to benefit the students, which in turn means that the tutor does not get paid