First, you go through a three week training. There is a lot to to learn, so it's good they have a long training. You will have to jump through hurdles, though. There are timed tests and assessments in systems that don't work correctly, so it's easy to get docked points when questions are worded strangely or a system fails. You also have to do a mock interview with a manager, using their interview guide (pretending you are an advisor). This is also easy to lost points in, and many people failed. In fact, it was so easy to miss points and fail in their training assessments, it felt like they wanted to fail you and make you feel incompetent.
Excessive and Counter Productive Micromanagement:
You are monitored like a hawk. You always have be available for calls, and every minute of your day is watched. Employees get yelled at to be available for calls if you need to take a minute to use the restroom or work on a file. You get a breakdown of every minute of each of your workdays every week in your 1 on 1 with your manager- how long you were available for calls, how long you talked on the phone, how long you took away from the phone, etc. They tell you who to call and when. Managers also listen to your calls throughout the week to make sure you are robotically following their interview guide. THEN during your 1 on 1, you listen to another one of your calls with your manager, and he or she critiques everything you say, how you say it, and when you say it. You have to follow the interview guide exactly, no room for any actual human interaction with students. The call reviews every week are demeaning, humiliating, and extreme. It feels abusive, because you have to do this even if you are meeting or exceeding goals. It is difficult to feel confident and good about this job. There is no way to feel successful. The company acts like their employees are all going to break the law at any moment with how they obsessively monitor calls. You will constantly have to justify your calls and how you interact with students, because the minute you slightly deviate from their interview guide in order to try to help a student or answer a question, you will be called on it. Big Brother is always watching.
PTO:
People who have been there for a while have decent time off, but as a new employee, you have to accrue time. In addition, if you get sick and have to leave during the day, you get an "occurence." Or if you call in sick the morning of your shift, you get an "occurence." You HAVE to call in the night before by 8p.m. PST, or else you are punished. In addition, National University is very shady, and they don't want you to know that there are laws in place that allow you to use sick time without punishment. They don't tell you that, because they want you to be afraid of repercussions for calling in sick. Also, with other jobs, if you have a vacation already planned upon hiring, most of the time a workplace will work with you. Not National University. If you don't have the accrued time, you have to jump through hoops to get it approved, and then you will take an "occurence." You can get fired after five "occurences." They want you be afraid all the time- of not having a good enough call with a student, of "occurences," of not meeting numbers, not passing assessments, etc, etc.
Lack of Transparency:
They are also constantly putting policies in place to micromanage their Enrollment Advisors even more, like automatically putting you back as "available" for calls when you are working on a file for more than 5 minutes. They told us this was to "help us out," but everyone knows that it is just another shady micromanaging tactic. Management treats Enrollment Advisors like a bunch of dumb cattle, even though many advisors are educated people with Master's degrees.
Recently, newer advisors now have to do "group" call reviews, where we all get together to listen to one of our calls and critique it. The university tries to spin these things as "coaching," and helping us, but let's be honest, this level of micromanaging is toxic.
