Pros
This position could be okay, with some major transformation.
Cons
I would advise against the Online Specialist position, for several reasons: You know all the PTO you get offered at Rackspace? Don’t expect to get to use it, as your time off from work directly negatively impacts your chances of hitting goal for the month. Welcome to micro-management. You are measured on how many phone calls you take / how many chats you take / how your chat interactions rate you and how many of your interactions turn into leads/opportunities. We receive more support calls and random directory calls than actual sales inquiries, many days you feel like a member of the front desk phone team, just transferring random calls around Rackspace. You don’t have a clear career path designated after Online Specialists, the usual path is to move into Acquisitions sales but there’s an us-versus-them mentality between the Online Specialist team and the Acquisitions team, so it doesn’t exactly pose as a good next-step career option. The Online Specialists have a quota you have to hit each month and the numbers are carefully calculated out so that you’re tied to your seat all day every day, trying to get all the interactions you can get, in order to hit goal. There’s a lot of red tape and a lot of unwritten rules, some demoralizing feedback and comments from Directors/Managers definitely happens. The most frustrating part is the fact that our systems are very flawed and the internal sales departments all operate within their own silos, creating division among the different sales departments. For example, Online Specialists pass leads, in order to meet a monthly lead goal and maybe the leads aren’t the greatest quality, then the Acquisitions team receives the leads and are disgruntled about the low quality of leads they receive from the Online Specialist. Causing a situation where the Online Specialists are viewed as incapable or low quality, when we really aren’t, we just have our individual goal we are trying to hit, so we don't get written up or fired. When you work your pipeline and call your potential leads, you lose your spot in the phone queue, putting you at the bottom of the list, we are told statistics show we receive the majority of our leads from phone interactions, so imagine having to wait an hour to receive a potential sales call, just to lose your spot in line when you make an outbound call, making you have to wait another hour to receive a call (which likely won't even be a sales call). You also have a director, two team leaders and an onboarding specialist, all to manage a chill group of about 18 Online Specialists – Hello redundancy. You might be told during your interview that you can move anywhere after a year in this position, however there are several people in Online Specialist roles who are unable to move anywhere internally and there’s not any development assistance happening from leadership. You’re kind of viewed as “flawed” if you’re not out of this role within a year. With Apollo acquiring Rackspace, every penny is scrutinized right now, so the future isn't really clear. Lastly, if/when your day does come and you finally nab a different internal position, you are severely low-balled and you have to battle it out to receive a decent offer because Recruiting will base your new offer off of your current base salary of 35K, (minus your commission). Overall, the vibe I get is the Online Specialist position is not a great launching pad into greater things at Rackspace.
