Educational Testing Service Reviews

Pros

Good workplace ethics
Decent salary given the area

Cons

Stressful at times
No career growth
No encouragement from management to catch up with technology

Advice to Senior Management

Catch up with technology

Pros

ETS is doing very well financially and looking to expand its workforce.

The retirement and educational reimbursement benefits are excellent.

Work/life balance can be very good.

Cons

Salaries at ETS are not competitive with salaries of other companies.

Employees who do very poor work are tolerated. In our team one employee cannot handle the simplest tasks yet he has been working at ETS for 20 years. This is only one example in our department.

Advice to Senior Management

The transparency in the publication of salary ranges was a welcome change. I hope enough is done for the highly rated employees that fell below the minimum of their salary range because they will eventually leave ETS for better opportunities.

Pros

I can choose whatever hours I want to work from 8:30AM-9:00PM. The work is fairly easy and interesting, and I can do it from anywhere as long as I have my laptop and an internet connection.

Cons

Because all the work is done online, there's no contact with other workers, and unless your content leader for the day decides to give you feedback, you have no idea how your work rates compared to others.

Advice to Senior Management

After working there for more than five years, I seriously yearn for Direct Deposit! I actually get a check in the mail and then have to bring it to a bank. Come on, ETS, we work online and everything is automated! It's ironic that you don't offer Direct Deposit.

Pros

nice colleagues, many opportunities, good benefits

Cons

because it's big, it takes longer sometimes to get things done

Advice to Senior Management

NA

Pros

Work from home and schedule your own hours.

Cons

Project oriented, not always stable.

Advice to Senior Management

Always work with different scoring supervisors so there's little chance for people to really get to know you.

Pros

Flexible, easy work at home job with great scoring leaders and decent pay. Fairly rewarding work considering its nature, flexible hours (when you can get them)

Cons

Frequent shift cancellations are a real problem, often with less than 24 hours notice. Can make it difficult to make ends meet with this job!

Advice to Senior Management

Increase communication about shift cancellations; treat raters like their time is valuable. Increase communication about opportunities for advancement (I've worked there six months and have no idea how one becomes a scoring leader!)

Pros

easy laid back good staff

Cons

everything is by the book, too much red tape

Pros

Laid back work environment. Very good for people who need to balance work life issues.

Cons

Below average pay in the IT departments drives out the good people while the so-so wokers who cannot leave are the ones that you are left with.

Advice to Senior Management

Must find a way to reconize who your truly talented people are and reward them so that they do not leave. Remember that those that leave on there own are usually the ones you want to keep.

Pros

great coworkers and flex time

Cons

dinosaur management and antiquated systems

Advice to Senior Management

honesty, ethics, integrity need to be put back into the workplace here

Pros

Work hours are easy and much more lax when compared to typical Fortune 500-type companies; 40-hours/week is what most work here
Family-friendly; alot of consideration given to the personal demands and allows for individuals to take time off for personal demands and, in some instances, bring kids to work if schedule allows
Social mission; assisting the surrounding Princeton area with such things as Habitat For Humanity, etc... Employees are allowed off 1 day per year for 'community assistance' which can be applied if you are chapperoning your kid's fieldtrip at school, etc...
Almost no travel
Reasonable Benefits
Job Security - This company has thrived during the current economic recession. I have received salaray increases and bonuses for the last few years.
Summer Hours - Work closes at 2PM on Fridays from July 4 holiday through Labor Day holiday
Family Picnic

Cons

Too many fiefdoms creates too much red tape on getting work done. This creates frustration, ineficiencies, and other negative aspects that should easily be avoided.
For a company of this size (mid-size of ~5,000), it is truly disappointing of the overabundance of redtape and fiefdoms that must be overcome to get work done. Having worked at Fortune 100 companies, there should be no execuse for these kind of problems at a smaller company like this.
Within IT, there appears to be many unqualified individuals of leadership positions. Such appointments appear to have occurred due to long-standing tenure having ben employed here for 10+ years, personal relationships (married couples working in the same division!), and a perpetual problem of unqualified managers appointing subordinate managers whom then are less qualified.
The pay is commensurable for mid-size companies in south jersey/PA. This is a not-for-profit organization, so ETS is not attempting to pay competitively as NYC or public Fortune 250 companies. Moreso, there is no 'huge bonus' or similar 'large raise' opportunities due to the company's conservative pay schedule.

Advice to Senior Management

This company appears to be at a cross-roads in that it is attempting to be more competitive with public companies for new opportunities. To do so, there needs to be an attempt to address the existing concerns within certain divisions that has spilled into unsuccessful large scale projects, CXO bickering, and having become ill positioned for such future opportunities. This is fixable, but should be given the time to do so now so that the future and expectations can be set accordingly. Kurt has taken the necessary steps, since taking over as president some time ago, to operate this organization as a publically-held for-profit entity. This effort should continue now as an internally-focused initiative that re-alligns the organization for where it needs to be in the future. Recent reorganizations have focused only on specific ETS products or a 'new team to fix an issue'. These type of reorganizations have slowly established the fiefdom environment that now plagues this company when attempting to address RFP responses joining corporate-wide resources.