H&R Block – “Ridiculous”

Pros

1) Get to meet lots of different people.
2) Advancement is fairly straightforward and simple, but you CANNOT be promoted year one under any circumstance

Cons

1) Very poor pay (near minimum wage after paying $120 for 100 hrs of unpaid training that they may or may not hire you after). After your first year you work on either commission or hourly wage (hours worked is subtracted from commission), of course you don't get paid for the ones the client doesn't pay for (free 1040EZ's for everyone!)
2) For all the training they give you, you will still have many, many questions, ie. the training does not do a good job.
3) Stupid work schedule (11 hour shifts during peak times, no hours other times but still spread throughout the week so you don't get a day off)
4) Seasonal, only hopes of becoming a full-time tax professional is to make it all the way up to Enrolled Agent
5) Performance metrics up the wazoo. They are watching you all the time. The most important one, your customer's perception of you, is kept a secret except from the office manager and you are expected to beg your clients to give you a perfect score or it counts as failing.
6) Expected to market for them, including calling, thank you calling, distributing flyers, etc. You are essentially running your own business, except with H&R block taking all the money and giving you commission instead.

Advice to Senior Management

During training it was my understanding that many steps were put into place to improve employee retention, perhaps because they realized that hiring, throwing their 1st years to the wolves, then firing them en masse when they didn't do so well, was neither good for their brand nor good for employee retention. Amends have been made to the hiring and firing, as they don't hire as many now, but you are more or less still thrown to the wolves. You are assigned a mentor, however I was not scheduled compatible hours with said mentor until almost a month. As a result, I had to figure out many things on my own, at the expense of looking like I didn't know what I was doing (and I didn't in everything save the actual tax preparation). The client roleplays, which were mostly skipped over and not taken seriously, would be VERY helpful for a first year especially.

The IRS exam will help somewhat to train since apparently H&R Block only cares if you know that someone qualifies for EIC and what they file as as shown in the class you take in order to get an interview to be hired.