Pros

The people are great!

You need to think about the role and what kind of people are going to fill it. I went for a Telesales role, and so the people that went for it were uneducated people, first jobbers, gap year and older people who wanted pocket money.

The money is not great, for that type of job its excellent. We had an hourly rate plus bonus on the number of sales. On top of that there were random events and prizes as incentives, like paintballing, trips to amusement parks, tv's and even consoles!

Also they actively try and get you involved in outside events. For example Friday nights in the pub and you can get together with people from other ICT teams. They don't mind if you bring extra people out, the more the merrier.

Cons

Progression. I went there and was 'overqualified'. I had 2 degree's (some people there didn't even finish compulsary education).I was good at sales and enjoyed that and the company. I primarily joined because it gave me flexibility to apply for graduate positions while having an income to pay off my student loans. However, when positions came out, I did apply but was rejected for them all. I mainly because the roles were made for people specifically. For example 'experience of monitoring calls' was required, there was only one person in the company who had that as part of their role... and they got the position.

However, since I have left, people that started in the same 'batch' have gone on to become supervisors, team leaders etc. so maybe its not all bad... you just need to stick out the time.

Advice to Senior Management

You need a career framework. Although I worked in the telesales environment, there should be a clear progression for everyone. At present if you are an agent, you will just be given an hourly raise every year. That's not great because people are there for 3 years and they are still doing the same job. If you carry on like this you may as well get monkeys and train them on the phones.