National Foreign Language Center, University of Maryland Employee Review

Current Employee – been working at National Foreign Language Center, University of Maryland as a contractor for more than 3 years

Pros – Interesting work with more government money than should be allowed. The center largely acts as a typical DC middle agency for federal and grant funds. Lots of opportunities for travel on the center's dime and very nice, quirky people to work with. Quite a bit of downtime, so much so that many employees use their time to study for classes, surf dating sites, and watch movies, but don't you dare get caught with a book (ebooks are a good way around that). Paid lunch hour, which is technically not supposed to happen, but it's a nice perk that management ignores. Nice building, with free parking, which is a nice perk when working at UMD. The director is actually competent, in addition to professional and genuinely kind.

Cons – Management and employees, for the most part, are great to work with. HR and the executives however are dismal! One year they told all of us that no one gets a raise, and then they gave themselves raises. They've also had incredibly unfair employment standards where they have fired a few people, all female by the way, some of whom went on to sue the center, win, and been forcibly rehired! Since then, they have wizened up and picked up new tricks. HR has bullied people into leaving the center because the budget called for the firing of somebody and the HR member (she) wanted to save their job. Very high turnover, except for a very small group of people.

Advice to Senior Management – Rebuild the HR department from the ground up, consider firing the incredibly and blatantly sexist individual on the exec committee (and everyone knows who he is), stop lying to your employees about funds, and stop treating people like children. Adults don't need dress codes and curfews.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend