Pros
- Meeting and working with some amazing, supportive, hardworking coworkers - Location
Kontras
- The Clinical Counselor position (also called "Guidance Counselor" or "GC") is NOT a clinical counseling position. - Don't be fooled by the title, talk about clinical experience gains or opportunities for advancement, new offices, unhealthy free snacks, or the occasional fake positive review posted here - this is a customer service call center job. - The bulk of the work involves basic customer service tasks including creating new client records, transferring calls, gathering minimal intake info, providing brief support and crisis intervention as needed, scheduling appointments for other departments, and completing search assessments for things like apartment, child care, or financial hardship assistance. - Heavy emphasis is placed on call times, call numbers, and ever increasing call quotas. The work is repetitive and tedious, and assisting multiple dissatisfied or at-risk clients per day can be very stressful. - Increasingly high turnover in the department (supervisors included) is due to lack of support, disillusionment, burnout and little to no effort made to recognize good work, or to retain experienced employees. - Pay is low, PTO is low, health insurance is expensive, support from management is poor, no professional development training is offered, the bonus system is convoluted and difficult to achieve, and the push to deliver the best possible customer support is in direct conflict with the constant tracking of call numbers and reminders to decrease call times - all of which is pretty ironic and disappointing for an EAP. - LPCs/Counselors in particular - beware. Forget the recruiting pitch - the work and supervision do NOT count toward any direct service hours required for LCPC certification, and there are no opportunities for advancement here unless you are a social worker. - GCs absolutely do not feel valued or heard. HR and management occasionally go through the motions of requesting GC feedback or ideas, but it rarely results in improvements that favor the staff. In the past 6 months, it has also become clear that management no longer considers basics like team meetings, sharing positive customer feedback, or offering reviews for longer term employees, or exit interviews to be necessary or important. - BOTTOM LINE: The GRU department morale is very low. I can honestly say the majority of GCs deeply regret accepting a position here, and are actively seeking employment elsewhere.