I started with ComputerTraining.edu a few months back. I was brought in for an interview pretty quickly and found out within a couple of days I was hired as an Assistant Director of Admissions for their program.
I went through 3 days of training and then started my job. There were about 5 or 6 other individuals in my training class as well. We were basically glorified sales agents. The management was so concerned about metrics and meeting/exceeding numbers that they didn't care about the employees or how we got potential students in the doors to visit the campuses. We had to make roughly 140+ outbound calls per day at MINIMUM or we did meet our call goals. We were told we were not "pulling our weight" and that it was "not acceptable" if we did not meet that goal. Our job was to call potential students that took the online skills challenge. We had to interview them to find their "pain" - why they were looking to educate themselves. Our job was to get them to come in to visit one of the 25 campuses to meet with the Director of Admissions to get "more information" about the program. We were told to say it was an "informational" visit and that you were not asked to sign up at the time. Really, the director would present the opportunity to sign up multiple times over during that visit. It was really a sales pitch. We, as Assistant Directors of Admissions, received $25.00 commission for every person that even stepped foot in the door that we scheduled. The base salary was $36,000, so with commissions, it could be a pretty nice pay check. People were averaging 40+ "shows" per month, so you could get up there. We had to be so aggressive, calling the same people day after day until they either answered and agreed to come in, or until they were furious and told us to never call them again. We had to bombard people with emails - it was sad to be honest. It was truly a company that had "forceful sales tactics".
After speaking with current employees, I was told about the "big layoff" that took place back in April 2009. That had me a bit concerned, but since I knew a lot of companies were laying off back then, I thought things had turned a new leaf. I mean, why hire 25+ people and a new manager if you were in a sinking ship. Well, the day came when we were all pulled into a room and were let go, some of us less than 2 weeks after we were hired. We were let go due to "poor economic" conditions.
Looking back, if the company had planned better, they would not be in such a rut. This was poor planning on their part and had they looked at staffing and resources, they could have seen this coming. People left other jobs to come work for this company who "sold" us this great opportunity. They promised a stable company that offered such great benefits and a rewarding career. In the end, that now seems like it was a sales pitch too. Since we worked nights, we couldn't even take the courses ourselves. Being a school, you would think educational reimbursement would be high on their benefit list, but no, it was not offered AT ALL!
All-in-all, I was grateful to have a job while I worked at ComputerTraining.edu, but now that I'm gone, I am glad to have left a company where I did not feel comfortable conforming to their standards. Their business practices are unfair to the employee and potential student, so I'm now sorry to have subjected myself to that. For the price of tuition, you could self-study or go somewhere else and get the same education and test vouches for a much cheaper price.
If anyone would like to contact me regarding this, please feel free to do so!
The Admissions Support Manager, Mark Godfrey, was also very drill sergeant like and was very unprofessional to his staff. Again, he was too concerned about sales and numbers and ran a very unprofessional office. We were bombarded with daily emails stating how horrible we were doing, that it was unacceptable and that we could not get students to come in the doors. His e-mail is Mark.Godfrey@computertraining.edu if anyone has any questions to direct his way.