Pros
Mediocre, modest salary that paid my bills each month.
Cons
Extreme levels of stress. Almost no useful training. Unreasonable expectations. Terrible work / life balance. Terrible reliance on "mentors" to teach you how to do your job, instead of giving good, actual training, on a routine basis. Terrible customers. Terrible supervisors. Terrible cubicle office environment. This company puts an extreme emphasis onto their "metrics" for judging the value of an employee. This was an utterly miserable job that made life not worth living. I worked in the Auto claims department of The Hartford Insurance company. This company gave me almost ZERO training, and told me that my training would be "On The Job" training. So after a week of talking about the basics of auto insurance, I was put into my cubicle, and told to start doing my job, and I was told that if I had any questions, that should present those questions to my mentor, through INSTANT MESSENGER, on the computer. My mentor was a young girl, whose was very busy all of the time, and I basically just had to figure out the entire job all by myself, just like nearly every employee. I had customers calling me constantly, and I constantly had to put them on hold, to get up and walk to another employee's desk, to ask them how to do my job. It was utterly miserable. I kept thinking to myself: "this is truly unbelievable. I cannot honestly believe that this company would put someone through such a truly miserable experience." The job never got any better, either. The training that this company provided me with, was almost non-existent, and the work load that this company had for each of its employee's in the claims department, was truly extreme. Nearly everyone needed to work overtime, just to stay current with their workload. If I actually wanted to ask my "mentor" a question in person, rather than through Instant Messenger, I literally had to lock my computer screen, get up from my desk, and walk a couple of minutes to her desk on the other side of the office building. Then, I had to hope that she wasn't on the phone with a customer. If she was, I needed to wait, or come back later. But I usually could not wait, so I had to bother someone else most of the time. But those other employees were usually extremely inundated with work, themselves. I have never had such a miserable job in my entire life, and I say that, as someone who has done a lot of different and bad and stressful jobs. This company was terrible to work for, and I could barely stand waking up each morning, to get ready to drive there each and every day. My recommendation to anyone reading this review, who is thinking about working in the claims department of The Hartford, is to consider working at another Insurance company that has much better reviews than this one does. This is the only insurance company that I have worked for, but I have heard much better things about other insurance company's. Furthermore, there is very little potential for growing into other areas of the auto insurance field, with this company; you basically can work in Auto Property claims, or Auto Personal Injury claims. Either department is very likely going to be a living hell. Having said all of that, if you think that you can work at a break-neck, lighting speed, and can teach yourself everything that you will need to know, and you don't mind continuously being treated like garbage by customers, and you can handle extreme levels of stress, then maybe you might like to earn a mediocre, modest salary with this company. One other thing that I will say, is that this company forces you to participate in its nearly useless 401k plan. So even though your starting salary will be approximately $43,000, you will have a large portion of that money, put into a nearly worthless 401k portfolio, that will LOSE money. Lastly, this company puts an extreme emphasis on customer service reviews, and that is EXTREMELY stressful. If a customer doesn't like the fact that they were actually at fault for an accident, they might take that out on their agent, rather than take responsibility for it, and that reflects very badly on the agent. I would absolutely never recommend working for this company, and I have spoken to numerous other people who have confirmed bad experiences working for this company. Read the other bad reviews on this website, of this company, before you decide to work for The Hartford Insurance company.