Contracted Employee at Fairmont, WV Contact Center
Pros
The only pros was the fact it was five minutes from my house and it was full time work.
Cons
Here in West Virginia First Energy does not hire on directly with the company. The only way in is through an agency which makes you a contracted employee. You are expected to do the same job as a FE employee but you are paid significantly less without any of the perks. As a contractor you do not get any PTO, bonus incentives, raises, ect. During training they will convince you that you have every opportunity to become a full time employee. The truth is they actually hire less than 2% of the contracted employees and they will either let you go or renew the contract rather than hire you on. Also, I was not impressed with being told we will be forced to take billing in the future and there will not be any pay raise to add billing department to our work load. Everyone has to do it so they said. What made me leave was when I was hired on my agency said we had 16 hours we could miss in training. I later found out this was incorrect that we could only miss 16 hours for the entire contract which was over a year and there was no way to earn the time back. FE asks you to set up appointments around your work hours which is impossible because you work M-F during business hours. It is a guarantee you will miss work for legitimate appointments. Even so that missed time is held against you and your chances of being hired on with the company. I also did not like the fact over time is forced on you so you never knew what time you would be off. Makes it impossible to set up personal appointments. When on call there is no on call pay for contractors you are paid the same. With all the negative cons I decided I would not waste my time or talent here, and I resigned while I was still in training. This was the best decision for me. It is a typical call center that is really no different from any other call center but what makes it worse is the fact you are a contractor. I saw no future opportunities with this contact center. I felt like I was just another warm body in a chair taking phone calls. The amount of stress and high expectations placed on you is not worth the pay!
