Pros
- Employees get lots of responsibilities from the get-go; it's really easy to get involved with lots of projects and feel like a contributing member of the team from week one. - Since it's a small start-up, you will get the chance to share thoughts and ideas directly to central management. - Working directly with children is a huge job perk if you like kids - you will often get to hang out and bond with members as part of your job. - Explore invests a lot of time in training and developing employees, especially in small business management, sales, and marketing. Overall, this position has lots of pros for a very specific type of person - someone who loves children and spending lots of time around them, is flexible working with unorthodox hours and schedule, thrives with many responsibilities and hats to wear, and wants to develop small business management and sales skills.
Cons
- Work-life balance is not impossible, but is a lot more difficult than with jobs that follow more traditional 9-5 Monday - Friday formats. This takes lots of getting used to and can be hard to deal with. - As it's a start-up, employees can be subject to lots of changes, as well as uncertainties, which is a turn-off to some people in the work-place. Management is - While the training and development is beneficial to employees, Explore will air on the side of over-training an employee who is under-performing for months, rather than knowing when to let someone go who is not a good fit. You will likely be the trainer, or will at least be involved in this training to some capacity. - Upper management is rigid when it comes to maintaining the center's "open 7 days a week" policy, and has prioritized this over employee safety and comfort. - The amount of sales in the position is sometimes misleading when reading job description or in interviews - this is a very sales-heavy position, which doesn't always come across right away. Lots of approaching strangers in malls, stores, community fairs, etc, as well as sometimes cold-calling prospective members. - There should be more curriculum & pedagogy training - the training provided is good quality, but there isn't enough provided to allow assistant directors with no education experience to always trust that they are delivering effective instruction when working with members and teaching classes. Anyone who is disinterested in sales, wants a standard 9-5 schedule with easy work-life balance, isn't ready to invest a lot of time and work for a later pay-off, and is uncomfortable with frequent feedback will most likely not enjoy this position.
