Great People, Great Company, Great Opportunity - Business Operations Specialist McMaster-Carr Employee Review

This review is a little long, but i'm trying to be as thorough as possible...I was hired into the Business Operations Specialist role and it was one of the best things to ever happen to me. First off I want to say that this role is NOT, I repeat NOT, an entry level position. You need to be extremely competent to be able to handle the job. That’s why most of the people that are hired into this role were managers/supervisors at their previous company or at least they were doing complex work—more than just “office work” or data entry. If you’re able to get hired here, you’ll be working with other people of the highest caliber. Let me tell you a little about my time here and what the job entails. Benefits and company life—Super competitive salary, great medical and dental benefits, cash and deferred profit sharing, and work/life balance. I came from a retail management background, so I love not having to work odd hours/holidays. Want to work a 40 hour week and have weekends off? McMaster-Carr can give that to you. Like to surf? You have all weekend to catch waves. Want to be able to go to church on Sundays (or any other spiritual/religious equivalent)? Well, now you can. With all that time off, you can do things that you've previously been unable to do for lack of time. Many employees I know spend the extra time with their kids. What did I do with my free time? I jumped into health/fitness and was able to get into shape in about a year. I’m in my thirties now and I've never been in better shape! Going to the gym not your thing? Well you can pursue whatever else you’re interested in because you can go to school for whatever you want (as long as the school is accredited), which by the way would be paid for 100% by McMaster-Carr. I haven’t taken up their offer yet, but I’d be crazy not to. Oh and they’ll even help YOUR KIDS go to college if/when the time comes. How cool is that? I have never heard of a company that offers that. They also sponsor a company football, basketball, softball, golf, and even a DRAGON BOATING team if you’re into that (and more)! Simply put, there’s a reason that some people have chosen to spend their entire careers at this company. It’s because McMaster-Carr is all about helping its employees improve the quality of their lives in any way possible. Went through a two week training course (I think it may be a longer course now...not sure) and started working in the Phone Contact Center (the Text Contact Center is the same job, only their mode of communication is strictly email/text). Oh and side note…if you don’t know this…When you call McMaster-Carr as a customer, there’s only one phone number and an actual human being picks up the phone--24 HOURS A DAY. Need to place an order? Need to check on an order? Need help picking out a bolt? Need to know if those bolts meet a certain spec? Need those bolts in a certain material or manufacturer? Need to get 1000 of those bolts to San Francisco by 8:30am tomorrow? Need something you don’t see in the catalog? Need to make a payment? Need any documents? That’s right, you call one number and the McMaster-Carr Business Operations Specialist that answers the line can help you with whatever you need. No runaround, no wasting your time, and no messing around. Sounds so simple but you don’t experience that kind of customer service everywhere. THAT’s the Phone Contact Center and that is the department that provides the fantastic customer service they've become famous for. On the job, I would take calls from customers--10% of the time it’s just an order, another 10% of the time they might need documentation or they might need to check on an order. Those are the quick and easy requests. The challenging and more fun interactions are from customers that are working on a project of some sort and they need your help building things. I once had an engineer from Cal Tech who called in because he needed help building a specialized ducting system for an experiment he was performing. Another time I had a call from the set of the TV show Sons of Anarchy where they needed some security bars that would fit on a specific kind of door. One time I even helped Tim Commerford (the bassist from Rage Against the Machine) build a custom Polyethylene panel for his off road truck. As you can see, it takes a critical thinker/problem solver and awesome customer service skills to be able to handle the wide range of requests from McMaster-Carr customers. Anyhow, I’m going to admit that in the beginning I made a few mistakes (like sending someone a wrong quantity on an order or not listening to the customer/missing information or forgetting to include a phone number in some correspondence or accidentally saying the wrong thing on the phone or somehow making something difficult for a customer…stuff like that). But while I was struggling, I was always notified of my errors so I could improve my performance. Each time a trainer talked to me about an error I made, I took it as a learning opportunity and took notes on what I should improve. It took a little time, but I took all the feedback and made the proper adjustments. After a few months, I started to meet expectations and gained the trust of my supervisors. Over time I was given more responsibilities, had more privileges, worked on various projects and was even given a raise after my first year. In fact I've been getting a raise every year because I've been meeting expectations (I think they would have been bigger raises if I did more than just meet expectations…and there ARE people who do!). Eventually, I was able to move to another department and am currently learning about a whole other side of McMaster-Carr. In retrospect I wish I had been able to make that transition a little sooner than I did. Especially because I was starting to see a lot of co workers (some who were hired after me!) get moved or promoted to supervisor. Some of them only spent about a year or so as a Business Operations Specialist before they were whisked away to the Export department, Marketing, Recruiting, Product/Order Support or Accounting. Thought I was jealous, I have to admit that every person who got moved or promoted fully deserved it! They are some of the best and brightest people I know. They were all fully meeting expectations if not exceeding them when they transitioned to other departments. As for me—although it took a little longer—I kept a positive attitude from day one, did my best and when a need presented itself in the company, I was a moved as well. Now here is some more of the nitty gritty. Those that don’t meet the clearly outlined expectations are given every resource and opportunity to turn things around, but if they are not able to improve their performance within about a year or so, they are fired. It’s never a surprise though, because you always know where you stand in terms of your own performance. It’s understandable though if you can’t do the job. The most common reasons for under performing---not able to give good customer service, not good at active listening, no attention to detail, can’t think critically, not good at problem solving, not receptive to feedback, or having a bad attitude. I've had friends who were let go and I have friends who have quit (because they weren't doing too well and they knew their days were numbered). Some of them have admitted to me that the role was not for them and they have moved on to other careers. The really disgruntled ones are usually the ones that have a hard time taking feedback/criticism or else they think they are too good for this job…and once they are fired they go on websites like this one and write bad reviews (so take the bad reviews on Glassdoor with a grain of salt). To all those people I say this: don’t blame your incompetence on others…especially your supervisors. I can tell you that the supervisors/trainers/managers that work at McMaster-Carr didn't get to where they are by blaming their shortcomings on others. Do you think a company that is at the top of their industry and has lasted for over 114 years got there by hiring mediocre staff/supervisors? No way! Bottom line is that when it comes to growth and career advancement here—If you want it, you can have it. There are no games here. You just have to earn it.