Pros
- Co-workers are beyond helpful. - Being able to support and see your clients achieve their individual goals is very rewarding. - Overtime pay. - A great job for someone who just got out from undergrad/grad. - Networking.
Cons
- There is NO work/life balance. You are expected to be on call 24/7 and available to clients unless you have requested time off. - You carry a fairly big caseload= Burnout. - Constant paperwork, calls, e-mails, troubleshooting issues. You rarely get a break even on a day when you are “off” and have no clients scheduled. - Have to use PTO for holidays or if you are unable to make your 40 hours each week. - You have to keep track of your hours by billing in various .10 increments=tedious and a job in itself. - Generally over worked and the pay does not reflect this whatsoever (you do get overtime pay which can be a plus but there comes a point where money isn’t even worth the constant hours). - Hard to keep personal plans intact since so long as a client is working, you are working (a good amount of clients work in fast food, retail, cleaning positions so various hours from morning to late at night as well as everyday of the week). - The current trend I was able to identify is that counselors left at about the 1 year mark; turnover.