When you're looking for a new job, your first thought is about availability. But most of us also wonder about sustainability. How long will I want to stay at the new place, and what are the opportunities for promotion? Here at The Connection, we offer both. Not only are we hiring for all positions, but we are constantly looking for good people to become part of our work family for years to come (or even more).
Want proof? Meet Heather White.
Heather is now workforce and industry manager at The Connection’s contact center in Jamestown, NY, but she started as an at-home Customer Service Representative. Not long after she started, The Connection decided to open a brick-and-mortar center, and she was invited to apply for a supervisor position. She was promoted to supervisor within six months of starting with us. She supervised other CSRs and helped them through their calls.
She then transitioned into a more specialized role, managing the calls coming in and who was getting them, as well as monitoring the calls themselves.
“Opportunities are huge!”
Heather had not pictured herself in this job at all. “I had gone back to school,” she says, “and it was a part-time thing just to kind of get me through school. It was going to be very short term, a year or two until I got through school.”
Very quickly, however, she realized how much growth potential exists at The Connection. As she talked with other employees, she discovered that our company’s growth is organic. Because we promote from within, we really want our current employees to be able to grow to their levels of potential. “It is a pretty great opportunity to get in on the ground floor,” she says.
In fact, there are many different avenues open to employees who want to move up the ladder. There are numerous opportunities for supervisory positions, plus workforce and training positions. And, of course, because The Connection is more than just a contact center, we have positions in everything from HR to accounting and IT.
“Once we figure out what qualities a person has,” says Heather, “we can put them on a path for success. We try to get them into a position that will make them comfortable, that will make them successful." She has always been especially impressed with the support system, both the training and the on-floor mentoring and skill-building. "As you become more tenured," she notes, "you get to help that next person, and that builds new skills."
More than job growth
The Connection offers benefits beyond promotions. For example, employees begin earning PTO and full-time employee across our contact centers, accrue up to two weeks of vacation each year. "That is pretty significant," Heather says, "because there are not a lot of jobs that offer you two weeks in your first year." After 13 years, Heather herself now enjoys six weeks of paid PTO.
“It was going to be just a part-time thing to get me through school kind of thing, and it just grew. I grew into a supervisor role and then into a workforce role, and now I am managing the entire workforce team,” she says. "The Connection gives people the opportunity to really grow and really understand who they are. You become an integral part of a work community."
When she comes into work each day, she feels good. The music is piping through the hallway. Everything feels fresh and brand new. “You just you feel like you are coming to a great place to work.”
