Be wary of any prospective offers for work at the Bank of America corporate complex on Chandler Blvd.in Chandler, AZ, especially in the mortgage divisions. Chiefly, temporary agencies (such as Select Staffing and Disys, at least two responsible for placement within the group who began work with me) are instructed to tell candidates that there are inbound customer service and account maintenance positions. Your first alert is that they are constantly hiring for this sort of work.
I was told (via email) at 9:30 PM on the Sunday evening before I was to report for work that I would, instead, be making exclusively outbound calls for the process of "loan modification." It is a simple enough responsibility, but clearly not the one offered. You will not be given any written or stated performance expectations, so may be let go for an unknown lack of productivity at any time, among other things.
While the staffing companies were theoretically duped (everyone in my class was told they were being hired for the same thing), there is no way of knowing that they are not complicit in this bait-and-switch hiring, since they place people there regularly.
Two or three people were "let go" over something that purportedly emerged on their background searches. This was odd if, for no other reason, because they were already working there for more than a week before whatever popped up. Some elected to abandon the position because, as mentioned, it was not as was described or ultimately desired. There were one or two people showing up for the same work, "loan modification, " every few days. "Training, " initially explained as two weeks, actually took less than two hours, if that.
This was also a temp-to-hire placement, though I never came across anyone who had been brought on in this fashion. The office complex is fairly large and it would be unfair to categorize any of this as a universal policy or experience. A note on the initial circumstances of the employ, which may change depending on when or how you are hired: You will not have a valid entrance badge, you will not have a working computer, you will not have any access to other systems as would be expected to perform your job.
It can be inferred that this a position of little importance and bottom-rung make-work for the division. My agency paid $12.00/hr. For it. There is obviously no question that any of us, at this time in the economy, will take anything we can, even if they lie from the beginning to the end of your tenure. I also discovered that hundreds of outbound calls I was making could collect the exact information from a single website link, to which we had no access.
For anyone who may think I am merely grudging my termination over an implied laziness or—again, undeclared—lack of throughput, I was in constant check with the others who were brought on at the same time. I completed twice as many cases as any two of them put together. I also casually asked one of the three people who seemed to supervise me (the exact individual with this responsibility was unclear, the entire time) how I was doing, and was told I was performing well. When I received the call from my staffing agency, at 5:30 PM on a Friday, I was surprised and baffled at the reason for my termination. It's like biking across the country from NY to CA and being told you only made it to NJ.
While it should go without saying, I was always dressed properly, friendly and deferent to other employees, did not have inappropriate conversations, or any of the other pitfalls that can sandbag anyone at a new job. Ultimately, beware of who and how you are hired by this company, at this location. Even if you have no choice, bear in mind that any reason whatsoever can be invented to remove you, there is an outrageously high rate of attrition, and you will not be given the tools necessary to perform your work properly.
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