Looking for opinions from people who've worked in these jobs!

[SparklingOrange]

Hi all!

So I've been out of work for over a year and I'm ready to get back into work again.

I've applied for various different jobs from call center jobs
to support worker roles with children who have MH/disabilities. I'm just wondering if anyone has or works these types of jobs and what's their opinion on both?

Thank you :)

I've worked in a call centre and my work place was excellent however we were a very specialised department in a very large company dealing solely with incoming queries so my experience of a call centre will be very different to someone mostly dealing with complaints

I did a call centre. I had to sit down all day, and at the same desk, with the same view, in the same building, with the same people. They were massively pedantic about exact minutes all the time - eg 5 minute loo breaks (max - not 6 - for any reason) Coming in and being “ready to work” by your start time which actually meant you had to arrive/return from lunch ten minutes before your start time or you wouldn’t have enough time to boot up their POS computers and connect all the devices you needed to in order to be “ready to work”.

I lasted three months because of the having to sit down all day issue. I wouldn’t recommend, but maybe they’ve changed.

Really depends on the type of call centre. DH and I have both worked in quite nice ones.

I took inbound calls so no pushy sales/debt management type situations. In my experience they’re good for flexible hours especially if you want to do evenings. I didn’t mind keeping logs of my time e.g comfort breaks, after call work etc as they never questioned my use of the time. I imagine if they started querying every time I logged out it would have been a different matter.

DH enjoys it where he works. They mix it up a bit more so he’ll be on different lines through the day, sometimes training and sometimes doing admin support. He likes the variety. Plus they give great incentive prizes (he won an iPad Pro and keeps getting £20-30 Amazon vouchers for getting good feedback).

Not for profits tend to have nice call centres, some big companies like Admiral have pretty good reputations for their call centres too. For places you’re thinking of applying, have a look at Glassdoor reviews to see what their employees are saying about them.

Having done both I'd opt for the care one.