Now. Here are the reasons I'm not giving this company five stars even though I desperately want to. There are two sides to this company - the administrative side and the labor side. Everyone on the administrative side has it AWESOME. It looks like a great area to work for and seems to very rewarding.
Now. The Core. This is where all of the technicians work. It is a team of about 100+ people who keep the donation of life moving along. MAJOR problems in this area. And NOT with management. It is with the technicians themselves. AlloSource seems to have no problem hiring family members. To get hired here it's strictly a "who you know" type of company. Which is very interesting because most companies frown on nepotism. And that is where this company is bleeding. In the Core. Where all of the mommies and daddies who work the ADMIN side get their little loving children hired - to work in the Core. There are only a few older people - mostly they work day shift - but the majority of the technicians are very young - barely out of high school and their age is FELT. Especially to any older employees who do the same job. Most of these kids have no higher education. Only high school graduates. They got hired because of they who know already in the company.
When I was hired I was told they enjoyed doing this. They trusted their existing employees to bring in 'good' workers.
I'm sorry, AlloSource, but this was not reflected well in the core.
I constantly found myself looking longingly down the hall to where the ADMIN staff resided and felt a loss. I would much rather have been upstairs working with HR than roughing it out in the sterile CORE environment surrounded by pubescent, hormonal 19-year-olds who shouldn't be trusted with a credit card much less the amazing gift of life organ donors entrust to this company on a daily basis.
The work itself was something I was used to. My complaint would be that in certain areas of my job there were a LOT of injuries. The hiring process is VERY rigorous. They put you through an intense physical just to make sure you can handle the job. I actually feel a lot of jobs should have been 'male' only. I ended up with a very serious wrist injury that still plagues me because of my work in the Core. Now - AlloSource takes care of their own. But almost everyone who works as a technician ends up with a long-term injury. And this is sad since most people are so young. But it also makes sense why they hire all these young people...older people are more worthy to handle this type of work...but they will break their backs ten times more quickly. It only took me two weeks of tech work before I ended up with my very serious wrist injury. I had been a very healthy person up until this job.
Granted, if I had not left shortly after the company would have covered all of my medical expenses and kept me off the bench as much as possible. But this is a real problem. They have a massive safety team and lots of ergonomic practices. They are opening a clinic on-site (a part of me believes for this very reason) so they do many things to prevent these types of injuries. Including having a physical therapist come on site several times a week - even to do preventive maintenance care! These are all warnings signs right there that everyone gets injured and the company is going to great lengths to prevent it. But it still doesn't happen.
Injuries.
Bad Co-workers.
Not enough micro-managing. --------- Not all of the managers can be in the CORE ---- it's a sterile environment and they have lots of things to do --------- but as a CORE employee my advice to management is to start watching their employees more closely. Hiring such young people comes with a big risk - laziness, lack of gratitude, lack of compassion, short cutting, bullying, etc.
