Pros
- You can improve your communication skills
Cons
There are many factors that contribute to the poor work environment at Bozzuto. If you are a potential applicant, please consider my thoughts if you plan on working on-site at a specific property. Bozzuto claims to have an incredible work life-balance. It is something that they highlight in the interview process and in training. More specifically, they highlight the twenty days of PTO and the nine paid holidays. These aspects of Bozzuto’s culture is great, but beyond that, there isn’t anything that remarkable. In fact, I would say there is less balance here than at many other companies. The scale is tipped way towards the “work” side. I have outlined a couple of reasons why below: Depending on your property, you may have 9 hour days (with a 1 hour lunch break). This is very common for businesses nowadays. However; spending an extra hour at work does not contribute to a good work-life balance compared to a typical 8 hour day. The office is open longer to accommodate residents and prospects, it is not meant to contribute to your work-life balance. Bozzuto offers 9 paid holidays. At first, this sounds great, until you realize that paid holidays are standard for most companies. Also, this sounds far less great when you may have to work on half of those holidays. Many properties (including mine) do not close the office on most holidays because they want to ensure that prospects and residents can contact the office if they need any assistance. As part of Bozzuto’s exceptional standards for customer service, I understand the reasoning, but you cannot claim to offer employees a good work-life balance if you have to work on holidays such as Labor Day, the day after Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and MLK day. If you are working on one of these holidays, you are given a holiday bonus. I think that a holiday bonus is needed compensation for employees who are made to work. However; Bozzuto culture claims that that the company is a “family” so it’s ironic that they do not recognize that employees should spend their holidays with their actual families, so they should know, only a very large amount of money can prevent me from seeing my family on a holiday (So pay up!). This may not seem like a big deal now, but it is frustrating to know that Bozzuto’s policies regarding holidays are completely customer centered and it takes no consideration to an employees work-life balance. We already work incredibly long and tiring days, we could at least be rewarded with all holidays off. The on-site schedules for team members are not standard and change monthly since the office is open 7 days a week. You are still guaranteed 2 days off every week (not always two days in a row), but you will be required to work most weekends. Management offices give each team member at least one weekend off. It is very hard to maintain a work life balance by not having a set schedule and not having all weekends off. You will notice that hanging out with friends/family and doing normally routine things like grocery shopping/exercising is far more difficult with this kind of schedule and is completely contradictory to a good work-life balance. This role is labeled as a “Sales & Marketing Position”, but do not be fooled, it would be more accurate to label this role as a “Customer Service/Hospitality Representative” The sales part of the role is obvious, selling apartment homes. This is a good portion of your job but the majority of this job is actually customer service based. You're expected to be extremely nice, accommodating, and understanding to residents /prospects. No matter how strange the request, uncomfortable the conversation or rude the client may be to you; all emails, phone calls, and interactions are to be extremely professional and always with a caring attitude. Bozzuto strives at this customer service because this is exactly what residents pay for. Instead of being a person, you will be treated like a very friendly and smart robot. Residents will learn quickly that they can say anything they want to you since you’re programmed by Bozzuto and will cave to their never ending ridiculous requests. So if you were expecting more of a traditional sales role, do not apply here. You will be dealing with residents and prospects for the majority of your day. In essence, your time is their time. You are their servants. You will be interrupted at any moment of your day in order to help someone. I rather not leave this review about the clients, but you may have to deal with very difficult people that makes your job far less enjoyable. This can become rather annoying. You may have to stay way past your shift in order to help people. You are supposed to go out of your way everyday to create “sanctuary” for everyone. This is exhausting, and after a while you will feel like no one cares about your well-being. This is a service role, so there isn’t anything Bozzuto can do to change the behavior of certain people, but management/corporate can provide a stronger backbone for their employees so that there are ways to mitigate and respond to poor/undesirable treatment by some clients Bozzuto likes to keep their on-site employees in check by hiring “mystery shoppers.” Basically these “shoppers” are hired to pretend to be prospects and will grade you on your performance. “Mystery Shoppers” are common for customer service roles, but the criteria for these ‘shops’ are a bit ridiculous and counter-productive to the effectiveness of a sales and marketing associate. If you do not like the sound of your own company hiring a third party to judge your skills, then I would not suggest working here. It doesn’t happen too often, but the idea is that you will always want to be following the Bozzuto Way because if you fail a “shop’ they will deduct one of your bonuses from your next paycheck. I think it’s an ineffective way for corporate to keep an eye on their employees, I also think it is unfair for executives to view results of a shop without the input of the employee. Most executives are detached from the realities of working on-site, so for them to deduct a bonus that you rightfully earned is quite despicable. Overall my experience working on-site at Bozzuto has been negative. I would not recommend this job to any of my friends. There are better sales and marketing roles that someone can apply for. Even though Bozzuto management/corporate are always responsive and are always asking employees if they need assistance with anything, it doesn’t feel like Bozzuto actually cares about those workers on-site. They ask you to tell them your opinions, and rarely do anything about them. I anticipate a very basic and lame response to this post saying “We care deeply about all of our employees, please reach out to me if you would like to speak further.” This is a customer centric company. This is not a company that puts employees first. I understand that putting consumers first is part of their business model, but being an employee here feels like you are at the bottom of the food-chain. It is 2022 and there are countless other amazing employers that are 100% employee centric. If you are looking to do sales and marketing in general, do yourself a favor and apply somewhere else. If I can sum up Bozzuto in one word it would be “fake.” Bozzuto is fake to their employees; they offer low pay and low bonus rates while expecting the highest quality standards in the industry. Bozzuto employees can be fake to each other. There is a strong SYOB (save your own behind) culture where blame is shifted and people just try to cover themselves while putting other employees under the bus. Bozzuto also has a very toxic suck-up culture where managers care deeply about their own image to the higher-ups and ownership groups. If you still end up applying, good luck to you. I hope that you have a management team that will help mitigate all of the problems I have listed above. I hope you are placed under different management that genuinely cares about your well-being and will go out of their way to make your experience better. I hope that you have a management team that doesn’t continually add tasks without making adjustments to your schedule. I hope you have a team that helps you organize your day and complete all of your work in a timely fashion. In the end, it will come down to your management. Will they put their employees first? Or will they put themselves first, to look good in-front of ownership groups and corporate?
