Pros
I worked for this company starting in 2011 when it was Affiliated Computer Services, then became Xerox, and now Conduent as of 1/3/17. I held several different jobs within the one Small Business Unit (SBU) I worked in the whole time. This is a professional business solutions or as some may call it "outsourcing" company. Call centers for customer service, mail handling, data entry, etc., for any company that signs a contract with them to do it. Pros, as someone who worked in the food service entry for a long time trying to make any use of his Bachelor's degree this was an invaluable experience. It will give you a lot of foundational experience in information technology, cable, insurance, medical insurance, mobile phone providers, you name it that you may not learn as a customer. I knew next to jack about power-of-attorneys, deductibles, maximums, legal guardianships, estates, business professional candor, basics of call center operations and profits that I never learned in school. If you are good with Excel, you will enjoy some success here. Many of the low-level managers I had there cared about me and my physical and emotional well being. They recognized my abilities and would recommend me to upper management for promotions. I enjoyed learning how to interact with a client. Work place diversity is all over the place. Many other of my colleagues said they were flexible with their school schedule but they really want you to be available full time. There are employee discounts to certain companies and they had a tuition reimbursement for related bachelors degrees I think but at least for general education they did. The cons outweighed the pros however. Some reviewers use bullet points but I have been waiting years to give someone my advice and someone will find this message useful regardless of how long it is.
Cons
I could write a play about how much I couldn't stand this place and the constant reneging of promises that upper management made and the instability of contracts that they signed. If you must work for this company, you will want to ask them if that particular project is a Money Losing Unit (MLU), when the client is due to resign their contract, how often does your quality analyst or supervisor honestly evaluate your performance and how, what is that project's budget for employee incentives/entertainment and how often do they manage to attain that, and what is the typical career path to someone just starting out as a level 1 employee and about long does it take for them to make it to those positions. An MLU is a group that at the end of their month or what have you, they either break even in profits and employee compensation, they didn't meet performance goals and maybe they have to pay a fine to the client but still pay their employees their wage and go below profit margin, or they just don't make their revenue falls behind what employee compensation is anyways. They can afford to incentivize much in those positions naturally but neither is opportunity. Let me start out with benefits. Now how much you are paid depends on the project and how much revenue it makes. In my experience, I started training at $9.50 an hour and then went to $10 an hour. I, and everyone else around me were at $10 an hour for...4 years! You do not get a raise to your base pay unless you get promoted. The project may have performance based bonuses that help make up for it. For a few months when I was first recognized for my attendance and abilities, I was offered to learn a workforce analyst position and fill in whenever they needed help they paid me a slightly higher wage for those hours that I was working and was told by the supervisor that when joining the team full-time I would get that. When he told the manager about that he was shocked and said we can't pay him that; why did you tell him that? My supervisor apologized for that broken promise and I foolishly accepted the job anyways. By the time I was involuntarily moved to another project within the SBU (more on that later), Xerox did a survey and announced a "Call Center of the Future" to where out wage increased by about 24%, and there would be increases each year of service and rate of increase capped after 6 years up to a certain amount. We rejoiced! One year later though, they discovered that this wasn't getting a positive correlation with revenue and performance that management had hoped so they fired the lady that came up with it and didn't tell us for about another 3 months that it wasn't happening anymore. They promised us the last quarters raise that was supposed to be paid just before this took effect and told us not to ask about it anymore; this was not happening. I kept my current wage until the project terminated but every other project in town was paying less than what I was being compensated. Insurance is absolutely ridiculous. For 2017, our medical premium doubled and the in-network deductible went from about $1600 to $2000. They only offer one plan. Dental and Vision were about average. Making your employees feel valued and giving them things like parties, gift cards, and things like that happened seldcomly. It only happened when they were given whenever we were given just enough money to come up with something. Performance based contests or just to be even nice happened maybe once a year or every other year. I am not counting times when attendance was low or OT was needed for work volume. It only seemed to happen when morale was at a troublesome low and we needed appeasement. Now to my experience with my career path is where I was the most distressed. I started out as a Customer Service Consultant then went on to be a Subject Mater Expert, Workforce Analyst, Quality Analyst, Team Lead, Trainor, back to Customer Service Consultant, Quality Analyst again, then back down to Customer Service Consultant. Most of this was for one contract changing reason or another. The Workforce analyst position while it provided a position of importance and gave invaluable experience with the business it was a dead end and was not the position for me. They allowed me back onto my old team and I became a Quality Analyst, Team Lead, and a Trainor all at the same time. I enjoyed those positions and the rewarding experience I got from coaching fellow agents and the interaction I got with the client. It was not to last. When I started in 2011, the client signed that this would be a 5 year contract. But a particular team within the SBU that made the most money was have abysmal attendance and performance issues, they decided to close down the entire rest of the SBU and transfer us over there. If we refused, we had to tender our resignation. So I was in a position were I was confident in myself and forced to start over and lost my position as QA and Trainor. They may tell you otherwise but the place is a glass ceiling. Another 3 months went by when for the next year the client announced the contract was awarded to someone else after the next year and they didn't even tell the managers they were going to be making that announcement to their customers. We were not even told for another 14 months whether Xerox or later Conduent was going to be placing us in a new job or whether we had to apply to jobs on our own. They gave us less than 60 days per state law to inform us of a potential layoff. Guess what? They made us apply for jobs within the company on our own. At this point, I had it. Even 3 years ago I had it. So I had a friend in a project I truly believed in got me a job but my boss would like let me go before a certain date the project was ending. I found out after I left from my friend they let one person transfer...but that person was not performing as well as myself and another one of my co-workers that accepted the offer I did! I went to a few interviews within Conduent in my area and my friends who had worked there before reported it was an absolutely miserable experience. Keeping up with some of my co-workers who did accept an offer that I declined, most of whom were the best of the best that we had to offer were let go after they joined that team. The place was not very transparent. New years eve, I was working for Xerox. The day after New Years comes and we were working for Conduent and no one even told us that that was happening. Much though was the same. Still the same benefits and broken promises after broken promises.