Pros
Department coworkers and other employees within the facility are very friendly and courteous. The work is very interesting and challenging. Due to sheer volume of accounts processed and the complexity of everyday operations you receive little effective direct support and training from Department Leads and Supervisors, but on the flip side there is a high degree of autonomy and flexibility in how you complete your work and when you take your rest and lunch breaks. Although there is a formal annual employee performance evaluation process, all non-probationary employees received the exact same 2% raise in 2016. This would be great if you are a sub-standard performer, but a bit deflating if you happen to be a high-energy top achiever. Pay and benefits are below industry average but the PTO policy has, at least historically, been very flexible.
Cons
From my own personal experience it appears to be virtually impossible to be internally promoted at SSM if you hire into a large, high-turnover department such as Pre-Service. Human Resources uses Taleo Recruiting software for initial screening of candidates and each manager has a direct link to it through the HR website. Several veteran employees within the department believe that managers have the ability to block individuals or even specific groups of employees from being given consideration for positions outside of the department, and have actually done so in the past. If this is indeed true, and managers are presently engaging in this egregious activity, it would go a long way toward explaining my own lack of success. Even if you are fortunate enough to receive a rare contact from a “Talent Acquisition Specialist” the best that you seem to get is a very pleasant person reading questions to you off of an obvious script that was indexed against your electronic application, as though you were a non-SSM applicant being considered for new hire. What you have accomplished professionally or academically, or how reliable and helpful you have readily and steadily been to your Supervisor and fellow coworkers, apparently bears little real value. Sadly, it has ultimately been much easier for many of my now former co-workers to gain advancement by leaving SSM for one of the competitors, which of course contributes to the high-turnover ratio. This particular factor is just one of several operational factors that have resulted in extremely low overall employee morale within the department. And from an organization that continually promotes and stresses moral values and individual ethical obligations to its employees this, at the very least questionable, practice is more than a wee bit contradictory.