Working at Sitel Corporation — Reviews by Employees

Currently ONYX, the parent company is Canada is pulling $200,000 per month per site off the top. They are closing sites right and left while the fat cats get richer. Ever member of Senior management in Nashville is corrupt and immoral.. Sitel won't last another year.

Advantages:

After working in the call center for a few months and passing several interviews and stat requirements, I was able to work from home.

The pay is ok if you are young and have no family to support. You can earn a sales bonus each month.

The company does offer health benefits and a small life insurance policy.

Disadvantages:

Getting the job took quite a bit of time considering it was an entry level position. There were several tests to take and after being hired it took some time to get into a training class. I was the oldest member of my training class. The supervisors and employees lack communication skills. Leadership skills are rare among superrvisors.

Although there is a dress code, it is not enforced and the employees look and act as if they are in a night club. Some of the superrvisors are helpful but the majority of them are rude. There is often a feeling that no matter how hard you work, you may be fired for any reason. There is no doubt some favoritism. Many times supervisors have refused to stop watchng a football game to answer a question.

After training with Directv, the rules change so often that one week, it is a firing offense to transfer a call and the following week it is a firing offense not to transfer that type of call. Although all employees at some point must attend a wage and hour meeting where they are told they must not work off the clock, hourly employees are required to do small things off the clock.

It's the small things that make me hate this job. For example, while working on site with all the busted chairs and computers, my team was told that the phone cables were being stolen and that each of us whould have to purchase one.

Some of the people I worked with onsite spent lunch time getting drunk. Some of the superrvisors look like hookers. I dread going to work more because of the people that I have to work with than talking to the customers. There are a lot of reasons I would like to leave this company. But like so many other people who are overqualified for jobs like these, I have nowhere else to go (yet).

working for sitel was ok, but it could have been better. to make a long story short i only worked there for 8 months and we were layed off august of 08 because the wellcare department of course moved elsewhere. it really didn't come as a suprise because they started firing people left and right some for no reasons and they even started firing coaches and also moving people over to cigna. i was the # 1 agent out of wellcare,cigna and the pharmacy department and when i tried to come back because i had a hard time finding a real job the recruiter wouldn't even hire me back. i never missed a day of work i actually had time in the bank . if you asked me it really wasn't the job i actually liked talking to the people sometimes on the phone it was the people in charge they all sucked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and ghetto fabulous,most of these people had no phone ettique and most lacked professionalism

First off, abit about my time and experience with the Company. I started at Sitel Hamilton AL the day the doors opened at that location in 2001. Back than things were alot better. Pay was good, enviroment was excellent, and people actually cared about each other and their jobs. The training was on par with the job required and the job was explained completely so you knew what you was getting yourself in for. When we started their was an actual standard to meet before getting hired. People came into work smiling and laughing, joking with each other, even coaches. It was during the first 2-3 years, Hamilton was the primary site for two of the top computer manfactoring industry at that time. We all were glad to come to than.

In the first year and half I made traininer and two years later I moved over to coach for more experience, was going for Operation Manager so I needed the experience. However it was around the 4 year mark, that the company started to change, it became more corperate so to speak. They started sending rule changes and policies. In short they only care about the black and white ink of a book, no longer caring about the people.
At the 5 year mark I was sit back on the phones because my team was not performing. At that time my team was the #2 team on the floor. A few months later I was asked to be a coach again.At the 6 1/2 year mark I went to the phones as a phone agent, because I was told my team did no perform. However my team was the best on the floor. I stayed on the phones till I was released in 2009. During this time however I was to mentor several groups, do up training and stand in as coach from time to time.

The terms of my release only proves that they nolonger care about the peple. I had missed several days taking family to the doctor and was written up for it, all days on one write up. I had put in enough time to reduce the the written to be void, so they went back and wrote me up again for each individual day, thus resulting in my release. In esences I was double dinged. To make matters worse, I was not allowed to draw my unemployement after almost 8 years of work, it was denied.

I was not the only one at hamilton,AL site that was treated in such mannor, most were treated worse.

Now for a review
Pay: In Hamilton the pay is not adequet for the job, it is just enough to get you to want to apply and than the raises are not sufficent. They have locked the topout pay so that regardless o how hard you work, that is the most you will ever make.

Respect: Well respect depands on one thing, who you kiss up to nowdays. It used to be how hard you worked, how good you did your job, how depandable you were, but those days are long gone. Now days it is who your are friends with or how much you suck up to the bosses. The only reason alot of us had an ounce of respect is because we carried it with us from the old days.

Benifits: As soon as they get some, than it can be comminted on

Job Security: Their is no such thing with Sitel now days, A coach who was ayear and half from retiring, was told to retire now or they would fire him. Their is no such thing as job security at Sitel, unless your in the click.

Work/Life Balance: Again another thing that does not excist at Sitel, They want you to give up all of your personal life and devote it all to work. Unless your management and in the click of course, than you get what you want. I know I was in that click for awhile until I refuse to sell my self to the company.

Career Potential/Growth: Growth is determined by who you are friends with, i mean they have people in coaching roles that are clueless about how to even manage a team, let alone treat them like humans. They want you to work as hard as you can but when you apply for a position, they give it to the people that they are friends with, regardless of experience.

Location: The only good thing about the site in Hamilton now. It is in a decent location, close to resturants.

Co-Worker Competence: This one is hard to pin down because they are so varied. The few that are left from the old days know their stuff, they fought for years to learn it. But Sitel hamilton has fired so many people over the smallest thing, mostly the ones that are making high pay now. That no one wants to work there anymore. This is turn has made them just hire any and everybody even if they have no clue how to turn a computer one. I myself have had to train, retrain, and re re train countless people jsut so they could pull there tools up each day. Than trian them again on how to do the job. Besides the hand full of us, the work force there is not up to standard.

Work Enviroment: Stress becomes your very best friend at this place. The employees at this place resemble an automated zombie workforce that is being yelled at by their masters. from the moment you walk in the door till you leave, their is a weight on your shoulders. If given a choose between Sitel or digging ditches, go with the ditches, atleast than you know what yoru shoveling for.

The only good thing about the job is the insurance.
Other than that...NOTHING.

The company will squeeze the life out of you for very little pay.

A job at Sitel = glorified burger flipping job. Except, the burger flipping job gets you some respect.

I would only recommend Sitel if it is the last possible job you can find. You will be treated like garbage. And, forget about raises.

This is how pathetic this place is: I sell auto insurance....I made a $4000 dollar sell and was congratulated by the staff...they gave me a $1.00 bill to show their appreciation.

However, they do give away Sitel hats in place of a decent wage. (I wouldn't be caught dead in Sitel apparel).

I worked for these bozos for several years, the only reason they didn't get rid of me is because I honestly didn't stick my out for any reason and just rolled with the stupidity. I've outlasted multiple coaches, several name changes of the company and the situation still sucks. It's a great job if you have no other choices and you don't mind mindless management and HR being somewhat lacking in common sense. The only reason I stuck it out was for the insurance, after that it was aggrevation, and mind numbing tediousness of constant change that made no sense.

I will keep this short. Sitel is by FAR the wors't employer I have ever worked for. This is mostly because of a total lack of respect and complete incompitence of management. They are exquisite at sucking any and all spirit left in you and squeezing it for every last penny. DO NOT WORK FOR SITEL, unless you are completely destitute.

"Everytime I hit the 'auto-in' button, a little piece of my soul dies." Co-worker to supervisor.


This place of employment is by far the single-worst job I've ever had in my life right under McDonald's on every level. I was actually treated better by my high school aged managers at every fast food restaurant I ever worked.

Sitel has to be the worst call center company if not the worst company to work for in the United States. The Human Resources department is the worst. Two and one half years ago we got a new VPHR, Michael Wellman. We don't know what they pay him for? One year ago we got another VP of HR, Pat Hays, she was hired to "bring change". There has been no change. The old VP of HR is still around, Ginni Goldsberry, we don't know what they pay her for either. That is probably a half million dollars in payroll with these 3 people but they got rid of all the payroll administrators who make about 10 dollars and hour. Go figure. Nobody in Sitel Corporate has any morals, loyalty, etc. They are horrible people. They are worse than most of these CEOs we have seen going to jail the last few years. There is a special place in hell for these people.

Pay: After a year I was making only $9.50/hour. The only recognition for performance in your pay was the occasional bonus, but you never knew what to do to expect a bonus, or even why you got one when you did. There was no "path" to higher pay.

Respect: Horrible. Just horrible. You could be #1 on the site, and your Coach would be berating you constantly for your mistakes. If you went to a supervisor, things would not change. You show up for work, you get yelled at by customers, that's expected at a call center. You shouldn't be berated by your supervisor constantly for work that is above and beyond what that supervisor themselves are even capable of.

Benefits: It has insurance, what can I say? That's a benefit. Plus you get great client discounts if you're working on certain clients.

Job Security: I waffled on this one. Finally I went negative. People leave/get fired CONSTANTLY and there is a high turnover. This is due to a number of reasons, the least of which is individual competence. Frequently there is the threat of site closure - we were told in July everybody would be laid off, and many people had already moved/made plans to move when the closure was "cancelled". Now they seem to be trying to "weed out" people. It's an endless cycle here. They'll be hiring at one end, and threatening closure and layoffs at the other end.

Work/Life Balance: Well, there's not typically any required overtime, that's a good thing. And you can bid your schedule (after 6 months or so) based on work performance. However, once you're ON a schedule, you cannot easily change it until the next shift bid comes up - regardless of circumstances. Worse, when "life events" happen, there's not much way around getting knocked points for every day you miss, even if you have paid time off. There's no such thing as an unscheduled day off that doesn't result in a step closer to being fired. Recently they have also started forcing people to part time who have earned less than 35 hours per week, and I guess it could be argued that makes sense, but it caught up several employees who had extenuating circumstances and forced them to LOSE their benefits, after the fact when they had not been warned this would happen.

Career Potential/Growth: This one's a die roll. If people like you, you get promoted. If they don't, regardless of your performance or competence, you get stuck on the phones forever until you quit.

Location: Port Arthur? How is that a good location? Seriously, it would have been much better - and able to attract better employees - had it been 15-20 miles to the north in Beaumont.

Co-worker Competence: Horrible. I won't go here, let's just say competence and performance are not rewarded.

Work Environment: Of all the places I've worked, the environment itself isn't too bad if you can get past the other issues. There's a break room with a free pool table, they frequently provide food, and there are some friendly co-workers if you're lucky.

Overall: I wouldn't recommend anyone work here unless you have no other options.