Pros
Some programmes worked great to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds and working on the frontline made sure that staff were able to see the reward of their hard work. It was also great to have an opportunity to manage a strand, this is great experience especially for people who have just graduated and are looking to gain many skills.
Cons
Unfortunately with this role, there are more disadvantages than advantages. I stayed within this role for 7 months before I could really sense myself burning out and beginning to face mental health issues and decided to leave. The training is very long and tiring, I felt like I definitely learnt more whilst doing the job rather than the long training. Even after training and working the job, I still felt unprepared and was thrown into doing things that I had never heard of before without any support. This role really did impact my confidence and I have left feeling super unconfident and now starting a new job, I am constantly questioning myself and my abilities. No one in the centre had time to answer questions, support learning or even being kind to one another when struggling. A sense of promoting teamwork is supposed to fix all teamwork issues but this is not the case. I felt unsupported, spoke to my manager who also did not have time and would constantly take work home due to the overarching demands and asked for help. Your experience will heavily depend on your team, you end up spending so many hours a day with them and this can be a nightmare if you don't get on. It is almost near impossible to get some time to yourself whilst your at work for example, if you're dealing with a safeguarding concern and feel like you need some time to just breathe, good luck to finding the time! Safeguarding cases can be emotionally draining on top of everything else you have to deal with. You are forced to socialise constantly which again, on top of everything can be extremely draining. You will meet with your cluster and be expected to constantly network. This job is not for introverts! Head office are apparently constantly looking for feedback but when you resort to give feedback, nothing comes from this which is why people use platforms such as this to provide feedback, hoping that something will improve for the charity so they can continue focusing on young people but also staff well-being which is drastically neglected. You cannot discuss feedback in your teams without the superiors trying to turn everything 'positively' even when you are dealing with the worst of the worst. It got to a point where I could not discuss how I felt due to this toxic positive culture. An example is in our cluster meetings, we would usually discuss successes and challenges and recently this had changed to just successes - so people could not share their experiences although as education workers, you could just tell who was unhappy and fed up of this role! I have worked for Charities previously before however, working for IntoUniversity made me feel like I never want to come back and work for a charity. You are constantly expected to give and give until you do burn out. So many staff I had conversations with felt exactly the same but no space to discuss this so solutions could be sought. Everything was hidden by seniors to education workers, (I was discouraged to tell people when I was leaving), you were not involved in centre wide discussions and were made to feel inferior and useless. Moreover, the work-life balance is absolutely awful. Early starts were a norm and hardly getting a 1 hour lunch break. WFH was an option 1 day a month which was also very difficult to actually get approved due to everyone being overworked and if one person was not in centre this would cause chaos. Also, using 5 days of your holiday during Christmas was very unfair. Lastly, I really do hope well for this Charity and really want the charity to do well but changes need to be made otherwise this turnover which continue and continue.
