Pros
After close to 8 years working at Valencia College, I have recently transitioned into a new role out of state. I have a lot of positive and fond memories of my time at Valencia and will list them below. - The people and students: In my multiple roles I served primarily in student facing jobs, most of which were with student employees. My interactions with the students were what kept me going and seeing their development and growth was always an extremely fulfilling feeling. In addition I worked with a fantastic, diverse team who made coming to work enjoyable and created lasting friendships. - Benefits: Valencia's Total Rewards program is among the best I have seen. If you are a single individual, you can get the best health insurance plan they provide and Valencia pays the premium in full. Al you will have to worry about are small add-ons like dental, vision, and life insurance. - Initial growth opportunities. My personal and professional development grew immensely during my time at Valencia. I can credit this to my leadership who was more than willing to provide me opportunities and know that I had their trust and support. - Flexibility: My leadership were incredibly flexible with things like time off, adjusting hours, working with schedules etc. I was very much treated as a person and colleague and my supervision always genuinely cared for my well being and health. I may have just gotten lucky with who my supervision was but I do know other colleagues in other departments who had similar.
Cons
As said, I worked at this institution for almost 8 years. Towards the end I really began to see the cracks and issues that make Valencia a frustrating place to work if you are in a similar career path/development point as me. -Upper Management and Senior Administration are completely out of touch with what the needs and wants of the main workforce. There has been a lot of changes and restructure which can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic but far too often it seemed like these individuals assumed we were operating as normal and not realizing the difficulties and challenges we were facing. - The good worker Catch 22 problem: Over the past 2 years, Valencia (like many other places) has seen massive waves of attrition. In addition to this attrition, there were multiple occurrences of hiring freezes where positions were not refilled and as such, others had to step in as interim, or take on additional duties in order to keep things moving forward. I myself was a product of this where I served as an interim for a full time position for almost a year, but on part time hours. I did the job and did it well, but there was always an assumption from upper management and administration that myself and others like me could just chug along as normal and in some cases, didn't need to hire replacements. Trust me when I say, we were burnt out. - Loyalty from you is expected, but you get nothing in return. Myself and many others experienced this where we sacrificed ourselves to help operations only to receive nothing in return. For instance, I was primarily a part time employee and then took over an interm role of a full time job, and once finally cleared to transition to full time, was offered the minimum pay for the position. My education, experience, time, and energy to the college meant nothing in the eyes of HR. In fact the response when I brought this up was something along the lines of "well in order to remain competitive, we start everyone off at the minimum, even if you have been here". - Pay: In a similar vein, the pay for the institution is beyond subpar. I laughed when the HR rep said the rates are good because they are competitive. They are not even close. I just started a new position at another community college that pays over $20k more than the comparable position at Valencia. People do not get paid enough to deal with the things that occur at this institution and is a primary reason why so much good talent has left. - Growth: Valencia is a great place to start and get your foot in the door, or to finish off your career. When it comes to next steps it is extremely hard. Nepotism is a real thing and many of the positions you might be applying for already have someone in mind internally and you eventually reach a point where you have grown as much as you can, but cant move forward.