Education
A minimum of a high school diploma or equivalent required.

Job Requirements
Applicants must have very good speaking skills, listening skills and good comprehension of spoken and written language. In addition, applicants must be able to accurately type numbers and short sentences into computers while conducting telephone interviews. Candidates must be punctual and dependable. Furthermore, it is essential to be patient, courteous and polite especially when dealing with the public. Required shifts include some weekday evening shifts, two weekend shifts per month and a monthly staff meeting (usually the first Wednesday of each month at 5 p.m.) The minimum number of hour available per week is 12 (3 four-hour shifts) and the maximum number of hours available per week on average is 19 (4 four-hour shifts one week and 5 four-hour shifts the next.)

Benefits
Employees set their own schedules every two weeks, which offers flexibility. The evening and weekend hours are ideal for students, retired individuals, homemakers and other people seeking part-time employment. There is a paid fifteen-minute break for each four-hour shift. Although no health plan is available for part-time employees, paid time off such as holiday pay, vacation time and sick leave is earned. Furthermore, employees receive a personal holiday, which they may use after 6 months of employment. We offer performance incentives such as paid time off for achieving perfect attendance, high dialing productivity or for persuading people who have previously refused to complete a survey. There are no individual “quotas.”

Compensation
Starting pay is $9.10 per hour or $9.56 per hour if fluent in Spanish and English.

Quality Assurance
Portions of live interviews are observed by the monitoring staff to assure that surveys are conducted in accordance with job standards. Interviewers are given performance evaluations every two to three months to reinforce their skills. The Survey Research Group is required to adhere to strict confidentiality and data quality policies. All employees sign confidentiality agreements stating that they will not remove any private information from the work area such as survey participants’ telephone numbers. The penalty for breaching confidentiality or falsifying data is termination of employment.

Job Drawbacks
The work can be repetitive. Interviewers reach disinterested people fairly regularly and sometimes reach hostile individuals. The majority of interviewers cannot work more than 19 hours per week on average and currently there are only a limited number of full-time positions available. Evening and weekend shifts are required. Outgoing personal calls are not allowed and incoming personal calls are restricted to emergencies only. We prefer to promote from within, but opportunities for promotion are infrequent.

Note
Employees of the State of California are not eligible for recruitment, as this would present a conflict of interest with our state clients.