by Phase 2 Scholar » Tue Oct 17, 2023 6:47 pm
I don't have numbers or personal experience on the facility question, but I don't think it's that uncommon. I know there are facilities that participate in the SMART program that struggle with employee recruitment and retention. (In fact, SMART might even prioritize those facilities, viewing their role as a recruitment and retention tool? I thought I read that somewhere, but I cannot remember where.)
I'm sure it doesn't help that for most SMART scholars, an in-person visit doesn't happen until after the scholar is assigned to a sponsoring facility.
Sometimes, a sponsoring facility is a bad fit for the scholar. Maybe the facility doesn't need the skill-set that the scholar has. (Ideally, they'd recruit scholars based on the program they are in, but sometimes facilities are just looking for people to fill empty roles.) I saw one thread on this forum, in which a scholar complained that non-SMART new hires were receiving higher pay, exploiting the SMART contract's phase 2 work requirement to compel scholars to work for less. To be clear, that was just one person's testimonial, and it doesn't happen everywhere.
There is some inherent risk in committing to taking a job a year or more ahead of time, without knowing how much you'll be paid or what the work environment will be like. Even if things are great when you start the program, there's no guarantee that things will stay the same until you finish your degree and start working. In my personal experience, my internships were with a different division in my sponsoring facility than the division I was placed in upon graduation. It's not a terrible place to work, but it is very different work from what I thought I was signing up for when I joined SMART.
I don't have numbers or personal experience on the facility question, but I don't think it's that uncommon. I know there are facilities that participate in the SMART program that struggle with employee recruitment and retention. (In fact, SMART might even prioritize those facilities, viewing their role as a recruitment and retention tool? I thought I read that somewhere, but I cannot remember where.)
I'm sure it doesn't help that for most SMART scholars, an in-person visit doesn't happen until after the scholar is assigned to a sponsoring facility.
Sometimes, a sponsoring facility is a bad fit for the scholar. Maybe the facility doesn't need the skill-set that the scholar has. (Ideally, they'd recruit scholars based on the program they are in, but sometimes facilities are just looking for people to fill empty roles.) I saw one thread on this forum, in which a scholar complained that non-SMART new hires were receiving higher pay, exploiting the SMART contract's phase 2 work requirement to compel scholars to work for less. To be clear, that was just one person's testimonial, and it doesn't happen everywhere.
There is some inherent risk in committing to taking a job a year or more ahead of time, without knowing how much you'll be paid or what the work environment will be like. Even if things are great when you start the program, there's no guarantee that things will stay the same until you finish your degree and start working. In my personal experience, my internships were with a different division in my sponsoring facility than the division I was placed in upon graduation. It's not a terrible place to work, but it is very different work from what I thought I was signing up for when I joined SMART.