Executive Administrative Assistant | Chesterfield, MO | Dec 1, 2014
Execative Assistant
A global leader for billing & software products in the telecommunications industry. Reported to Sr. Vice President of Advertising & Media Division – AT&T account providing full range of administrative services to a large number of executives and technical support personnel.
• Control and maintain Sr. VP calendar including five additional calendars for senior management directors
• Coordinate national and international meetings in both face-to-face and video-conference formats
• Provide domestic and international corporate travel arrangements
• Screen and field incoming phone calls for Sr. VP
• Obtain working visas and passports for all international employees
• Maintain highly confidential files for HR involving salaries, evaluations, relocations, organizational changes, and staff changes/issues
• Enter and maintain payroll system for entire site – around 300 employees
• Supervise contracted employee(s) hired to maintain, clean, & stock kitchen areas
• Orchestrate special events and meetings for both AT&T and Amdocs employees
• Assist and maintain general accounting functions and handle A/P and A/R
• Provide full range of administrative support services to staffs of five senior directors & handle demanding workload meeting aggressive deadlines consistently
• Interface with Customer/Client for account facility/resource needs
• Maintain and track financial budgets for multiple projects
• Maintain office supply and snack food budget for account
• Work closely
I transitioned to this company as part of an outsourcing arrangement; this was not a voluntary hire. There is no job security for the US based workers. This is a company that is trying to move as much work as possible to India, Israel and Mexico, so they do not value the American employees. Layoffs are continuous, and they do not have offshore people with the skills needed to perform the work, This seems to be a company that hires recent trade school 'graduates' who have no practical experience.and poor language skills. The onshore managers have absolutely unrealistic expectations of the onshore team; they are expected to assume other jobs from layoffs with very little training. The threat of being laid off if you don't work more hours is continuous.
Cost is the only thing that matters here - there is no concern for Quality or the job satisfaction of the staff or having personnel trained with the skills needed.. 'Just be happy you have this job' is often recited. The work/personal life balance is non-existent. You are expected to be on-call ALL the time even while on vacation or dealing with medical issues. Management has no clue what their staff is doing, and is extremely demanding and not tolerant of issues beyond the staff's control.
Compensation is very unfair - most people do not receive annual raises or bonuses. The method of determining those is very secretive and speaks of favoritism. Ten years after I left AT&T, my compensation was the same.
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ProsExcellent medical benefits, flexible work hours, virtual office
Executive assistant in two location, virtual assistant for the EVP, onsite work with multiple teams, ATT -oversight and I-9 responsibility
Days were always varied and reacting to specific need created priorities requiring flexibility and problem solving in the US and understanding cultures in the International group
You can have the respect of colleagues, a great work ethic with successful project completion and still find yourself out of work when teams are eliminated to balance the budget.
International colleagues and team building with assistants in the US was co-operative, life altering and energizing.
Hardest part of the job came with scheduling international meetings-one in India, another in middle east, another in an airport between flights and 5 others in various US cities. Creativity and help from assistants to get their colleagues engaged was a life lesson. The person that you helped last week, will reciprocate at a time you least expect because of the relationships you trust.
My greatest joy was setting up meetings for the people that came to our campus for a visit. Learning about other cultures, how we shared goals gave me a new appreciation of international business.
An unexpected gift often arrived representing their team and the gratitude they had for the work we accomplished on their behalf. It was a very unique experience.
Prosintense learning opportunity, bright, creative people to work with, good salary and benefits
Consavailable to colleagues 24-7 blackberry, severance packages do not replace work you loved
Imagine you are one of the heros in a horror film that doesn’t know it’s a horror film yet. Everything offered sounds great. Good benefits, flexible hours, working from home. You start into your adventure with high hopes meeting your band of teammates. Then you hear whispers of ‘not enough work’ and before you can turn to see where it’s coming from, you’ve lost a few teammates. ‘It’ll be okay’ you think and continue forward, picking up their slack, putting in extra hours. The team splits up to investigate different areas. By accident you trigger a pile of work to land on you, fixing incomplete or failed projects. Just when you think you are done, more ‘broken’ projects appear, as if they are multiplying by themselves. Paychecks seem to not always match, maybe math is broke now too. You look to your teammates for advice, but only find hollowed out eyes staring back from even more piles of never-ending ‘broken’ projects. As you continue to search for the solution to this twisted puzzle, you begin to question your sanity. You hear the voice of your manager in the distance. Opening your mouth to try to scream for help, but your voice fails you. An overwhelming fear you may lose your job if you speak up sinks in. You begin to feel the knives in your back, not sure when they first appeared. Maybe one day your manager will appreciate you the same way they appreciate your foreign counterparts. Maybe one day you’ll find the escape route.
Working at Amdocs is Pune type TOXIC work environment
This company is no different then the any of its agents that they rely on to onboard team for projects. In most cases the agency environment is better then the Amdocs it self. There is too much position ego and lack of job specific knowledge on the management side. This is the same type of environment you would expect to see in Pune, when you start out as a fresher. The work flows down the chart, as you would expect in Pune, the management them selves know nothing, and promise all type of engineeringly impossible non-sense to the clients. They then ask the BAs to make the impossible possible. If you try to argue with the management with the requirements, they basically say, well that's your job to figure out the way to make the impossible to possible. If you are not the favorite of the management, you are FORCEFULLY REQUIRED to work after hours, to meet the deadline of another team, that supports a project that you have no knowledge about. This reflects the toxic work environment you would expect to see in Pune as a fresher. Working in India was a lot better, then working at Amdocs to get a H1B visa. I will leave this company as soon as i get them to apply for my green card.
I left Amdocs in 2005 so not sure how it is now, but I can do this review based on what I remember.
This was a great company to work for. You had to work some overtime most of the time, but you felt like you were doing something that helped the customers, and like you were part of a big family that cared about doing a good job.
The coworkers were great and here I include the managers. Management at Amdocs, even at the highest level, always felt like it was just another member of the team. They had an open door policy and you could just go to any office and talk to one of the managers, no matter who it was. Everybody from the last to the ones on top was part of the same team.
They didn't allow for remote work when I was there but the company was flexible enough that you could schedule your day around your life, as long as you got your job done. They also had great benefits.
Another thing I liked about Amdocs is that I used to think that people that became managers actually deserved to be managers and they always made sense. Sometimes there is a disconnect between how things really are and what management thinks they are. I didn't see that at Amdocs.
Would definitely recommend this company.
If you are in North America, stay away from this company.
1. Their business model involves letting people go to show their investors that they are earning money. They have been doing it at least twice a year, for every year I've been with this company. They just did so today, even when my manager told the team there is none in the works just a couple of weeks ago.
2. They are not interested in your career advancements. They will advertise company initiated 'learning' opportunities, but apparently that is only for their offshore people. You can study on your own, but most likely you will not find any opportunities since they are not developing their business.
3. Morale is really low in this company. You cannot help but feel bad for those who were let go, but those of us who survived the lay-offs are made to bear the brunt of the departures, and our workload will just double.
If there is anything positive to say, it is knowing we are at the point where there's practically no one left to let go. So it feels good knowing I will leave this company soon myself.
ProsAverage benefits
ConsFrequent lay-offs due to mismanagement, no career advancement
Pay & benefits
No promotions, only a portion of the staff gets an annual raise or bonus so its sometimes years before you see a 2% raise or a 8-10% bonus
Job security and advancement
One class in 5 years and promotions only for select employees.
Management
very little involvement beyond direct manager and next to zero communication.
Culture
every little decision takes a ton of approvals from around the globe and it can take months for a approval.
Overall
The work and the people you work with are the best part. Benefits are marginal and the cost seams to go up nearly every year. Difficult to navigate the company's redtape and approval process. It seams to take a VP level or higher to accomplish even the smallest things.
They waste a lot of money being paranoid rather than belive in the design of the equipment and staff.
Your lead to belive your the most important assett until it comes time to please the stock holders and board of directors, then your a cost savings and your cut. Unless your a part of the correct group then your safe from anything.
Think twice and ask all questions before signing anything
This Job seemed too good to be true, It was a work from home, hourly job. With a W-2 tax form i felt comfortable working here. i soon realized that the project manager and upper management have no clue nor care about the process and what to do. They believe in themselfs that they can get work done faster than you and that if you question them you will be insulted in meeting and made a fool then if you defend yourself you get fired. It is a very back stabbing feeling company and the project manager gets away with murder. They provide a team overseas that gets bulk of the work and then the US team takes the slack for them. If you wanna QC and do someone else's work this is a job for you, they lure you in with the promises of if great schedule and friendly environment. Then they expect one day turn around times but they make you feel you need to stay up all night to finish the work no matter what. Dont expect overtime pay or paid time off, they don't care .
Typical day at work running a schedule on your own 12 hr shift, lots of responsibilities monitoring several systems business production schedules, bringing down on-lines, for nightly processing, process mobile phones payments, run process to terminate mobile phone service due to non payment, bringing down databases for backups.
Learned how to take on a huge responsibility of overnight processing, to ensure business on-lines are up and running on time for next business day. Also, exposed to a very diverse group of co-workers, and management. The hardest part was that I am not bi-lingual and most of our customers were not either. The most enjoyable, even though we had many different cultures we always managed to have fun and had great times going out to enjoy each other company off the clock.
ProsTraveled to some great places that I may not have visited on my own.
ConsYou hardly got a break, working 12 hours and you're all alone
Role involves the following :-
- Develop the responsibilities and specifications for projects by identifying project phases and making sure that the equilibrium is always maintained between Schedule, Cost and Scope
• Function as single point of contact for reporting project status.
• Make recommendations for executive action when required.
• Oversee the development of each aspect of the program/project resolving the most difficult work problems.
• Solutions require resolution of complex operational and integration issues.
• Provide detail and summary reporting of program status including progress and completion outlook.
• Prepare briefing material and present overviews when required.
• Ensure compliance with contractual agreements.
• Identify all issues of the project and coordinate and collaborate to bring to resolution.
• Manage client issues in relation to decisions and preferences.
• Anticipate and resolve management, resource and scheduling problems.
• Coordinate interdepartmental and corporate technology initiatives and commitment to client programs.
- Production Support Activities – like handling many clients at a time which includes monitoring, assisting in case of critical issues, build/release activities, providing analytical support for assuring all components availability and functioning, suggesting improvem
When I first got hired by Amdocs, I was ecstatic. Great pay for the area I was living in with decent benefits. However, it soon turned into a nightmare experience that left me with panic attacks and a bad taste in my mouth for large corporations. The division I worked for was seen as rather expendable by upper management, and most managers and employees worked with an overwhelming sense of dread that they would be made redundant at any moment.
Additionally, even though employees are salaried, weekly timesheets were calculated according to codes. Each project had a budget with a specific code. Employees in my department needed to have 45 hours per week allocated between several codes. If a project was slow or there wasn't enough code to go around, we were told to put our vacation day code in - even if we had worked or been at the office waiting for work to come in. I heard they've since amended this practice, but still super shady and inconsiderate.
Because of Amdocs I choose to never work for a large corporation again. There is no work-life balance - you are always expected to ask how high when they say jump, and answer your phone at all hours of the night. If you resist, you receive a verbal and/or written lashing.
ProsFree Lunch, Good vacation package
ConsNo work-life balance, High stress, Terrible upper management
Empresa explora força de trabalho em troca de lanche
O desenvolvimento só tem fama, não se programa na verdade, usa um framework em que está tudo feito, basta configurar algumas propriedades numa IDE para fazer modificações no software existente, para quem quer aprender tecnologia ou programar de verdade, fuja disso.
A área de suporte é absolutamente desorganizada, e com foco em explorar o funcionário ao máximo, afinal, o suporte é 24x7, mas só contratam um funcionário no Brasil e outro na Índia para cuidar de cada módulo, ou seja, esqueça fins de semana, feriados, etc.
De tempos em tempos te dão algum brinde - lanche, festinha, passeio pra "compensar" isso, mas os salários em geral são baixos, para o grau de responsabilidade e conhecimento exigidos.
Aprendizado - se tiver sorte te ensinam algo, há muita competição e é comum ficar à deriva, sem informações suficientes para trabalhar e sendo muito cobrado. Se reclamar, será demitido, afinal, tem indianos que trabalham muito mais horas por muito menos $.
Viagens - pra quem gosta de viajar subitamente sem programação, é excelente, pois te avisam na 6a.f, 10 minutos antes do fim do expediente que terá que viajar no domingo, pra ficar alguns meses no cliente.
Prosgeralmente pagam hora extra
Consbaixo salário, falta de planejamento e organização, excesso de horas extras
2 years & 9 months of Experience working with Amdocs from Aug 2011 till present.
Experience in Software Testing/ QA, Application , Manual Testing, User acceptance Testing (UAT), System Integration Testing (SIT).
Experience in Toad, SQL Developer.
Expertise in Test management Tool like Quality Center / ALM
Expertise in CRM and OMS application.
Strong Knowledge of Third Party Systems like Enabler, Telegance, SystemX (Front & Back end).
Knowledge of application program interfaces like ICS and integrated Order management system like IOMIP and web ordering applications like Phoenix.
Experience in preparing Test Artifacts like: Test Strategy, Test Plan, Scenarios, Traceability Matrix, Test Cases, Defect Management Process, Summary reports and Defect Graphs & Reports
Responsible for end to end testing of projects: Test Planning, Test Scripting, Code Execution, Analysis and Reporting.
Good knowledge in planning, risk management, critical path analysis, customer interaction & internal team coordination.
Good Knowledge on SDLC (V-Model) and STLC (Software Testing Life Cycle), including the “Bug Life cycle” concept used in Industry.
Good communication skills
Questions And Answers about Amdocs
How are the working hours at Amdocs?
Asked Feb 22, 2016
US workers are expected to be available any time of night or day, even if on vacation or sick leave. If you do not work > 50 hours you are threatened to be considered for downsizing (laid off).
Answered Jul 29, 2019
Pretty much depends on the project you work. I worked for projects with 40 hrs a week and for some projects close to 65-70 hrs. Amdocs has laid off lots of people in recent years, with that the work hours have increased significantly.
Answered Oct 4, 2018
What is the vacation policy like at Amdocs? How many vacation days do you get per year?
Asked Nov 22, 2016
15 vacation days, depends in the years of experience. You also get 1 floating day and 10 sick days a year.
Answered Oct 4, 2018
20 days a year. can accommodate until 44 , over which the days are cut off.
Answered Oct 14, 2017
On average, how many hours do you work a day at Amdocs?
Asked Nov 3, 2017
10 hrs per day
Answered Aug 8, 2020
10, many times it is more, on average you will work 10-11 hours per day, but the days go by quickly and you feel like you are accomplishing something.
Answered Jun 24, 2019
What is the company culture like?
Asked Feb 22, 2016
Very professional
Answered Jan 28, 2020
Always an emergency, no time to maintain software because you’re always forced to do new
Answered Nov 30, 2017
What tips or advice would you give to someone interviewing at Amdocs?
Asked Jun 12, 2018
If there is a way to protect yourself from being out sourced
Answered Mar 11, 2020
If you are in US, do not expect to make this a long career. Amdocs prefers to move long term assignment work to India, Mexico or Israel.
