CyraCom Employee Reviews for Anonymous Employee

"I've been collaborating with CyraCom for half a year as an interpreter. I'm glad for the opportunity, but there's a lot of room for improvement The Pros: The call volume is decent. Flexibility allowing you to work at your own leisure. Large amount of resources and glossaries provided on the interpreter portal website. The Cons: The rate offered is lower than what other smaller firms offer, but you can negotiate. Their protocols for introductions, goodbyes, and various situations are the most pretentious aspects. The intro is unnecessarily long leaving you out of breath when said in full. There's even a hold time protocol you are required to fill out and stop, for example, the doctor in real time to ask when he's coming back, while he needs to be and should be doing doctor things. They say it's "to avoid unwanted charges for clients". Yes... other firms simply have a ~10 minute hold policy that you just disconnect if nobody comes back. No need to file forms, record the times, and email them. I don't do this but I'll likely be penalized sooner than later. They refuse to acknowledge the concept of night/weekend rates. When you make your case they double down on: "our business needs dictate what we offer". Excuse me? Your business wouldn't exist without us interpreters for starters. The onboarding process takes too long and they forbid using a cellphone line for work. Emailing management for support is prompt, but they will stop responding completely when pressed with more difficult questions. For an interpreting firm that's the 2nd largest by revenue, their email support feels like it's run in a tiny office by a small local company that doesn't have the means or resources beyond cookie cutter replies. About every month my profile 'glitches' and I don't receive any calls until they have to manually reset my profile."

"Not hard to get the job. Training was good. Getting legit experience in many different fields. Very affordable health insurance for single employees. But I only think of this company as just a stepping stone. Trying to find another interpreting job once I get 3 years experience. Honestly, I was shocked to find out that our clients pay up to $1.89 per minute for our service when we only get paid $15/hr(=0.25/min). No wonder the clients have such high expectations and try to use us as scapegoats for whatever problems they have, for example, they bring an elderly LEP who can barely hear anything on the line, then if they can't understand, the English speaker keeps telling me to speak louder, then the LEP says they can't understand because of my pronunciation even though I always get complimented on how clear I sound when I get monitored. I think it's too much mental stress to put up with for $15/hr, especially when you have to deal with 2 or more people at the same time. And then there is some serious micromanagement. To be honest, I kind of abuse this after I started working from home after COVID, but back at the center, no electronics of any sorts. You can only browse on list of approved sites at the center, and can't even google things when you need it. Worst part is that you have to stay on 'Available' at all times when you're not on break. You will get another call in less than 2 seconds even after getting done with a long/stressing call. You have to fill out reports for anything unusual about the call, but you have to multi-task and fill that out while taking the next call. If your scheduled shift ends at 5 for example, you have to stay on "Available' until 4:59:59, take all the calls that come in and finish them. That's why I get frustrated when a call ends on the 58th minute, because I'll get another one for sure before I can go. I can't make any plans right after work because who knows I might get a 2 hour long call right before my scheduled time ends."

"The job itself was amazing! The only concern I had was the robotic behavior supervisors and workers had in terms of their time, computer usage, restroom usage, and such."

"I have found replies to emails indicating issues, or conflicts to be slow to come. Otherwise I am content with the services provided to me, and even more so with the service the company allows me to provide."

"Cyracom was the first company I started as an Interpreter. Beginning was very challenging but they company and the job offered me lot to learn. And now I am a professional Interpreter. Great place to work with."

"If I could give this company zero stars, I would. It was the worst company I ever worked for. I only applied here because I was fresh out of college and needed a job where I could gain interpreter experience. But it was the worst 2 years of my life. To start, the pay for the job that people do here is extremely low, especially for Spanish. Spanish interpreters are paid a lot less than any other language interpreter. They don't care if you are fluent in both languages or that you have a background in interpretation. They just want anyone who speaks two languages without realizing that they are doing more harm than good. Not everyone that is bilingual can interpret, and I saw many people interpreting incorrectly. It doesn't surprise me as the trainers and supervisors themselves have no clue what they are doing. Half of them don't have a degree in interpretation nor any other experience but call center experience. This job focuses too much on the rules and call center side of things instead of interpreting for the client correctly. Spanish interpreters do not get enough time between calls to gather themselves and prepare for the next call, because as soon as you hang up, you get a call. Most of the calls you deal with are sensitive. You interpret for doctors, banks, police, etc. yet they do nothing at all to prepare you well for this job. Three weeks is definitely not enough time to prepare anyone for the amount of work they do. They should either focus on one subject or allow interpreters to focus solely on one or the other. Having to learn about countless medical conditions and then interpreting laws within 5 seconds of completing a medical call is not helping anyone. The client does not get a good interpreter and the interpreter is not working up to his or her potential. You are very limited in the tools you can use to help you complete the job; the internet is extremely restricted and the dictionary they created is not updated, nor does it have any term you need."

"Meantime job, and get out of there as fast as you can! Employee exploitation to the max! Great profits for the owners. Deeply in need of a UNION."