senior advisor

copywriter

healthcare executive

senior counselor

account manager

A Place for Mom

As a whole, A Place for Mom lacks good business ethics and integrity.  

I've been in senior care for 16 years and this was by far the least rewarding position I've held.  The focus is entirely on numbers and closing, less on clients and helping them find the right solution. 

I think the most telling aspect of their company culture is that they consider seniors and families looking for information only as "leads" and the senior communities as their true customers.  

Those unlucky enough to fall for their website bait-and-switch tactics to gain contact information are then immediately subjected to a constant barrage of emails and phone calls which can last weeks.  

While they promise families knowledgable senior living professional advisors, a large portion of their new hires have absolutely no experience in senior living at all. What's worse, they're given immense territories with hundreds or thousands of communities that they've never toured themselves.  They're essentially regurgitating the information from their database results.  

In senior living, it's important to know each client and hear their story to truly understand what they are looking for. This takes patience and good listening skills.  However, here Senior Living Advisors are only given up to 10-13 minutes to drill callers about needs and preferences, being instructed to "control the call" by rudely interrupting and to get them off the line as soon as possible once all their script boxes are checked. 

Once this happens families are immediately slammed with calls from countless care communities that have been provided with all their information.  Those simply hoping for some information to be sent by email find themselves hammered with constant calls from competing community marketers hoping to gain their business. This goes on for weeks and even months.  For seniors and families simply wanting to enjoy their peace and quiet, this can be a huge source of stress.

Lastly, their commission from communities is so astronomically high that only a portion of communities will work with them.  This means that while a community that's perfect for someone is just down the road from them, if they're not contracted with them, that information will never be provided.  In short, while APFM may provide some options, they might not be providing the BEST options for that client.            

If you are in senior living and are considering a career with APFM, think twice.  You will find that going out on your own as a senior living advisor or exploring a local placement franchise to be much more rewarding.   


My experience with this company changed dramatically over time. What began as a flexible, family-focused role evolved into a highly metric-driven environment with constantly changing expectations, compensation plans, quotas, and processes. Communication regarding these changes was regularly limited, and employee feedback was frequently dismissed rather than addressed.

One of the most frustrating aspects was the repeated outreach to families who had already stated they no longer needed assistance, requested no further contact, or whose situations had long since been resolved. Outside vendors were brought in to make additional calls despite often lacking access to the full history of the account. This resulted in families being contacted repeatedly, sometimes within days of previous conversations, creating frustration for them and for the employees tasked with managing the fallout.

A significant portion of the workday became spent apologizing to people who felt they were being harassed by repeated calls. It was common to be yelled at, cursed at, or told that requests to stop contact had already been made multiple times. Employees regularly offered suggestions for improving these processes, but these suggestions fell on deaf ears. 

At the same time, goals continued to increase while earning opportunities became less predictable. New procedures were implemented before employees received adequate training or explanation, creating a constant sense of confusion regarding expectations and priorities.

The company also implemented increasingly strict workforce management and attendance requirements that left little to no room for flexibility. The level of monitoring and adherence expectations felt excessive for experienced professionals and made it difficult to maintain a healthy work-life balance.

There are many hardworking employees and managers throughout the organization who genuinely care about the families they serve. However, prospective employees should understand that this is a highly monitored, high-volume SALES environment where expectations change frequently, employee input may have limited influence, and maintaining work-life balance will be challenging. Caring about the families does NOT seem to be the top priority as it should be.

If you are looking for autonomy, transparency, flexibility, personal fulfillment, and an environment that treats employees as trusted professionals, this is not likely the right fit.

Typical Day At Work-
Since I tele-commuted, a typical day at work started with firing up the laptop and checking support ticketing systems and emails, prioritizing my day depending on work load and what pressing issues were happening that day/morning, and tele-commuting for meetings, trainings, etc.  Usually I worked 9-5 or so. Lunches were pretty flexible. 

What I Learned-
Over the course of four years, I learned some really valuable experience in the wider real estate industry, and with how marketing, sales, and SaaS (software as a service) played an important role in those aspects. 

Co-workers-
While I worked with a pretty small departmental team (less than ten people), I often had to work across the aisle with other departments in order to satisfy customer requests or needs.  It was helpful to make friends in other departments in order to get objectives done in a timely manner. 

Hardest Part of Job-
Because of the nature of the service we provided, and the industry in general, things were constantly changing, so it helped to be very flexible. Because the size of our team/department was small, it was sometimes difficult for our smaller department to compete with more influental departments on the non-software side (accounting/biling, other sales/marketing channels) for company resources.

Most Enjoyable Part of Job-
The work life balance, and flexibility.  Feel of a start-up.  Easy to schedule days off.  Small department meant we could move more quickly than other departments when their were problems or issues to solve

Management-
Upper management was a bit 'clicky', often outsiders were picked from the CEO's old Expedia 'good ol boys' club before he came to APFM, which resulted in animosity from those who had worked at APFM for years, only to see outsiders get positions that should have been hired from within. Aside from that, more direct manangement was more favorable, typically due to smaller team sizes.

I have been working as a senior living advisor with A Place for Mom for a little over 3 years. Overall, it's a great role. I work from home, & the schedule is somewhat flexible. I have two small children & have always been able to get the time I need to be there for them & for the last-minute things that come up when you have little ones. That is extremely valuable to me. The compensation at this job is great, if you make/exceed the monthly expectation - I have had other roles in my career before with higher level titles, but made nowhere near the income that I have made with this role. Make no mistake though - this is absolutely a 40hr/wk+ job. 
The hardest thing about this job is time management, self discipline & staying in contact with a huge caseload of families that you are trying to assist. If you are no good at multi-tasking (talking on the phone, while writing an email, while reading other emails coming in) you will fail at this job. You absolutely must be able to self-start -You are alone all day long. If you thrive in a "team environment" working physically with others, you will not like this job.  You must become very adept at "active listening" & be able to anticipate what families are going to need, while staying in constant "follow up mode" with the properties that you are trying to connect them to as a potential option for their loved one. You must have a high level of emotional intelligence & empathy.Having said that, you must be able to emotionally cope with hearing a lot of very sad things all week & still be OK.  
The most enjoyable part of this job is working from home ( or anywhere with high-speed internet hook up) & the gratitude from the families that you connect with & help. It's absolutely amazing the connections I have made & I feel honored that the families I have assisted allow me to be a part of their journey in finding care for their beloved family members. It is a privilege.

Typical day is 4 hours taking inbound calls from families in need and matching them with client communities in the area that they are seeking for senior housing/assisted living. Many leads are not financially qualified and have needs at times beyond the communities scopes and have to be sent to public funding or nursing home facilities. All of these will not be commissionable, they do not sort them in anyway and you may work your shift with getting all paying clients or no paying clients. Although you will usually get a mix and can get enough each month to make your goal. You will have about 3 hours for follow up calls and an hour on some days will be for conference calls or calls to communities that are clients to follow up on families that moved into the community to secure your commission. You have to be vigilant on following up and building a relationship with the communities that you work with so that they will tell you when a family moves in within the required 48 hour timeline, many smaller providers will not self report and you have to chase them to get the information after a family tells you that  they are moved in. Management is hesitant to become forceful with them for some reason although I do not see the point as they are not being paid until the community tells them. 
My first manager was awesome and very supportive, the next one was in over her head and was micromanaging people to the point that people were leaving at an alarming pace. She then hired people that just agreed with her on everything and did not question her even when she was wrong or wouldn't go to a client for them. Not a good experience at the end. Overall everyone I worked with on the sale team was supportive and we learned to work around her. 
I loved helping the families even the ones that did not have finances and needed to be sent to public funding.

Different employees are evaluated differently. One can get away with not following the required scripting walking away with 100% scores while someone else does the same or something less critical than that and walk away with a 59% score. It's favoritism...plain and simple. It's unfair treatment, it's "cherry picking" and just a very convenient way for them to boot out who they want simply just by giving bad scores, even if you're good. If you have a high moral standard in where you work, then this will not be for you, if you believe in fair and equal treatment that ----everyone------ "should" get, especially in a workplace environment.

You're an "independent contractor", but you'll be treated as if you are an employee. A lot of online courses to complete off the clock, always technical checks that they want you to complete that you are never compensated for...Now, they make these such that "you don't have to attend", ---but---"if you don't, you could lose your contract or not be able to get or schedule hours." Does that make this mandatory then? The answer? Yes, if they have to threaten loss of your work or your contract for not doing it.

It seems like everything here is designed to set you up for failure with the intent of having you on this program for 90 days only. That's when you see a lot of agents being "let go" due to QA scores that "they" control by the way. You also see a constant inflow of new agents. Don't get happy about this. It means they have a high turnover rate. When a program cannot keep employees, there's a reason for that, and it's not always a good reason. 

Never feel that a job is "so great!" that you can't see what's going on in the dark corners that's being hidden from it's workers. Always keep your eyes and ears open and you'll soon see some things that will  "bother" you.

You've heard the saying "If it is too good to be true, it probably is." Well, that is exactly what working at A Place for Mom IT is. Expect to always be fighting a "fire" between things going down or management riding you for things out of your control and having unrealistic expectations. You are made to feel like a number here and if you want to have a life outside of work good luck. You'll do what, when, and the extra hours they ask of you or else. Don't expect much support here.  Since our new CEO it has been a nightmare. It is more about making a quick buck in the short term if they can. It is best you keep looking around at other opportunities. There are much better places to work.

Cons:
- Massive micromanaging by the IT Manager. - A Director that only wants to be your "manager" when he wants you to do something. Other then that don't expect him to help you as he will deflect. - Significant issues with call center software going down periodically for the whole company including at times our IT team. - Expect to take your typical help desk calls. - No personal life - Treated like a number - Consistently dealing with management that has no clue about technology - Unrealistic expectations for completion of projects and still pushes such. - AD Infrastructure is an absolute mess. - Questionable and concerning security issues regarding their infrastructure. - Never ending issues and always expect to be putting out fires.

My experience at A Place for Mom was overwhelmingly postive. The training, supervision, support, pay and benefit structure were all top of the line. The technology was first class--would have loved this kind of support in other jobs!

Like most sales jobs, it is a numbers game. It was not unusual to make 800 calls a month, about 50/50 between customers and partners. The customers were frequently in crisis, sometimes hostile due to the stress of their family dynamics. Still most offered a fair review and thanks after placement.

Most of the partner agencies were a pleasure to work with. However, due to the nature of national and regional companies, this is where most of the problems did occur. Partners were not always on the same page as the senior management that signed the referral agreements, and it was not unusual to have to fight for commissions. APFM did provide support and help when this happened.

The training and supervision was the best I have ever had, especially in a sales based organization. Your coach and market manager was with you every step of the way, and you always knew exactly where you stand. The metrics were clearly expressed and reachable.

There was some frustration in not ever meeting your customers. You were always dealing with families on the telephone. Often you never even spoke with the primary person you were placing, but rather family members.

If you read no further, let this be your takeaway: DO NOT TAKE A JOB AT A PLACE FOR MOM.

I worked with some of the best people I have ever known when I was at APFM. I had a lot of fun, attended some great parties and had a lot of free lunches. 

I also learned the hard way that just about everyone in the corporate office from manager on up is really only out for themselves. The instant they perceive an employee to be rocking the boat or giving of even a whiff of controversy, that employee will be terminated immediately, regardless of performance and reputation up to that instant. HR would prefer heads to roll than to actually have to do anything difficult. Senior leadership and/or the owners (hard to tell from the bottom levels where the directives originate) drive hard for the bottom line and care only for lining their own pockets. To say that the majority of employees are underpaid would be a dramatic understatement. Leadership attempts to compensate for this by peddling the "you're making a difference to people in need" angle, but that gets old fast. 

If you want to make some great friends while being underpaid and overworked, while jerks around you get promoted and good people get canned, by all means, work for this awful company. If you value yourself in any way, run for the hills.

When I started here 5 years ago I loved the company and the CEO. I felt valued as a person and I felt that my work was valued as well. I had planned to be with them until I retire. Sadly, last year our Board of Directors fired our CEO and it has been downhill since then. The new CEO is following a pattern that he has done at several other companies of centralizing the workforce. There are no advancement opportunities unless you wish to work in New York City or Kansas City. He rolled out a new set of company values that are generic sales motives and stripped us, as Advisors, of the pride of our work. The pay is on the low end considering that it is sales. The quotas are generally achievable but the metrics are not. The metric that they are all fired up about changes all the time so you are always trying to hit a moving target. He eliminated Christmas Eve as a holiday, signaling to us that he doesn't care about us as people. He also extended the weekend hours until 9pm. So we are open 7 days per week from 8 am to 9 pm. As people leave the company they are not filling the open spots so managing the schedule is getting more and more difficult. The bright spot is working with other amazing and talented Advisors that are supportive and wonderful people. I love helping families find the right fit but I'm going to have to find a new way to do that with a different employer.

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