liaison

préposé à l'entretien d'immeubles

maintenance person

camp counselor

security guard

Columbia International College

Over worked and underpaid. Student Development is in shambles. 

Management/ supervisors/ coordinators lack maturity, professionalism and leadership and spend more time making bets than working. Instead they are given promotions. When bringing the behaviour of the supervisors up to the director, it is not taken seriously and told “she starts drama”. Management lacks transparency and thrives on gossip without talking to staff like professionals. 
Known as the “special sauce” to the owner. A change in Management needs to be looked at because the turnaround rate is baffling and nothing is changing. Instead other departments are forced to take on our mismanagement (RLP). 

Don’t buy the interview. Told you will go on trips to Bark Lake, New York, Ecuador, raptors court, etc, and you will never be put on them. For part time staff, you are told 20-25 hours a week but barely given that a month because they pick favourites. 

Many staff have quit this past year because it is a toxic environment and are unhappy and all staff are applying for other jobs (including coordinators). More and more work will be piled on you with no compensation. The blame is put on the HR department but it isn’t HRs fault just management covering up. 

Pros: benefits, RRSP package, students, 3$ lunches 
Cons: supervisory staff, no training or feedback, uniforms

The job description almost never match the actual tasks at the job, I have seen it personally with my own position as well as with other staff. The residence is so unorganized that staff are either always overworked or underworked. Management does NOT appreciate their staff and they do not see them as actual human beings with lives outside of work. Staff are expected to go above and beyond for work but management does not provide the same treatment for their staff. Staff who have been there for YEARS are getting paid laughable wages. Management fully takes advantage of staff who are not perfectly fluent in English. They know that they can pay them pathetic wages because the workers will have a hard time working somewhere else due to their limited language skills. The culture in residence is very clique-y and reminiscent of high school bullies. They do NOT value diversity and will shut down any ideas that celebrate different identities. I took this job because the job description seemed promising, unfortunately, it ended up being a horrible experience and a real waste of time. I would not recommend working here at all. 

The school sells "Total Care" to students and parents, but provides no care for their own staff. No opportunity for personal or professional growth, pay is well below scale, benefits are minimal, little opportunity to advance unless you impress the boss for some reason, no vision (aside from making as much money as possible - none of which the employees see), no intentional community development among staff/departments, little training or guidance, everyone is overworked... the list could go on. Also, because of all of these realities, turnover is very high, putting extra pressure on everyone. This is not a school with a vision for great education - it is a business with a vision for maximizing profits and minimizing expenses. 

On the flip side, the students are amazing, the multicultural environment is fantastic, and many staff are wonderful people. It's really too bad that the way this place is managed just slowly destroys your soul, because it really is a unique workplace. So much wasted potential.

Students are great but the Management staff is terrible. Complete favoritism in the departments. If the department management is at all threatened by the fact that you can think on your own and could potentially make them look inadequate, they will make your life miserable, cut your hours back, put you on terrible shifts no matter what your seniority level is, they will block you from moving up the ladder, pay is terrible and they continue to pile the work load on you. Everything is blown out of proportion to make them look like they are more valuable and irreplaceable then they are. Ultimately they will try to get you to quit or find a reason to fire you. The non-management staff changeover is ridiculously high. Human Resources has been notified multiple times by multiple employees of issues with their supervisors, yet nothing changes because they are all friends and looking out for each other. You are wasting your time working here and your mental state will suffer unless you enjoy being a puppet. Staff is constantly in fear of loosing their jobs.

"Everybody is seeking a way out." One of the friends that still works in Columbia told me a few days back, and I quote:"Can you believe that there are eight full-time staff have left the company in my three months here?"

No on-the-job training. You will not be provided any job-specific training or professional development coaching by HR. Just to be fair, yes, you may receive some unsystematic briefings from your supervisor and co-workers but, hey, you are on your own. 

Very low pay. Look at the salary reviews and you would find the pay here is significantly lower than industry average. If you have a family to take care, a few months to feed, you may find it difficult to pay off your bills. (they pay monthly, not bi-weekly, btw)

The worst thing is no support from higher management. If you are trying to achieve anything here, dreaming is probably the best route of all. Everybody is master of ping-pong, except, of course, you are the ball.

In my time wirking for Columbia College I saw the company go from partially caring for more than the bottom line to only caring about the bottom line.
 The turnover in staff is never ending as the support is next to non-existant from the higher managers. Useful suggestions from front line employees are casually tossed into the "don't really care" pile while those that just go along with every bad decision get praised. 
 Promotion, if you want to refer to it as such, is not based on your time in and ability so much as the whim of the new management structure and how much you can suck up to them. There is absolutely no loyalty base here anymore since the owner took a back seat to let his son and hired number crunchers take control.
 Think twice very carefully before you accept any position from this company.

I never received training for my job, I got shown a power point and thats it, anytime I would be handed a task I wouldnt be told what to do, If i asked I would get ignored or they would say *no sorry im busy* afternoon staff will not help you, be careful because if you do decide to do something yourself and its not the *right way* bassically making sure its kept under the rug... you will get in trouble, even if this involves doing your job, if you want to feel any sort of saftey dont work nights they will put you in alone with zero security at night and the front doors are broken 90% of the time anyone could easily get in. Even if you have relevent background  experience for the position your ideas will get dismissed and put down, and if you work at pine girls good luck..pine boys get away with everything pine girls gets in trouble for everything.

they make everything sound perfect for you in the interview dont be fooled.

I have been working with Columbia international college for over a year now and it is one of the best careers I have ever had the staff are all great people the supervisors are always there to help and actually stop to say good job which is rare these days and the upper management are fantastic group of people to work for and give you great support it's a very family like feel in the workplace the owners of the company are some of the most down to earth great people you will ever meet and if they do read these I would like to thank you for giving me a opportunity to work at Columbia international college. I have learnt so much in such a short time and made a lot of new friends. The company offers excellent training and overall will treat you great.

This was a part-time job in summer. The HR office hired some new employees for serving the summer campers. My work was assisting my leader to create the working shifts for all the employees by using excel and adjust the shifts on their special requirement.
The hardest part of my job was how to face to the emergency and balance the time of all their shifts. Sometimes, the employee could not go their shifts on time or some of them think it was unfair for them to get less time of shifts than others. So, I had to report all these situations to my leader first and tried to help him find the best way to figure them out. After updating the shifts schedule, I had to explain them the reason that we think it was the best way to make all them happy. Because, usually, their efficiency is depends on their feeling of happiness.

I worked there and had four bosses in less than three years. The job started out ok at first for security, straight nights, easy work, decent benefits, at the time $2-3 above minimum wage. However it quickly went downhill from there. Security management didn’t stick around long at all so you had a new boss every few months. The work load got added to significantly and you would find yourself rotated out of your position regularly without notice, no matter whether it was convenient for you. Eventually the management decided it was important to start spying on the other staffers to the point that I felt like I was in the Secret Police instead of a security guard. I’ve since found out since I’ve stopped working there that the school had slashed company benefits severely during COVID too.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Liaison 7 salaries reported	$35,143 per year
Préposé à l'entretien d'immeubles 5 salaries reported	$22.00 per hour
Maintenance person 5 salaries reported	$23.09 per hour
Camp counselor 5 salaries reported	$18.60 per hour
Security guard 4 salaries reported	$19.38 per hour

Working at Columbia International College: company overview and reviews

Columbia International College

Columbia International College ratings

Popular jobs at Columbia International College

Salary satisfaction

Job seeker tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected