People of EarnIn: Candace Middleton

Many times, what you get your degree for isn’t always what your career path ends being. Candace is currently in school for forensic science but over the course of her college career, she unlocked her passion for accounting. Now she’s taking the necessary steps towards the career path that she wants to pursue. Here’s her story:

“I’m actually finishing up my degree in forensic science at a college in my hometown. My last semester starts in January so I’ve almost got my degree but I’m currently working at a call center for AT&T. It’s a new job for me since I was actually trying to get into accounting. I got interested in accounting at my old job in a hotel as a night auditor, working 11pm - 7am overnight. They asked me if I was interested in doing some accounting work, and I agreed to it to make some more money and I fell in love with it. It was so crazy. I was like, “Wow, this is so different from what you went to school for Candice, seriously?!” I was mad at myself for a bit but it happens. I told myself I'm still going to finish my degree, but I'm still very much interested in accounting.

Then COVID happened and a lot of things at the hotel shut down. Our gym closed, the bar closed, the restaurant closed, and we no longer had security overnight. So it would just be me by myself all night in this big, old hotel in the busiest area of the town. And then, the people stopped coming, it was a ghost town. Seeing the difference that happened, it was eerie.

On top of that, my mother is elderly, so she was one of the first people we were concerned about getting COVID. She's not in the best health so it was also just trying to take care of her and making sure she didn’t get COVID on top of the other stuff that she already had. I was so worried that the hotel was going to close, but thankfully I was able to stay employed.

Unfortunately, the accounting department closed down because of COVID and there was no guarantee as to when it would open back up. So I was just like, “Okay, let me see if I can find somewhere else where I can actually learn accounting.” And my current job at the call center is helping me do that.

I like numbers and I've always been a numbers person, but I also like talking to customers. A big thing at the hotel was making sure that we had a good relationship with our clients. One of the biggest things I’ve loved since I started working at the call center was giving good customer service. I love when a customer comes in with a bad attitude, then they get to me and they end up smiling before they leave. I love stuff like that and fixing their issues. It feels good being able to keep customers with us because I’m able to sympathize with them and see what they need fixed. So customer service and numbers, that's my thing.

When I first moved into my apartment, I was working two jobs to try to keep myself afloat and it was tiring. I was looking at different options and I found an ad for EarnIn. Since I found the app, it has helped me tremendously. I was in debt and EarnIn helped me get out of it. I had a roommate before, but now I live on my own so I had to figure that out, which was one of the reasons I got EarnIn in the first place. When I moved from a shared apartment with one roommate to living on my own, I was like, “Oh, wait a minute, this is a big difference.” I had to do everything by myself. That was definitely a crucial moment and Earnin really helped me.”

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