Poor experience, extreme micromanagement, poor business development strategy. - Recensione dipendente - Consultant presso A2F Consulting

A2F is a very small company (~5 people), operated like a one-man show by its CEO. Job applicants are typically promised a startup environment, claims of sealed projects with big name clients and assurance of travel all over the world. In reality, they have been around since 2007 (startup?) and they are surviving on 2-3 small projects a year. While they do occasionally work with big names, most of the projects they claim are about to start, are not in fact awarded to them yet. Often they are either still applying (at the Expression of Interest stage) or are short-listed at best. 90% of your job will consist of writing Expressions of Interest (EOIs) and, if short-listed, Requests for Proposals (RFPs). This is not bad in itself except that most likely you were not hired or were not expecting to have this as your main responsibility. You will be given previous EOIs or RFPs and will be told to recycle them to the new project even if you are a specialist in that area and you realize many things in those documents are either very shallow, dated or inaccurate. Even if you are assigned to work on a project, that will be a secondary priority. It is common that work-in-progress documents are thrown around different people because the text 'does not flow' or because the CEO randomly decides they need to apply for a different project regardless of approaching (or past due) deadlines. Consequently, A2F are always late with their deliverable, which in turn leads to delays in payment. Cons: - Lack of a sustainable business development strategy: the company should hire a specialist in this area. The CEO and COO lack these abilities completely. - Extremely poor management and planning: everything is done at the last minute, with little to no planning. The deliverables are always late by months, affecting company's liquidity (see the other reviews about delayed payments). Assignments are thrown around to people having nothing to do with them. - CEO's personality and management style: although he is a friendly guy, he is highly unorganized and is an extreme micromanager, getting involved in EVERYTHING from writing EOIs to filling your reimbursements for travel. He rewrites and changes ALL documents at the very last minute. He also often does not have the right qualifications or up-to-date knowledge and takes corrections and criticisms very personally. - Unethical practices towards employees and very low employee retention rate: employees are not told the entire story when hired (see above). When problems with payments arise, employees are sweet-talked into waiting (sometimes for months) for payments. Travel reimbursements are done very late and exchange rate fluctuations are passed to employees on the entire amount, including money spent in the US. - People who left the company had to wait months for residual payments and to complain to Maryland department of labor. Once they delay your first paycheck, just quit! Once you allow for larger amounts, they will delay them as long as they legally can.