Vantaggi
Good entry level positions available for recent college graduates. Good experiences to be had that hopefully can translate to other more successful companies. Opportunities to perform in a stressful environment. Start out with decent vacation (12 days)
Svantaggi
Poor benefits package, health insurance is terrible, no system of raises or clear paths to career advancement. Low Moral on site. Positions that open up are often already filled (the buddy-system over job performance and capabilities of candidate). Work environment can be hostile at times with long-term legacy employees being overly comfortable with coworkers (i.e. cursing, yelling, intentional sabotage, bullying and blaming others). HR department consists of 4 people, so the HR department is largely unable to give attention to these issues (or most others) and these type of things run rampant in the office. Moral is obviously low when you walk in the door because there is a history of the site where things shifted from a Branded Pharma Company (Wyeth/ Pfizer) and then turned into a 3rd party cosmetic and sunscreen manufacturer (Fareva). A few years after the conversion the employees salaries were cut 12.5% and since that time (2011) there have been no raises or cost of living increases. Instead particular people are given "raises" by creating job positions and filling them with the desired candidate. These types of practices lead to negative moral and that stuff hangs like a perpetual cloud over the Fareva Richmond Site. Extremely high turnover in my group as I have seen 50% turnover of the group members leave during 2018. I think there is some disconnect between the owner Bernard Fraisse and the people here in Virginia working for him.; managers/ upper levels of the company are all French (most related too) and there is at minimum a difficult language barrier and at worst a French company trying to get Americans to do as much work as possible with as little investment on site and investment in employees as can get away with. Lastly, safety practices are of question. There have been fires/ incidents that have occured on site and are only notified about by the people that were involved or through the rumor mill. I personally am made to feel unsafe because instead of discussing these things and explaining what happened it is hidden from employees. If there is a site closure due to inclement weather than employees are forced to use a vacation day for the closure.