Vantaggi
As a new graduate this is going to be your entry point into the world of IT, consulting or business management. It's a good 'starter' as the requirements for entry are pretty low, and no experience is needed. My recommendation is, get your 1-3 years of experience to pad your resume and move on.
Svantaggi
Client Innovation Centers (CICs) like the one in Halifax are a "cost neutral" opportunity for IBM. It's a way for IBM to get cheap labour to service clients that require certain linguistic or cultural considerations (i.e. speak English or French, be able to get a security clearance) that other CICs (India, Philippines) don't always meet. It's not a "core" IBM, but rather almost like a 'subsidiary' experience. To put it simply, your lack of experience and basic entry requirements translate to cheap grunt work like activities (like execution of testing scripts, manual entry, excel entry, programming etc). This translates to low salaries, and a slow promotional curve. From a culture and from a growth perspective this makes IBM's CIC a rotating door company as the salary is significantly behind what the 'core' IBM pays (i.e. in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver etc), there is some sense of being second-tier. Don't expect to get to high level bands in the center (i.e. 8 / 9 ~90k / 100k cad ) in your first 6-8 years. Bands 6G start at 40k, and have significant number of steps to promote. The band structure 6G - 6A - 6B - 6 - 7A - 7B - 7 - 8 - 9 takes about 1 year per promotion. Point two, the center is utilization driven and you're expected to meet a 95.7% target (which translates to 44-50+ hours / week) - if you don't meet the target (which is not under your control as the work you're assigned isn't always there) you're going to be passed on for promotion opportunities. Some of these require client approvals too, i.e. you're re-sold to the company at a certain rate (e.g. $40/hr), and if you get a raise (e.g. you become $45/hr) the company you're assigned to do work for can reject that promotion and request a cheaper resource instead (you end up on bench). You will average about 12% per promotion, to get promoted you must be rated a rock star / rising talent or an exceptional employee. The complexities behind promotions don't make it worthwhile to stick around for more than 2-3 years, it's simpler and faster for you to get a higher salary by applying to a different company with the experience you have gained instead.
