Disappointing - Recensione dipendente - Consultant presso IRI

There are plenty. - If you get a bad client, you will be miserable. - The client facing roles themselves are extremely basic and not challenging in any capacity. Most time is spent pulling data from a database, formatting in PowerPoint, and sending via email. This holds true for those from the Analyst level through Principals, and quite frankly most of the work I could teach a junior high student how to pull because the database is super easy to use. Also found the work to be very inefficient; there would be hours and hours of calls and edits, etc to a deliverable that would improve it by a mere 5%. And the clients didn't appreciate the extra formatting, they would have rather gotten the data 4 weeks sooner than see some pretty colors added. - The roles are NOT focused on research/insights/consulting; the true job is to identify revenue opportunities, desperately try to sell to clients things that they don't need, and then get berated for hitting 99% of target for the year (which is still 10% growth compared to last year). All about pushing solutions the client doesn't need, to the point where the client is annoyed. So, if you are a true research/consulting professional, it’s probably not the company for you. - Most people work weekends/late nights, but the mediocre pay doesn't justify the extra hours. - The other component to being successful in this role is being a great executor and not necessarily a great thinker. Coworkers were really good at explaining methodology, measures, etc - things they had memorized over the years, but when clients asked questions that involved actual strategy and thinking outside of the box, the consultants I worked with would literally just keep repeating the same buzzwords and dropping names to IRI products that they were trying upsell, without adding any value or actually providing a real answer to the clients questions. Do you remember that kid in your college group project who was super vocal and tried to lead the team, but they actually didn't understand the assignment at all and everything they were saying was just wrong? This is where those people go to work. - About half of my time was spent in meetings/calls (90% of which should have been an email), and the other half was spent filling out tech support tickets because the Unify database constantly has tech issues/glitches. Most of the time your ticket gets ignored until the problem magically fixes itself, and then tech support can never explain the root cause so there is no reassurance that the issue won't occur again. - The technology was also good in theory, but there are so many caveats to getting it to work and limitations that basically make the solution unusable in many instances. On a weekly basis a client would say "I thought we could pull XYZ" and I would have to come back with "well, yes, but in this case we can't because....". For solutions that cost in the 6-figure range, this happened way too often and it’s not fun being the person who has to explain to a client that we can't get at basically any of the data they need/are paying for. - Instead of having a sense of teamwork, it was every man for himself. People were quick to throw each other under the bus, whether that be on an internal call or to the client. I never trusted 99% of my coworkers, which doesn't make for a pleasant work environment. - Because they are owned by a venture capital firm, they are really cheap when it comes to taking care of employees. Insurance was expensive biweekly, but with a really high deductible, raises were average (~3%) even though the company was making bank, if you go 10 cents over budget on a meal when traveling, they actually will make you write them a check for 10 cents, and there was no maternity/paternity leave beyond disability for the mom, nothing for new dads. - Company cellphones and laptops are embarrassingly old. I once was laughed at by clients at a meeting – like actual out-loud laughter.