I'm going to write this con section as if it was a letter to myself for before I started working at NFI. This is lengthy, but honest. These are things I wish I knew before accepting.
The Job: The job itself is extremely difficult. It's very monotonous and boring. You're sitting at your tiny desk all day cold calling businesses and candidates. Due to recruiting such niche professionals, every business and candidate you call has been contacted an absurd amount by many people in the company. It's borderline harassment, and it makes for NFI to have a very bad reputation. I've called people I've never spoken with before and they have immediately cursed out NFI. I cannot stress to you how much of this job is based on luck. NFI preaches "control the process" and will berate you if a deal doesn't come through. But let's think about this. From the business (or "client") side of this, how is a voice in their ear going to have enough control to make the business have an employment need they cannot fill, agree to pay NFI's way over the market average rates, then on top of that actually like the employee that we send. Then from the candidates side, they need to be looking for a job, fit the job description, interview well enough to get the job, like the job, then possibly relocate. This all needs to happen. Too many major things have to fall in place for luck and good circumstances not to play a huge role. Yet, managers will get on you HARD if a deal doesn't come through. They will act like you just committed a mortal sin and take you into a private room and yell and express extreme disappointment. It's unbelievable. Each month is a new slate, and they could care less what you did the previous month. You could do 3 deals in September (which is almost impossible), then blank in October, and you would be put on performance review, which means if you don't do a deal the next month you're supposed to be let go. But with such high turnover I really believe this is an empty threat (like so many of them are here). There is a phone report that goes out THREE times a day to everyone in the company that shows how many dials you've made and your call times. Managers will get on you hard if your times are not up to their liking, even if you've been working diligently on other things (They want minimum 60 dials a day, and an hour and a half on the phone). There are not too many companies that use certain team's technologies, so many of the companies get bombarded with calls and emails from NFI, to point like I said earlier is borderline harassment. Oh, and on top of this they expect you to work at a minimum of 10 1/2 hours a day doing this cringeworthy task. They don't like it when you leave your tiny desk, and they even ban cell phones during the day (what is this middle school? We're adults, treat us as such).
The Management: The management of this company is a joke. Most are basically rejects from other industry's where NFI's they're last chance. The other's have done well their first year (the very few), and were put in a management role, even though they did not go to school for it, or know how. I have never been more micromanaged in my entire life. There was a point where my manager was listening in on all of our teams' calls. If he did not like what you were saying, he would yell at you what to tell them, to the point where you couldn't even have a conversation with the person you called, due to so many people talking at once to you. They constantly made the team feel uneasy about their job security, which is a ploy to make you stay late (which I'll get into).
The Hours: The hours are the worst, because the job is brutal and they force you to stay late. They purposely make your KPI's (goals you must hit for the month/week) impossible so you have no option but to work at least 11 hours. It was like a game of chicken to see who would leave first, and get dirty looks from the team and manager. Management will claim no one is forced to stay late and that it's the choice of the employee, but don't buy into this. They legally cannot say you have to stay this late because we're salary, not hourly and there's no overtime pay. They force you to stay very late by like I said, having intentionally high KPI's, mean comments if you leave before 6:45 (yes, it's hard to believe, but true), and the constant threat of your job security. They act like it's a crime if you come in past 8:30am, when they tell you show up between 8:30-9am when you first start. Managers will actually come in on their PTO days, to show the President they're working hard. People are seriously brainwashed here. As you leave on Friday, they will try to pressure you to show up on the weekend. Managers have told my team members that if you take a sick day or PTO day, you're expected to make up the time with even later hours or coming in on the weekend. One nice thing is that you do get an hour for lunch.
The Dress: You never once see anyone you're working with on either the business or candidate side. Yet, they want people to wear a suit and tie everyday. This is laughable. Employees are on the phone all day, its not client facing whatsoever. Just another attempt for NFI to control your life.
The Perks- For the type of job you're doing the perks are a terrible. Once a month you do "First Thursday", which is an open bar/sales meeting at a venue that almost was always too tiny. It's fun, but I remember the best part being that we got to leave the office by 6:30pm that day. There is this thing called Lunch Club, which is always dangled in front of you and supposed to happen every month if you earn it, but it normally happens once every three months. It's laughable how often it gets canceled. They do promote incentive trips on their website and to new hires, but the last one they went on (September 2015, only ten people from the NY office was allowed to go. Out of over 100 employees). I mean thats almost the same chance someone has at getting into an ivy league school. AKA it's only a perk for a select few. They've actually faked incentive trips, just as an attempt to motivate people. Just know if you work here, you're almost definitely not going on one of these trips. Maybe once every two months your team will go out for drinks, but it's basically just your manager drunk off two beers bragging about how much money he's making (which normally isn't an amount that deserves bragging about) and how they see you taking a future leadership role with the company. Just know they tell this to everyone. Also, they discourage you from taking PTO/sick days.
The Pay: Small base salary, and you really only make good commission if you do multiple deals in a month. Your first deal of every month you typically get 5% of the rate NFI charges which comes out to be around $800, but commission tax in NYC is 40%, so you lose so much of it.
Concluding notes: The bathrooms are the most vile thing I've ever seen in my life. 3 stalls for an insane amount of people. No compensation for dinner if stay past a certain time. The turnover is so high that if you take a sick day, people will assume you're interviewing for another job. Managers have no life's, and that's why so many of them have girlfriends that work there. Side note, you don't need a college degree to work here. I've heard management tell HR/internal recruiters to write fake glass door reviews, since there are so many honest reviews on here about how terrible this job really is.
If you read all of this and you're thinking this job sounds like hell, well you're right, and 85% of the employees working at NFI would describe the job as such. The two phases to the job: learning the processes, then looking for your next job. Very few people stay past 12 months. They say that 1 in 4 people make $100k their first year. Probably because the only people that stay over year, are the one's who lucked out/sold their soul and did well.
I wish I knew all of this before I started. I wouldn't wish this job on my worst enemy. I don't know anyone that is still working there that isn't actively looking for a new job right now.
If I could rate this job less than one star I would.
