Vantaggi
- the name looks good on your CV - the travel opportunities can be incredible. it’s worth putting in a couple of years for those alone. - colleagues are brilliant and clients are generally a pleasure to deal with - the work can be very enjoyable when you’re just left to get on with it - the five weeks training programme at head office in London was brilliant when I started, although newer consultants seem to have less and less of a grasp of the basics so cannot speak for it now - basic pay is very good, though if you’re particularly good at selling, the commission structure is such that you may still earn significantly more in bonuses elsewhere
Svantaggi
- losing lots of staff due to their antiquated policies re: annual leave, etc (see pretty much every other review) - in turn, putting massive pressure on those left. ironically this worsens the problem as it makes it even harder to get leave - inflexibility re: wfh, even when the government advice was to do so where possible(!) - It’s exhausting. while you’re told going into the job that working weekends will be a part of it, what isn’t made clear is that your replacement days off often won’t be together. the combination of 9 hour days with a half hour lunch, often only having a day off between shifts, sometimes finishing at 8pm and restarting at 9am, and the sales pressure can take a huge toll. calling the rosters team about this is frequently unsuccessful as the response you invariably get amounts to “computer says no” - promoting from within is a double-edged sword; in principle it’s encouraging, however as a result a lot of major decision making is now left to a bunch of former salesmen who simply don’t know how to run a company. those in managerial roles are something of a mixed bag. - insufficient training; there has a been an enormous rollout of new product over the last 2 years but the training has amounted to a few memos, quizzes and videos. the company is pivoting from being relatively specialist to a jack of all trades and among many of us, there is a feeling this is not what we signed up for. - a “telman” system that is presumably supposed to monitor consultants in order to increase productivity but is extremely bad for morale. “telman” is a role shared between managers of the company, and basically means one person is responsible for keeping an eye on call volumes throughout the day so as a company we can meet the demand on the phones. depending on who is appointed telman on any given day, the person in this role can be unbelievably condescending and unreasonable, and in general it shows what a complete lack of trust management has in the workforce. there is also a tacit assumption shared among “telmen” that if you’re not available for calls then you’re not doing anything, which is particularly irksome when a lot of the product we sell is new to all of us and requires a great deal of concentration if we don’t want a clients’ itinerary to be littered with mistakes. It’s understandable that the company doesn’t want to lose calls but their proposed solution to this is absurd and doesn’t work. - focus on quantity over quality when it comes to bookings. there is little recognition of the work many consultants do assisting clients with non-commisionable services (such as aftercare). it can be a boring and time consuming element of the job which is why many palm this sort of work off, but those who take ownership of these thankless tasks are the ones maintaining the company’s reputation from a service point of view. this seems to be of little interest to upper management, who are just obsessed with sales sales sales and the bottom line. - limited opportunities for progression outside of London
