Unfortunately, the bad far outweighed the good during my time at this agency.
First of all, the work this agency does was grossly misrepresented to me during my application process when I joined. They've definitely gotten better about this, but I accepted the position being sold a different idea than what it ultimately was. Depending on what your situation is, that could potentially be a catastrophic career move. Once again, this seems to be remedied with current job postings the agency has, but keep in mind that roles on the digital media team are not traditional marketing agency roles. There is no organic or paid content creation, and most everything you do will involve reactive social media management.
Compensation is flat out not competitive for the vast majority of employees. Most employees are paid peanuts to work 50+ hour weeks, and are not paid overtime. The agency tries to compensate by letting employees use their extra time they worked during the next pay period, but most employees never get to do this since their work schedule is consistently over 40 hours per week. This lack of compensation combined with expected overtime leads to a culture of mediocrity, where employees do the bare minimum, creating mediocre, unimpactful work.
Leadership is weak here. There are basically no boundaries with the clients. Leadership tends to say yes to every project without any regard for employees' time. This leads to employees being overworked and once again, turning out mediocre, replacement level work. Some members of the leadership team are also toxic and very obviously faking their experience/expertise, setting a bad example for the agency and honestly making everyone involved look incompetent. The leadership team could definitely benefit from a course on managing client expectations and setting a good example for employees.
There is a general culture of fakeness around this agency. Things get swept under the rug at an alarming rate. The agency tries to hide behind superficial diversity initiatives, pay-to-win awards, and empty pep talks on agency values and principles to portray an image of competency. Employees say things to make it seem like they buy in, but it all seemed rather obvious to me that most people were just being fake. Important to know this before you decide to work at this agency.
In general, the agency does not take direct action to solve large problems that it has. Turnover rate is incredibly high, even in an industry where turnover is known to be higher than pretty much any other. There are a certain group of employees who have stuck around for a long time, but they seem to wallow in mediocrity and skirt by playing games with the leadership. If you have high aspirations for your career, you will probably quickly see that your path lies outside of TruePoint. The turnover problem is not something that can be fixed overnight, but a clear path to promotions and competitive compensation is probably a good start. No matter how much the agency tries to make you feel like part of the "family" with fancy in-office lunches, Amazon gift cards, and feel-good conversations about how inclusive you are, you will probably eventually look for things that matter more.
It cannot be stressed enough how erratic the work schedule is at this agency. Most employees are scheduled for 35+ hours of "shifts" each week. These shifts are hardly ever at the same time each day. Some days you might work from 8am-5pm, others you will work from 10am-midnight with a small break thrown in somewhere. You will hardly ever get a weekend off unless you specifically request it, and employees are discouraged from making frequent requests for specific off days. This means you will sometimes have random Tuesdays and Thursdays off and work on Saturday and Sunday. Not a great deal if you have friends, significant others, or children you want to hang out with/take care of on the weekends. The operations team will work with you a little bit to make accommodations, but you will ultimately have to make some sacrifices in your personal life or not have many obligations to make this job really work. All employees will also work some holidays, which can be another major obstacle if you, once again, have a personal life.
Lastly, the above issue of erratic work schedule gets magnified by the leadership team adding you to "projects" where you will sometimes work 10-15 extra hours per week on top of your shifts to execute things for the clients/other teams within the agency. Many employees will accept working on these projects to prevent a perception of them being lazy/incompetent. This expectation leads to a toxic work environment where employees who are working essentially for free (remember, no overtime) get preferential treatment over those who choose not to do "urgent client requests" without compensation.
