Working at FDM Group has put me 2 years behind where I should be in my career - IT Consultant FDM Group Employee Review

Unpaid for the first 8 weeks of training: Joining as a fresh grad and with a huge amount of debt I had to work over the weekends to pay for my commute from South England to FDM’s London office. This meant that over the 8-week training program I was working 7 days a week. They were generous enough however, to pay for a one-way ticket to Hong Kong. Hefty debt if you break your contract: Though I have never heard of this happening to anyone, in your contract it states that if you choose to leave FDM before your contract expires and after your probation period then you must pay £20,000 for the training (which as stated were good but not that good). Terrible relocation package: With only $10,000HKD grant, it was enough to afford a month’s rent in a box sized room. Manipulating Account Managers: Prior to placement you are beached in “The Pond” where you receive additional training if necessary whilst the Account Managers try to seek a new role for you. However, most of the time here is spent waiting in a grey dimly lit office whilst waiting for a new opportunity. The Account Managers do not give a rat’s backside about your background or skills because their priority is to place you in any role, they can so that they receive a commission on your salary. I was pressured into interviewing for non-technical roles which received threats of being reported to senior staff if I refused to take an interview. My first role I was straight up lied to that it would be “Java heavy” whereas in my second role I was led to believe that I would have some “technical responsibilities” which turned out to be sales. No real work experience from any of the roles resulting in 2 years wasted: After completing the intensive Java training program, I was excited to get my hands dirty with some coding at my first role. A few weeks after the first day my concerns began to grow as I had dabbled with a few spreadsheets but not written one line of code. The weeks turned into months and by this point I was pleading with my manager to grant me any work that would utilise my skills in Java. He was kind enough to give me a small project that lasted two weeks but after it was complete, I was left with very little to do again. That was until I was assigned an Arts and Crafts task which involved cutting A4 paper into “cheque-sized” pieces to be used one of their testing machines. Humiliated, I asked my Account Manager to find me another role to which she replied, “just do the job”. At this point I had given up in finding any meaningful work, but I was pleased to discover that Amazon was one of the few unblocked websites, so I spent the rest of my time reading books on the Kindle Web Browser. When the one-year contact with the client expired, my Account Manager notified me that I would not be extended, and my sigh of relief was met with a bark - “Unprofessional!” I gained as much work experience from my second placement except I had more freedom. My new manager treated me to lunch on my first day where I described how eager I was to get into software development to which he responded, “oh but you won’t be doing any of that here”. He was very sympathetic towards me because he knew I could not leave and was aware of the nature of FDM’s business. He was kind enough to let me work from home whenever I wanted and gave me very little work to do. I decided to use the spare time I had to take online courses in software development. This was a feeble attempt to steer my career in the direction I wanted after my contract was finished and I was rid of FDM for good.