Pros
Work in a flashy building in a nice central CBD location. Other than that, not much really despite all the big talks about their patented methodology! It's pretty basic like any other market research firm. Oh yes, they are a market research firm daydreaming they are into management consulting!
Cons
Poor employee experience, unprofessional, unethical with concerning long hours (12-18 hours) on a regular basis. You will get treated like school kids, probably because most of their employees are freshly graduated Uni kids without much knowledge of how a better workplace should look like. You won't find any experienced personnel staying in Forethought long. Very high turnover rate overall confirms the mismatch between what you will hear from HR in the info session about the company and the experience you will get after joining. They should consider doing their own brand tracking, fix their leaky bucket problem and do a survey on ultra high churn rate! The managers have no knowledge about modern management and organisational style. It's a company living in 90s treating employees like labourers, no trust and always telling you what to do. "Get your coffee before you walk into work, not after" - you get the idea how they bully. They even make you do kitchen service - rostered among employees to save money from getting a cleaner. They still use Desktops, access to any personal email service is blocked (as if people cannot use their phone to access them anyway) and have no decent ERP or a project management tool. Their contracts are unethical (as some others here already mentioned) - tells you to work 8:30 AM - 5:30 PM with occasional long hours (which ends up to 12 hours/day on an average) and you will not be compensated or take any TOIL. Another funny thing is though most Australian companies get you to report 7.6 hours for 8 hours of work (9 AM - 5 PM), here it is 7.6 for 9 hours of work (8:30 AM - 5:30 PM). You never finish at 5:30 though. And account management rejects your time sheet if you report actual hours you are putting into. The contract requires you to give 4 weeks notice. But if you give 4 weeks notice to them, they are still upset and CEO comes out screaming "if you don't include us in your future plans and give us only 4 weeks notice, your personal file will be marked as not-for-re-employment." Management is not interested in learning and trying anything different beyond what they know. You can't discuss anything with them. It is their way or highway. You have a good chance to be a Forethought manager if you are very old fashioned with pretty much out of date skills or knowledge but are somehow related to the CEO. Oh did I mention that it's a family business owned by the CEO? I wonder how long they can continue operating like this.
