Pros
- It's a more relaxed culture than the larger recruitment firms like Hays and you have a bit more freedom to design your days. It is not an aggressive, 'salesy' culture based on the fact they do hire people who will try and focus on building long-term relationships. - It is a reasonable stepping stone before joining a search firm that does more retained work and values creativity and entrepreneurial flair
Cons
- it is a highly stats and volume based recruitment company, meaning any ambition to be creative/innovative is stifled. You are expected to conform to type and this is completely at odds with any long-term attempts to build long-term relationships - it does not seem to evolve as a company, it is stuck doing recruitment the same way it always has, despite the industry changing dramatically - it should be focussed a lot more on developing retained work for example - there is a distinct lack of cross-team business development - a cardinal sin for any business. It should be incentivised better - managers are generally very poor at actually managing people, partly because they are only incentivised to do well individually and therefore are, in reality, only supervisors. - The CEO rules with an iron fist - even fairly minor initiatives have to be passed through her and this is hugely frustrating. Some of her senior management are in their positions because they will be compliant and not challenge her and this creates a somewhat robotic culture