Pros
1. Everyone that leaves the company seems to go on to good roles, doing things they enjoy (this is based on my experience, not any statistics) 2. The vast majority of people in the connections team was very nice and friendly, contributing to a nicer work environment 3. When I was there, it was a relatively good starting salary for a fresh grad with decent bonus potential (if you are lucky + willing to put in an unholy amount of hours calling people at night) 4. Potential to reach senior titles quicker than in most other roles (because the attrition rate is abysmal). The downside is of course that this leads to toxic/ underexperienced managers. 5. Good exposure to a host of different topics and different people 6. The soft skills (pitching, negotiation, basic research, client relationship management, stakeholder management etc) you acquire are very useful
Cons
1. The business model essentially relies upon exploiting naive grads who don't know that many of the company's requests are totally unreasonable. 2. Absolutely zero weight is given to feedback from staff members - hence why the staff turnover remains so high. As you can see, the other reviews are very negative, but leadership either lacks the humility or the vision to do anything about it. 3. The company will brag about diversity and especially diversity amongst its leadership - until you realise that the majority of managers and senior leaders are privately educated. Only 7% of the British population is privately educated but I'll be damned if half of that 7% don't work for Third Bridge. 4. The targets are obscene. If you are lucky enough to get staffed on a busy account you will make an extra ~20-30% on most of your colleagues, and everyone will sing your praises. If you are unlucky and get staffed on a quiet account, you will be put on a PIP and eventually fired, all the while being told that it is entirely your fault. (btw @Management, before you write off my review as just someone who is salty they got fired - I didn't.) 5. Very repetitive. As a new associate you will spend your entire day (and I mean your entire day) doing 1 of 3 things. Either you will be calling through a list of experts already in the database, doing cold reach outs to potential experts or you will be acting as a PA to the expert/ client trying to make a call between them happen so you get points towards bonus. Once you pass probation, you will have the added task of managing client comms & searching for experts within the system. 6. Micromanagement. Each morning you will check in with your manager to plan your day and your to-dos, you will then be hounded about what you are doing for the rest of the day. If you are a project manager (associate who has passed probation) you will have no freedom on how you execute the project as you will consistently have your manager going through your project and making changes without telling you. 7. More work for same pay. As mentioned, when you pass probation you take on the client management aspect. This used to be a promotion (you went from Connections Associate -> Client Associate and got a like 10-15% pay rise). Now, however, it is not. You take on about 30-40% more work for no benefit. 8. Here's a fun one: being shamed for doing anything after work. In a normal job, it is expected that you will do something after work (drinks with friends, the gym, a long dog walk perhaps!). Not at Third Bridge. No no, for you, my young graduate friend, must be available at the beck & call of a large consultancy firm. Clients will send you projects at 10PM at night and you are expected to respond to them within 20 minutes and have an initial list of experts over to them within the hour. I have on several occasions been told that it simply "wasn't good enough" that I was uncontactable at 9:30PM, and that I should have made another member of the team aware that I was going to be out for dinner. Now, some teams have a way round this! What they do, is they each take 1 night a week to be "on-call". Essentially, they sacrifice 1 whole night a week where they can't do anything and must be available until 10-11pm. During this time they must respond to any and all client comms and set up projects. They do not get paid for this.