- They use Sterling as a company for external background checks. Be prepared to absolutely pull your hair out at this – just have a look online in general at the poor feedback for this company (if you’ve worked for one company for the past 6 years – you’ll be fine…)
- Mandatory training is never-ending – half of this is blocked by the client firewall so expect to use your own device for this.
- Progression is difficult – it seems the majority of UK based opportunities are being moved overseas to India and Manila.
- Incredibly dependent on the whims of the client account you’re working on. In my first week, I was warned in explicit detail by several layers of the AMS staffing structure to be very careful around the Client Lead of the team I worked in – known for unrealistic expectations, very questionable communication hidden behind the veneer of feedback and leads a culture of fear (which is a sentimentality shared by the sheer majority of the Graduate and alumni population of the client workforce – I lost count of conversations with individuals at all levels who explicitly said “I can’t speak out about XYZ and there is no point in providing feedback because XYZ will make my life a misery”)
- Off the back of the above, I had the audacity to have an emotional reaction to a series of overly rude correspondence from this person (because anyone who has a relative in critical care in hospital is going to be of absolute sound mind) to the point I had to take mental health leave to simply cope with a horrible situation completely out of my control. To reiterate the previous point, a good deal of colleagues who were made aware of these emails (from sheer concern for me) – they all agreed that this person’s approach lacked the necessary gravitas for the situation and yet again were being absolutely unreasonable.
- On my return it was suggested I’d go on a PDP (with…interesting criteria that I pushed back on) and my probation extended. The remaining week the client was incredibly off with me, non-supportive and it was categorically clear I didn’t have a place despite previous ongoing amazing feedback from stakeholders and the cohorts I supported.
- I received a random email asking me to attend an in-person meeting regarding the outcome of my probation quite late on a Thursday with very little context. I was advised the PDP was not going ahead and more would be discussed further the following day. On the Friday early morning, I was informed my employment was to be ended with immediate effect with incredibly poor reasons – ranging from my emotional response to the above emails (and yet again, a relative in critical condition in hospital), allegations of deletion of core data (with no evidence, explanation or room for questions) and that I’d disclosed my PDP to another colleague (please note this was never reiterated to me in any meetings – and this was in the context of feeling disappointed with the outcome and that it would be a learning curve within a corporate environment). Apparently showing emotion is a huge negative and you should be a soulless robot. To get around the fact they were supposed to give me 48 working hour’s notice – my last working day was made to be the Saturday of that week (when I was a Mon-Fri worker!)
- Receiving information from HR about how much final pay and annual leave I had accrued was like pulling teeth – I received a boilerplate response outlining the next steps (which half of categorically didn’t happen, it was clear this was rushed through on the changing whims of the client). My several requests for calculations were ignored, as I no longer had access to important systems…
