GDS Group reviews

I worked for GDS for some time, and eventually left because I didn’t want to be associated with a company that had no moral compass. GDS is an events company that prides itself as a market leader in their field which is ultimately in ‘meet the buyer’ type events. They arrange 2.5 day ‘Summits’ where 65+ executives from brands come armed ready to speak with companies about their top challenges. The brand executives come for free, but the companies wishing to meet them pay substantial sums of money for the privilege (The standard package is around £25K). In order to sell slots to companies, GDS claims to obtain project intelligence from the brand executives about their top 3 challenges. This is where most of the fraud is committed by GDS as most of the project intelligence is either completely fabricated, or, an obsolete project from an old summit that has been regurgitated. The sales campaign starts around 6 months before the summit takes place, and usually there will be around 15 or so brands that sign up at the start. This is not enough to encourage companies to participate, so fake lists are used to make out the summit is not far off being full of delegates. Likewise there will be little (If any) project intelligence, so sales staff are instructed to make up their own. This will be the case right up until a couple of weeks (Sometimes days) before the summit takes place. This dishonesty is not as a result of a few desperate sales staff, it is a company-wide problem starting with the CEO and working down at all levels. The office environment is best described as toxic. If you work at GDS then you can expect to be micro-managed, treated like a child, given little support and basically made you to feel like you are expendable. It is very difficult for any semblance of structure because of constant changing at the whims of management. Drugs are openly dealt in the office and regularly consumed in the toilets. There are undertones of sexual and racial discrimination. The turnover of staff is insane. There is constant back-stabbing, dishonesty, and attempts to steal sales deals. The middle management are largely inept and corrupt. It is true you can earn a lot of money, but this is the exception not the rule.

Everything at GDS is built around lying. You are being actively misled during the hiring process. The first sentence of the script you read every day is a lie. Your manager will encourage you to input fake activity because it is important for the office to show fake numbers to hq. The morning meetings are built around celebrating the people with the best activity when it is OBVIOUS / SO AWKWARD that that person input a bunch of fake activity. The company is run by the founder who is the only person who makes any decisions. The group that lead the office have no power to make any meaningful change and they know it. The management style is actively celebrated as being Alec Baldwin's speech from Glengary. If you are 1 minute late (to work, from break, from lunch) be prepared to be yelled at in the middle of the sales floor. Extreme micro-management. Literally "what have you done in the past hour?" Stay away.