GLG reviews

Do not be like me and think “of course there is just negative reviews because people who have nice things to say are less likely to write it”. Big mistake, I can see completely where every person is coming from now. Do not expect any career progression in this job (recruiter)Do not expect to be happy coming to work in the mornings for your entire time as the work becomes super repetitive once you hit a certain point quite quick (you only have two main tasks: lead gen and calls every single day). Also the recruiting agency advertised a salary 10k higher than you actually get. I don’t know whose fault that is but since the group of people that I joined with raised it and there has been new joiners since then reporting the same thing, no one bothers to fix this. Further you are just a number in here and have to deliver the required targets which are probably 50% being good at the job and 50% luck. Clients treat the most amazing Council Members with no respect and so does GLG. People do not even get a sorry if the time that they set aside for the clients has been cancelled, if they do that is down to you if you have the time to bother and tell them. Which you will not have as you cannot care as a normal human being, you have to think about the next 5 recruits you are supposed to bring in which will rarely get called as well, which has nothing to do with their or your quality at all. You have to consider yourself lucky enough that the client actually comes back instead of ghosting, yet you are forced due to metrics to deliver on projects where clients don’t bother ever responding, wasting your own and the people you speak to time. If you raise this kind of feedback to management you will be shut down. I have seen people struggling in this job and asking for help to succeed. They did not receive any help or more feedback and were being pressured instead by extending people’s probations if not ending up firing them in the end. I do not want to point fingers at anyone being evil in there because the disfunction comes from a way higher level in my opinion as this company exists about 20 years now. Fair play if you can’t change the job but at least give good people opportunities within the company and be a good company to work for because that is currently not the case. I could probably write an entire essay on this, however I hope this gives people the insight they need to determine if they want to work here or not.

The work - Though the job description has changed marginally since I applied, it is still fairly misleading. What was billed as a research position was actually a glorified secretarial/head hunter mashup. The work itself is mind bendingly boring. Scheduling calls and browsing linkedin do not require much, if any, training. The most challenging part of the job is ramping up on all of the proprietary (made up) lingo. Work life balance - This frequently comes up in critiques of GLG for a good reason. 10-11 hour days are expected. The firm assigns outsize value to being seen in your seat after 7pm regardless of whether there is any actual work to be done. Weekends are not protected, in fact working on weekends is expected. Management - From senior leadership down to team leaders, the management at GLG is fraught with issues. GLG consistently rewards loyalty. Thus, some of the more senior leaders (at least in the Austin office) have been rewarded for years of service rather than business acumen. This results in managers who may have been highly efficient at scheduling calls and hyper responsive to emails (all qualities of an A+ GLGer) but have little to no people leadership ability. Poor management is compounded by the practical absence of an HR department. The unlimited vacation perk that is used to draw in recent grads is actually in the hands of a maybe-competent manager. In practice, this looks like some employees taking 4 weeks of and others being told to cap vacation at 10 days. Career advancement - In my, and others, experience who have interviewed at clients or anyone who has experience with expert networks, GLG has proven detrimental in the interview process. Financial Services/Consulting firms do not respect GLG and its employees--they view GLG as a glorified call center. Within GLG, career advancement is based on a black box of ever changing metrics. There was never a single performance review where I felt that I could confidently peg where on the internal "curve" I would fall. Year end bonuses are determined by where you fall on this internal curve ranked against your peers as well as a subjective review of each individual by management. This subjective piece adds to the black box mystique of performance reviews. If you get lucky and find a manager that will step up for you, the road to manager will be a breeze. Otherwise, have fun hanging out as an associate until you give up and go to Facebook.