Great training ground but expect to hit the ceiling quicker than your MBA counterparts
Pros
Lots of opportunity for getting a breadth of research experience by rotating through a number of positions - syndicated, trends, primary/divisional, shopper insights, international, social media. Because GMI still has an internal primary research supplier and large syndicated team you can get nuts and bolts research experience being on the 'client' side of research. Great benefits and they've started to embrace flexible work arrangements to some level. Lot's of smart people to work with. . Making an effort to embrace multicultural trends. Compared to other area which General Mills hires MBA's for, Consumer Insights is more stable career wise as the track is not up and out like marketing is. Does a great job stay on the cutting edge of research approaches. Currently focusing on training CI organization with 'future skills' needed to develop great consumer insights.and less on the tactical research abilities.
Cons
The glass ceiling exists at General Mills for everyone but they'll let you stay and look out the window. If you join after grad school expect a couple promotions and then you'll hit the wall after becoming a manager. It's rare to break into the Sr. Manager or Director ranks especially if you don't fit the preferred style and desire to be divisional focused. Wouldn't be so bad but after a while at the same level your salary increases decline even if you get great annual performance reviews. Not a great place to be an expert in a research area (e.g. new products, research method) since they don't have a technical or specialization track to reward expertise. Rewards/promotions are based more on how you manuver the political landscape. Expect to end up behind your MBA peers promotion wise since promotions are slow to happen and rarely accellerated. You may find yourself a CI manager but not have any direct reports so you'll have to do double duty exectuing and work overtime to make room for strategic thinking time. You have little direct control over how your career unfolds as the job rotation system is opaque and dependent on how powerful your current manager is in the group determining moves and how much effort they make to understand your talents and desires. They don't balance their talent pool well. They focus only on hiring graduate level employees so an experienced resarcher ends up spending too much time on tactical aspect of research. Due to strong risk aversion the marketing teams want to measure everything before making decisions. This puts big pressure on CI to often spend too much time tactically rather than strategically setting the stage. Big varience in the quality of upper managers/directors - some are focused on helping you with development and give clear guidance. Unfortunately though some are passive agressive /opaque and lack the ability to coach and provide development opportunities for their employees. Flexbile work arrangements/part time can work sometimes with managers who are skilled at ensuring workloads are appropriate for the time. The flex schedule will slow your career progression, not that there is much room anyway, and unless you are vigilant you may end up working more time than you get paid for.
