General Mills reviews

- If you are like me and love trends and being on the forefront of innovation; then General Mills is not the place for you. Too slow to innovate. Too much focus on mass market consumer vs. up and coming niche opportunities. Example: GMI totally missed the ball on Greek yogurt. They are currently "missing the ball" on many other nutrition opportunity areas. - Way to much focus on managing up, self promotion, "who you know", rather than on focusing on high quality work. To move up and be in good standing you have to set coffee time with the movers and shakers within the organization. That means that the real work needs to get done after hours. In the same light, too much focus on extracurriculars that do not add value to the business but add time and stress to employees day to day. - Work Life balance can go both ways. Depends on what function you are in and who your manager is . Marketers work late into evenings and on weekends. Some bosses send Friday evening requests for Monday am deliverables. I did have other managers who would respect time after 5:00pm and during weekend. But there are more managers of the former than later style. - Diversity is a myth. Though the company does focus and cater to hiring minorities, these are expected to fit a personality mold that is very Minnesotan. Communication styles of other cultures, which tends to be passionate and verbose get "corrected" with main point style that may seem un-natural to the culture. If you don't master the style and culture you are out. General Mills then, is not a diverse company. It seems like everybody is a cookie cutter image of one another. I would often refer to is as Stepford Wives Syndrome. - Minnesota Nice - conversations between managers and employees are often sugar coated. The language that General Mills uses to communicate with employees when it comes to performance is very political. Managers communicating low performance can state it in a very positive light. You need to know how to translate the language or better yet, the company needs to be more honest and direct with employees.

Marketing as a whole was a horrific dog-eat-dog environment where it was all about politics and little about merits. Depending on the team you’re with, you will get the rug ripped out from under you, you will get thrown under the bus, and you will even be threatened with your job if you don’t groupthink like the high school clique environment expects you to. And the sad part is I know I wasn’t alone. You will be made to question your own self worth, and you may end up waking up with daily nightmares about how your manager is going to traumatize you next. Severe lack of diversity in any form. White, straight, cismale is the name of the success game here. If you’re a woman, you’re probably pregnant or just had a kid and if you can’t engage in conversations related to babies, husbands, and houses, you’re in the out group.