Let me first start by saying that this is the first review I have ever written online. So no, I am not one of those crazy people who badly rate every product/company I ever come into contact with.
With that being said, if I could describe IG in one word it would be torture. They have everyone start as a recruiter and pay you as little as possible to work as many hours as legally allowed. But of course you're salary based not hourly so if you work 60 hours or 40 hours you're still paid the same, which is not a lot. Once you've been in that role for a couple of months they begin hounding you to get into sales. If you don't want to be in sales, and would prefer to stay recruiting, then they toss you to the side like last night's leftovers. You are hired to go into sales and the second you stray away from their plans for you, you become irrelevant.
Since IG is such a large company, with so many locations, there are many different levels of management. However, upper management holds every office, every recruiter, every account manager, etc across the country to the same standard. Meanwhile upper management doesn't even interact with the offices they manage, they yell at the guy below them, who yells at the guy below him and so on and so forth, until it eventually reaches the office leader. But the top dog doesn't know the culture, and the employees, and they way they learn, and how hard they truly are working. They refuse to acknowledge the fact that newer offices are not going to be as lucrative and successful as offices that have been around for 10+ years. It's common sense that selling in a new territory is much more difficult than selling in a territory where you already have strong relationships. But this is irrelevant to upper management. They are a metric based company and you better meet those metrics if you want to keep your job. If that means faking your productivity, then so be it. But that is a double edged sword. Because when 95% of your office is faking their metrics, then instead of taking a step back and saying "ok what are we doing wrong here?" they take their micromanaging to the extreme. This means spot checking every single person in the office along every single step of the process, to the point where you feel like a kindergarten student who can't be left alone for 2 minutes. And then since you are being checked on constantly, and reamed out if you're not meeting your metrics, you then sneakily fake your numbers in order to save face. It is a vicious endless cycle.
In the short amount of time that I was employed here I saw over 40 people either quit or be fired. One of this company's favorite mottos is "everyone is replaceable". If you don't drink their kool-aid and join into their need for constant belittlement, then you're pushed out the door. The longer you're there the nastier of a person you become. They teach you to be cutthroat, competitive, aggressive, and to push anyone aside that gets in your way. Even if they're your friends and/or colleagues. Time after time I saw people who were once good friends become near enemies over a territory, or a contract, or recruiting someone who they were already working with. After leaving IG (most of the time) those people realize it was the toxic environment that made them dislike one another, not each other's personalities.
They pride themselves in being the "most professional company" when in reality it is high school on steroids. Not even college, but high school. They aren't kidding when they say work hard, party harder. And if you're not into the "party scene" they harass you and make you feel guilty for not wanting to be intoxicated 7 days of the week. A couple times a year they fly you to their corporate location for a "sales conference" which is actually just an excuse to get severely intoxicated on the company's dime for three days. And if you're not one of the "popular people" you can forget about going. Instead you have to stay and work in the sweat shop while your colleagues are getting drunk at the hotel bar in their bathing suits. All this company cares about is money and partying. They don't even try to hide it.
To say they play favorites is an understatement. When promoted into sales your territory is based upon how much your boss likes you. If you're not teacher's pet, you can forget about getting a good territory and thus making money. They talk up about how much money you can make, but the people who are making the money are the ones who were handed projects that would become lucrative, because they were favorites. They coach you to work 60+ hours a week in the office and then also spend every waking moment outside of the office with your coworkers (at parties, happy hours, etc) and so IG thus becomes your life. And since you are spending so much time together, this breeds interoffice relationships (which supposedly is frowned upon but rather they just turn a blind eye to it) which also creates more favoritism.
If you're still reading my rant, please know that 98% of the "positive" posts on here are forced upon current employees by upper management to make them look better to the public. If you are a hard worker and you have any sort of self-dignity, do not work here. It changes who you are as a person, for the worse, and it is hard to find yourself again after being brain washed by their antics.
