When you come to Korn Ferry, especially in Junior roles, you are fed endless promises about the opportunities you'll have to work across all aspects of the company, the mentorship and development opportunities you'll have, and the innovation of the company.
Then, when you try to actually do any of those things, you'll be shot down and even punished for trying. You'll be gaslit into thinking you aren't capable or you made a mistake, and you'll be told "in a few months" for years at a time, but that will never come even when there are senior partners looking out for you. The office administration in New York in particular are always looking to keep people calm and happy, but they're just trying to string things along until you give up or leave. They'll switch your assignments and tell you it's temporary, and after 8 months there will still be nothing. The partners are compensated in a way that makes collaboration and innovation worse for them financially, so they put no effort into trying anything new.
The partners either rely entirely on the Associates/junior staff to do every aspect of the search, or they treat them like additional administrators - there is no in between. Either way, everyone is overloaded because of inefficiencies. It took the company 10 years to institute a resume parsing software - which they only actually did in 2020.
The lack of diversity is absolutely painful, and if you didn't go to the right schools and go on the right skiing vacations and eat at the right michelin star restaurants, nobody will bother with you so it weeds out all but a certain group. This is worse after the layoffs during Covid.
There is an absolutely toxic culture at the senior level with partners screaming at junior employees, making people cry, working them to the bone, sexually harassing them, and suffering no consequences. Even partners who have been formally reprimanded for this behavior multiple times remain on staff and get 7-figure bonuses.
They also forced junior and low-paid employees to take a 20% cut during the pandemic, and senior partners only took a 25% cut which is barely more.
Korn Ferry basically sells you a dream of a future where you will be successful, working on cutting edge projects and growing. They're just stringing you along until you give up, they will never follow through AND you won't get compensated for it.
