- Career Job Advancement - If you do not listen to anything I say on this review, please at least read this bullet point. You will eventually hate your life as a recruiter, and look else where. Maybe you have spent about 1 year recruiting, and cannot take it anymore so you decide to look. Your options will be as followed; 1)Another recruiter role - this is a worm hole and you will end up a lifetime recruiter 2)An entry level inside sales role. Do yourself the favor you "soon to be college grad", start with the entry level inside sales role, and do not go to Aerotek, you just saved yourself 1 year of job advancement. Now say that you did well in recruiting and were able to navigate the Aerotek politics and now you find yourself in a Account Manager Role (This is a lot harder than Aerotek will make it sound in the interview process). Once you realize it is time to move on from there, you will struggle trying to explain to the companies you are interviewing with what exactly you sold to give yourself enough experience to go into a B2B sales role. They will eventually hire you because Aerotek gave you enough business acumen, and you are now probably 24-25 years old which is a prime demographic.
- 10-12 hour days.
- Redzone....You spend 2 hours each day standing around the white board discussing what everyone is working on. Its a utter waste of time. This is a pillar of Aerotek's core, so they will never remove it but if they did, the bullet point above would only say 8-10 hours a day, and would no longer be a "con".
- Micro Management - As a recruiter be ready to spend even more time in conversations about what you are working on with your account manager, your practice lead, and even your DBO. You probably could have filled the position you are working on in the time it took for these pointless conversations. As an account manager, things wont change, you will be in even more pointless conversations about how you are managing your recruiters, and how you are finding business.
- Feedback - Feedback in a necessity for any business, Aerotek has this right. However, the feedback here is used for "tough conversations" that the person delivering the feedback to get ahead. In interviews to move up, the question will often arise; "Tell me about a tough conversation you had recently." This means people are scrapping for examples and trying to find feedback to give to others that no longer comes from a good place, it is only for ones self-gain.
- Self-Entitlement - Wow this is the definition of Aerotek employees. They think that this company is the best thing since sliced bread. Managers will talk down to you and act like they are the sales leaders of tomorrow, when really, those who have worked at Aerotek for over 5 years would have trouble landing a strategic sales role after Aerotek because their industry experience is so much different that B2B sales. Leaders will make it seem like there is no better company out there. Keep in mind when you are selling Aerotek's solutions, you are not even dealing with real executive decision makers, you are probably dealing with a night shift manager looking for some call center reps, or some guy in a factory ripping a cig in your meeting looking for someone to drive a forklift. Its not that complex, you are not solving their real business needs. You can get better experience selling with an entry level inside sales role.
In summary: Aerotek will do a great job on getting you to buy-in however, that will fade after a few months. They will make it seem like you cannot make this type of money any where else, which may be true for some of the non-college grads they hire, but definitely not for you. You are 22 years old now coming out of school, do not spend your prime years working these hours for this pay, you are not an investment banker making 200k.
