This company is purposefully deceptive about many aspects of the role. If I had known the reality, I would've never taken it. Here are a few things you should know: 1 - They avoid the word 'sales' in recruiting, but you are effectively cold calling executives all day. You are expected to be rude and it is not possible to succeed in this job without being a bit unethical in your tactics and the degree to which you aggressively hunt people down. 2 - People are fired all the time. You will have no real job security in this role, and it's a constant stress because they make sure you know it. You can also be moved across teams and business units with less than a day's notice. The job is incredibly stressful for many reasons - this is a major contributor. 3 - Everything is metric-driven. Despite what they say in training, they make it challenging to succeed if you suffer an unexpected event that may temporarily affect your performance, such as a close family member's death or a serious health event (witnessed both amongst coworkers). Many of my former coworkers spent a shameful amount of time having to argue with HR and dealing with managers' attitudes in the wake of unexpected life tragedies. 4 - Managers are your own age and have no real management experience. They try to spin this as a positive ("look how fast you can gain career advancement"), but it's really a result of their inability to keep employees at the company. They almost entirely recruit new grads, so the managers have usually never worked anywhere but AlphaSights. Your experience as an associate is almost entirely in the hands of the manager you get randomly assigned. If they're bad at training or organization, you suffer the consequences and they suffer none. It was a common occurrence to hear people crying in the bathroom during the first few months due to the stress and attitude of managers. 5 - You will always be on call. In my interview process, I specifically asked about the working hours and was told 8am-6pm, with occasional longer-hours. The reality is that you are always expected to be available no matter the late hour. Many teams continue working far past 6 every day and expect all members to do the same. 6 - It is very hard to find a job after working here, unless you're interested in sales, recruiting, or business development. Those industries appreciate your skillset (aggressive outreach and cold calling), but no others do. This is a major reason many people stay and try to become managers, because then at least they can say they have management experience.
