-After you've worked there for a few years, you'll realize Sevan is nothing more than a sophisticated owners-rep focused staffing agency with a few technical offerings layered on top. Clients pay Sevan to fill roles that they do not want to carry on their own books due to the volatility of the market.
-The success of the fiscal year is largely determined by 3-4 core clients; all of the new programs in the world wont' make up for the performance of these clients. The company is at risk when these clients hold on to their capital instead of deploying to programs that are staffed by Sevan.
- Ask about this years turnover rate, and how many furloughs they've had. Ask about opportunities to cross train and move from one team to the next. Leadership would rather hire someone new than cross train a current team-member even if they're able to get approval from the client.
-If you get a job at Sevan, you will absolutely learn a lot and develop as a professional, but always understand that as soon as the contract is done, you will be as well. There is little to no internal team movement because of resume and experience requirements, regardless of the aptitude of the team-member to learn on the job. For large accounts, the client has a say in who Sevan puts on the programs, and the client always wins. Again, staffing agency. Ask how they had a new hire conference (LinkedIn post) the same week that long-standing Sevan employees, some of which had been at Sevan since it started, were writing their farewells due to an "unforseen restructure". It's a business, and you should treat yourself as part of the transaction. No matter what they say, they don't consider you family.
-If you feel like backlog is drying up and you're slowly becoming less busy, it's probably a good time to start sprucing up your resume. Very rarely is someone pulled from furlough back onto full time work. You will be treated with absolute respect while you're an employee, but everything beyond that is the bare minimum. Do what's right by you always.
-If you never expect any compensation increases or bonuses and only count on getting your base salary, you will never be disappointed or disgruntled.
-CEO has been checked out for a while; they hired an individual (who is no longer employed) that somehow killed spirit and culture while using the company as a springboard to his next endeavor. Now the company is mostly ran by the old CFO. CEO is a figurehead.
-They have one constant in the Sales department; other than that OG, that department has completely turned over at least three times in the last five years. They hire sales staff with little to no AEC sales experience to work there because again, the client treats the services as a professional service or commodity. And they don't sell all service lines because of the incentive structure. Lots of opportunity to fix here.
-Check out their leadership page; lots of flashy hires that look awesome in a LinkedIn post, but don't seem to have amounted to much in the way of performance of the company. These hires have been wildly successful at other companies, but have no need to work hard here. They have their success and wealth; this is just an easy paycheck because they're not hungry. Great people, but just no incentive to grind.
