Pros
The office is located in a prime, central location in Glasgow city centre. There is also free tea/coffee and fresh fruit is delivered twice weekly. The researchers are all great and the portfolio managers I have had have been both supportive and encouraging. The learning and development team are excellent and you gain a strong insight into commercial real estate.
Cons
Make yourself comfortable folks cause this may take a while. CoStar preach that they are not a call centre almost daily. I actually think upper management are hypnotised prior to joining to say that it isn't all about the calls. Last month an absolutely atrocious call target of 20 ninety second calls was enforced and these have to be achieved DAILY. On top of this production (data entry) has to also be completed. Now I believe calls to agents have to be done so information can be captured, but 20 a day? That just takes the biscuit. This place IS A CALL CENTRE and the researchers are forced to spend the entire day scratching around for anyone to call just to keep themselves out of the firing line because nothing else matters but CALLS. Still don't think it is a call centre? Then grab a drink folks. Recently we now have these cheesy American branding scripts which have to be read verbatim to agents/PAs or whoever we are lucky to have on the phone no matter how many times we have spoken to them in the past. It is frankly embarrassing. Due to the time spent trying to make 20 calls a day there is a massive backlog of production sitting in limbo which is not on our system. Subscribers and non subscribers use CoStar to give their listings the exposure they require and they aren't going to be pleased when they see all these lovely reviews stating their researchers are too busy calling tenants just to make their call target. The procedures and portfolios constantly change so if you get a nice portfolio full of friendly agents don't get used to it! At present the amount of staff off sick is resounding. Many experienced researchers have put their notice in and many are looking to leave because the place is so awful. You feel the tension the moment you walk in the door.
