Pros
- A mediocre job is better than no job - If you’re lucky, you get your foot in the door for companies where you may not have been successful getting on their head programmes.
Cons
- Depending on where you train (good luck in Birmingham apparently) getting access to learning platforms is more of a task than it should be - they essentially don’t want to have to buy more licenses for people to have access. They’re clearly not invested in you unless you’re placed - Even when you’re placed it can be hard to get in contact with them - this is slightly better now that the pandemic has forced them to pull their socks up. - Salary for a graduate is not competitive - they charge the business double what you take home and claim that it’s because of their initial training investment of £20K - to suggest that 8 -12 weeks training on the business course is worth £20k is laughable and a form of exploitation. Think about how much 3 years at uni costs. Joke. - If you leave a day before your 2 year contract you’re still liable to pay the £20k even though they suggest you’re paying it off in time while on client site at the assessment centre. Unless the employee didn’t mean to say that but again an indication of the companies complete incompetence - God forbid you go through a tough time - it took months for a colleague to get help from HR when their mental health was in jeopardy. Compassionate leave is essentially unpaid - you get dropped to base salary on compassionate leave, so if you pay rent, you essentially cannot afford to grieve. I believe you only get 5 sick days before you get dropped to base salary so you can’t afford to be really ill - this is a form of elitism even though they claim to be equal opportunity...etc - Slow to react to BLM, had one call and from what I know there’s not been much in terms of action since. They can get away with saying they treat women, ethnic minorities and people from lower social economic backgrounds equally because it’s true they pay everyone a poor amount and treat everyone with the same level of apathy - They claim that 3rd year pay is great because it’s such a jump from 2nd year pay but they charge the client a lot more for your service which can make you undesirable especially when other companies are generally providing better consultants. KPMG, CapGemini, McKinsey - please try to apply to these first they actually care about training and upskilling their workforce and actually touch base with their employees when they’re on client site. They only speak to you when your contract with the client is coming to an end - I know of colleagues who were able to negotiate their third year salary, I know of others who asked and were told it was Jon negotiable. In these two instances there’s the male colleague was able to get more money - interesting. A third year contract is a new contract not a promotion. With all new jobs you are able to negotiate your salary - The pension they contribute is from your base salary - the absolute bare minimum required which is awful - 20 holiday days - I think that’s the absolute bare minimum required by UK government. 3 of them are already allocated around the Christmas period unless you get sign off from your manager - this isn’t very inclusive of people who don’t celebrate Christmas and would be happy to work in that period