Pros
-Good Locations: The offices are in great locations whether it be in LA, Boston, NY, etc. -Office Space: The offices worldwide are getting redone to new "collaborative working space", which essentially means no assigned desks. Also in-house barista. -Colleagues: Colleagues are generally fun and interesting. -Some good managers: There are some very good managers that are a pleasure to work with, and really encourage one to grow as a professional. Definitely not all of them. -Flexibility: You can take as much vacation or sick time as long as you are meeting the goals and it is within a reasonable amount (10-20 days a year). -Expatriate Opportunities: Many colleagues have moved to international offices fairly easily at a relatively young age. If the opportunity is right, you have enough tenure (at least one year in the job) and your manager supports you then you could move to another team and office. Very few other companies can claim that if you have less than 15 years of experience. That said, there are almost no foreigners coming to work at the US offices of GLG, it seems it is mostly Americans going to foreign offices. -Networking Opportunities: Other than the obvious colleague networking opportunities, you should take advantage of the networking opportunities with clients and experts in a specific area of interest. All too often, experts are just seen as the product/inventory, when in reality there are few other jobs that especially with less than 5 years of work experience you would be able to speak or interact with them. I have met with a few experts in person and have created good bonds with them. I know I will be able to leverage them in the future. This doesn't come automatically as you will need to go out of your way to do it. -Transparency: The company is fairly transparent on how we are doing and where we are headed to. Will they tell you details? No, but enough info to get a sense if you are at a good place or should you start looking for other opportunities. -The "Research Term": To anyone criticizing the research term, it is obvious that you are facilitating **primary** research to clients. Are you creating 100 page decks based on your 2 week research of the pen market in France? No. You are finding the guy who worked in the pen industry for 30+ years, and can speak about it. The job is equivalent to being a librarian where you are helping someone find a book (in this case an expert) and helping them in their research. This should be obvious unless you haven't done your research on the company the industry, and the day to day responsibilities.
Cons
-The work itself: The work itself can be very monotonous IF you let it be. If you get a request and only do the minimum keyword searching without at least trying to understand why your client is potentially even interesting in this, then the work is incredibly boring. You can eventually become a "thought partner" to your client, but it isn't done overnight as it really takes time and trust so that you are eventually seen more than a keyword searcher by your client. It is also hard to become a thought partner if you are generalist i.e. looking at the fertilizer industry in the morning, then looking at hairstyle products projects in the afternoon, and then looking at airline maintenance in the evening. However, there are people in research and sales that are certainly seen as thought partners by clients, similar to an equity research analyst. -Competitors: GLG started this space and is still the largest company in the space. However, at times it seems like a race to the bottom whereby it is all about which company can send experts faster to the client. The industry while growing is getting commoditized. Who can get a relevant expert faster and cheaper ? -Scalability: The services do not lend themselves well to scalability, but management certainly wants it to be scalable. This means that there is a trend towards becoming more of a glorified call center (if it wasn't already), so that employees are more flexible (i.e. generalists) and can take a higher volume of requests. -Exit Opportunities: Don't think you are going to exit to the buy side or sell side unless it is to an investor relations or sales role. You will not learn analysts skills here, but you should already know that if you are even interested in GLG. The exit opportunities are not obvious but in general people that leave go for a sales/account management role at companies (generally not in finance). -Long hours: Work/Life balance is encouraged in paper. However, if you really want to shine you'll be working long hours. Clients do not to have a 9 to 5 schedule. Your competitors could be working longer hours and delivering to clients.