Pros
There are some great colleagues in the firm an you will get exposure to large multinational clients that engage with Korn Ferry across a very wide range of products. There's no other search and advisory firm that have this level of integrated offering that can be provided at scale. The remuneration is strong.
Cons
Culture is next to non-existent. The leadership are very poor and all have their own, narrow agendas. Every decision is driven by the US HQ leadership and there's no real decision-making ownership by EMEA or country leaders. They are effectively in ambassadorial roles. That's not to say they're not very nice people who may be doing their best. The raw leadership capability just isn't there and the meritocratic ethos that Gary drives in the firm guides the natural behaviours toward purely financial goals, to the detriment of good leadership and culture development. There's zero clarity as to how bonus is calculated and it never has a direct correlation on performance. You could have two equal years and even a better year than the previous one and yet have a lower bonus payment. Overall, no transparency on bonus, it's simply decided by one man in the US that you'll rarely communicate with. The turnover of staff at all levels is really incredible, I've never seen anything like it. Often you'll reach out to a colleague and simply receive a reply to say they've left the firm with no announcements, even if they are actively engaged with a client. People are simply disposable and decisions are largely made from a spreadsheet. Advice to anyone joining is to solely focus on sales and your contribution to sales. This is the only metric of success in this firm. There is no value in good quality delivery to the client, outside of making more sales with them. The firm itself doesn't care. They only look at the numbers on salesforce.