Great place to grow and develop personally, although directionally challenged at the leadership level. - Anonymous employee Mars Employee Review

3.0
Mar 6, 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great for personal development and role development. Worked with a lot of people who are energetic and passionate about what they do. Mars touts their 5 principles and sometimes follows them. Work life balance is important, but can lead to lackadaisical attitude toward project completion.

Cons

There is a push to always be positive, although your thoughts are "always welcome". This includes an annual focus on Gallup engagement survey. Although encouraged to express your opinion you must make sure to be a team player as it is ambiguous as to how this will affect your position and team in the big picture. Mars tends to make major restructures called "revitalizations" about every other year and due to the fact that the company must maintain the view of non-discrimination, they'll separate with anyone regardless of performance. Goals are strictly bottom line to the corporate OGSM and they will sacrifice success at field level and the financial betterment of the field sales team to ensure that the corporate leadership makes it bonus. Be prepared to work for your salary and not much more. Took sales driven brands and made them marketing driven brands to great detriment of wonderful brands. Most of the marketing personnel were barely out of grad school with little real world experience and made changes to the brands without understanding the market, industry, and legacy of the brands themselves which led to huge declines in brand awareness, customer satisfaction, and retail sell through. They created confusing messaging and instead of becoming the leader of the industry as they could have, they became the "safe" brand which follows the leader many months/years behind innovation and continues to lose share.

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3.0
Jan 2, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Company car (fuel card, insurance, etc) - Good benefits - Great brand exposure/understanding of CPG sales at the retail level - Annual sales meeting is fun, but exhausting - Simple job

Cons

- Micromanaged by leadership (EVERYTHING is tracked) - Extremely repetitive work (not much freedom in creating your schedule, same tasks over and over, etc.) - Dealing with retail management. If you don't have respectful store managers, good luck. A lot of your KPI's are out of your control and your experience relies on your store. - As DOZENS of other people have said, this is a merchandising job - not sales. You are responsible for placing product on the sales floor after consulting with the store (basically asking management who only views you as free manual labor). There is no commission/incentive for producing positive results. - SEASONS: this is the reason why you have this job if you're working with the Walmart channel. You have unrealistic expectations set from leadership to pack out hundreds of heavy cases of candy each holiday season after begging store management for space to place it. Most of the stores' back rooms are a complete mess and a lot of your product is inaccessible. Long days are expected with no additional pay. - Work/life balance: It is frowned upon to work the bare minimum of 40 hours/week. Your stores get backed up while you're on PTO. Overall: an okay role This isn't a bad job by any means, you just need to know what the role entails before taking this job. You need to relocate for any future opportunities within the company.

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Mars Response
5mo
Thank you for taking the time to write your review. We’re sorry to hear your experience with us has not been positive. We aim to support our Associates in every way throughout their time with us and are committed to their wellbeing and development. Please reach out to the independent, confidential team at ombudsman@effem.com, and we look forward to discussing this further.
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