Pros
The one good thing about Aerotek is that they have a great training program. They really get to show you how to be a good recruiter and break it down meticulously. When you work at Aerotek for at least six months, you won't have trouble recruiting for any other company. They are hands on and really take people with ZERO experience and turn them into seasoned recruiters. This is the one thing that helped me to get to where I am now because Aerotek is one of those staffing firms in the industry that is known for their training.
Cons
These are the REAL issues with Aerotek that everyone needs to know. I will state that if it wasn't for my experience here I wouldn't have gotten where I am now. 1. If you are looking for remotely ANY work-life balance do not work here because you will just be miserable. I worked in the Piscataway, NJ office and we had to work from 7:30am to 6pm every day and of course if you left early this raised eyebrows. That's 50+ plus hours per week on a low salary. People would say you have to work hard to be successful which I agree with, but there are plenty of other jobs where you can make way more money and work the same hours. This doesn't include getting text/calls on your day offs from your account manager about contractors on your payroll. This is one of the reasons turnover in this company is so high. If you work here get used to seeing 5+ people leaving in a span of a month or two. 2. BEWARE of the culture. Our office was fun at times with the happy hours and events but that fades quickly the longer you work here. People think that when you're young that it's going to be great to work with other young people but this isn't always the case. I had recently graduated a month before I took this job and initially I thought it would be great. However, the amount of cattiness and unprofessionalism was pervasive in the Piscataway office. I was an office filled with entitled people who believed that they knew everything because they knew the Aerotek "culture". This was when I realized I needed to be around real professionals with actual industry experience and not around an environment that still reminded me of college. 3. Your success not only depends on how hard you work but also which account manager to you have. I was very lucky to have an account manager who have some years of experience and knew how to MANAGE others. I can't say that for other account managers within the office who literally would belittle other recruiters. There was one account manager in the Piscataway office who would bully everyone in the office and how this was acceptable or how he never got fired I will never know. The company promotes recruiters who have done well to account manager positions but does NOT teach them how to manage people. They only care about the money they are bringing in. This is a big problem in my eyes because this creates a bad experience for recruiters and they leave the company to find real professionals to work under. I knew of one recruiter in my office who had to switch account managers because her original account manager was oblivious on how to manage her. 4. The compensation for recruiters is extremely low. In NJ the recruiters get $41k base salary and I assume it's lower in other states such as Florida because I was in the tristate area. Don't get me wrong, this is a decent amount for a recent college grad, but the amount of work you put in does not match the pay you make. This is ESPECIALLY true when you start getting "commission" as a recruiter which isn't that much even you when you work hard. You really start making money when you become an account manager because the commission structure is more favorable. So the recruiters are expected to recruit and make about 40-50 calls every day, take their contractors out to lunch and manage them, develop leads to bring in new business (which should be the account managers job), and display leadership in the office. When all this is done and the recruiter brings in business the account manager will still see the better end of the compensation because their commission structure is better. When they say you can “easily” make six figures here they don’t mean as a recruiter. 5. There is a disturbing lack of diversity in the company. I’m well aware that not every company is the most diverse but Aerotek has crashed and burned in this area especially because they acknowledge it and try to get better. Since I left I was made aware that the Piscataway office hired 10 new people and only one was a minority. It’s a complete shame. Another thing is that Aerotek always promotes from within which is a great thing except the growth in this company is extremely narrow. You’re only two options as a recruiter is to become an ARM (Account Recruiting Manager) or an Account Manager. If you don’t want to do those things you are wasting your time within the company. My advice would be to get the experience you need and move on to a corporate recruiting job with less stress. 6. I may mentioned this already but the lack of professionalism is TERRIBLE. Half the things that went on inside the Piscataway office would have been reported to Human Resources in other companies and people would have been fired. I’m talking racial jokes, bullying, belittling people for no reason. One account manager in that office took an inappropriate picture of a female employee and shared it on social media! He only got suspended and is still working there. This is when I really lost faith in the company. When I left the company I was supposed to contact them for an exit interview and never heard back from HR when I did. I even spoke to an internal recruiter who redirected to another person in HR and they never got back to me. I reached out 4 time! The most unprofessional experience I have ever had with a company because they didn’t care to even give me an exit interview. This was long needed to be said. Everyone who just puts up positive reviews on here are being real with people. I try to be as fair as possible. Aerotek provided good experience for me in regards to understanding the industry I was in a developing some nice skills. I also met some great people but not all people at this company are bad. I would steer clear however from this company and try hard to get an internal recruiter job for an actual company and do without the stress here. I’m probably going to get a bogus response from Aerotek on Glassdoor based on my review.
