AlphaSights reviews

3.4

54% would recommend to a friend

(2,005 total reviews)
avatar

Max Cartellieri

78% approve of CEO

65% positive business outlook

AlphaSights has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 2,005 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The AlphaSights employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Management & Consulting industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

2K reviews
1.0
Dec 5, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The office is pretty nice with a lot of great snacks, some breakfast/fruit, and it’s in a very convenient location on Madison Ave. The company has a big budget for social events, so frequently doing fun team events, taking clients out to fancy dinners, or massive summer/holiday party. Nearly everyone is a fresh or recent grad so you’ll make friends easily. Subsidized lunches, benefits are pretty good with corporate gym discounts at Equinox, ClassPass, Crunch.

Cons

The Job: Incredibly monotonous and you learn nothing. 50% of your day consists of rescheduling phone calls between the client and expert, just for the client to eventually cancel the whole project or for the expert to yell at you over the phone. 20% goes towards writing unnecessarily long emails that go straight to these investment/consulting clients’ inbox archive. 30% of your time will be wasted on LinkedIn cold connecting/messaging with people, sending out aggressive reminder nudge emails to experts who clearly don’t want to consult, and waiting for the poorly designed AlphaSights portal to load. You will get rude responses from people (which is justified) and be forced to continue interacting with them to hit your quota of sourcing enough people for the project. There are so many easy ways that the job could be a lot more efficient if we just automated things like email taps or sending out mass emails. You will get bored really quickly, because it’s the same routine every day. You juggle 10-15 projects at once and it’s frustrating to see how poorly the clients treat you. They see AlphaSights as a disposable ENS among many other services, and often times they don’t reply to us for weeks or treat us like robots. There’s very little room for growth, you don’t learn anything that you can take to other jobs. Sure, once you get a little older you start working with clients and making google presentations inputting very basic data, but that’s the extent of any hard skills you’ll learn. It’s not a consulting job, it’s not market research, it’s at the core a glorified secretary job to help bankers/PE associates/consultants who do the actual work. Hiring: This company specifically hires young, easily manipulated fresh grads who have either played college sports, were in greek life, or are generally attractive females to lure in the experts (most of whom are usually male). Cant even begin to explain how many times these young females have to be hit on by men as part of their professional work. It’s a horrible tactic given that many candidates who actually do want the job are turned away because they don’t fit AlphaSights’ niche criteria. If you’re smart and want to do well in life, you won’t like this job. Training: None if the skills learned during this job can be transferable anywhere else. PD created hours and hours of lessons and programs to teach us the basic skills of how to talk to someone on the phone or write an email. Associates aren’t allowed to send their own client emails until 7+ months on the job, and this is written off as being very “typical” for all entry level positions at any job. Meanwhile you will see your peers at other companies with *their* entry level jobs taking on a lot more responsibility. Frankly, a lot of your peers will actually be the clients. This job doesn’t require a degree, it’s a job that anybody could do fairly easily as it doesn’t revolve around critical thinking. It’s nice that all associates are paired up with a trainer, but the company has an intense micromanagement issue. You can barely take a break for lunch, you’ll get questioned for taking 30min of personal time on your calendar, and overall your time is not respected. Don’t work here if you’re a self starter and have a lot of creative ideas. All associates start at the same place with same pay, there’s no room for advancement based on your actual skill or hard work. Salary, Hours, and Culture: Standard office hours are 8am-6pm, working hybrid M-W in office. There’s a toxic mindset that people who come at 8:01am or leave at 5:45pm will be frowned upon, and people who stay until 7:30-8pm are rewarded. People who work late nights or weekends are also rewarded for doing so, even when it was completely unnecessary. You’ll likely be working a 55-60 hour week for a barely livable wage. There will be projects or emails to deal with on Saturday night, and if you decline to take work in off-hours you’ll get called out. The base salary is 60k and the commission you get is all or nothing, and strongly depends on which team you get placed on with which clients. They say top performers can easily make 90k, and while some people might, it’s not whether you’re a top performer. The cards are not in your hands, it just all depends on the kind of client you have, what month it is, how many people are on your team, etc. Most people struggle with hitting their benchmark credits, and receive $0 in bonus commission for the month. They make it seem like it’s easy to hit the quotas when it’s not. The all-or-nothing model is ridiculous and really hurts the associate morale. You could be working your a** off all month at 60hrs and still not meet the quota. If you don’t like the idea of having a quota riding on your back every month and needing to be ultra competitive with your coworkers, this isn’t the place for you. It’s a very competitive environment. I would suggest a team based quota or profit sharing model instead.

1.0
May 9, 2015

Vacuum salesman, or Analyst?

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Note: Glassdoor reviews are required to be written by Analysts during their first month on the job, which heavily skews the ratings in favor of the company. Your first month is not nearly as indicative of your entire experience at AlphaSights. Aside from that, there are fun, ambitious, and bright people currently working here. The office is quite social as the company is fairly young in age, and there are many social events that take place in and out of the office. Can be a very "college 2.0" feel.

Cons

For good reason, there has been a mass exodus from AlphaSights in recent months. Employees are grossly dissatisfied with pay, management, hours, and the work itself. "Analyst" is a misnomer, as there is no analysis involved in this job. Employees are measured solely on the number of calls they sell and not on their overall contribution to the firm. As mentioned above, the majority of employees, including management, are in their 20s and lack significant experience in running a company. As a result, it is terribly mismanaged and unprofessional. Management is predatory towards entry level employees and ill prepared to deal with the rapid changes the firm must undergo. Overall dreadful place to work.

1.0
Nov 5, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

If you have a low GPA + want to get an easy back up offer + have no other choice, this is the place for you. If you join, here’s the game plan for 90% of people: Do 6-12 months here, grind it out, recruit on the side, eat all their free food, leech off the company in any way possible and find a new job ASAP. Be greedy. Be selfish. It’s the only way to survive or to be OK. They will attempt to rob you of your happiness and your career. Stay strong and stay focused on the goal. Get in. Get out.

Cons

The following metrics are based off information from October 1st, 2023: The 30 most recent Highest Reviews: Average Word Count: 41 words per comment Median Word Count: 15 words per comment Average Like Count: 1 likes per comment Median Like Count: 0 likes per comment The 30 most recent Lowest Reviews: Average Word Count: 293 words per comment Median Word Count: 264 words per comment Average Like Count: 11 likes per comment Median Like Count: 8 likes per comment I’ve been told by multiple former associates that upper management (Manager 1/2/3s) ghost-write fake positive reviews. Just looking at the stats + the reviews themselves, the evidence seems to be pointing that way as well. There’s a clear trend of generic/hastily written reviews for 5 stars and then absolutely down right scathing novels (LOL) for the 1 star reviews. Also, the responses from HR are down right pathetic and don’t address any of the issues directly (or they try to cite some cherry picked metric to justify how they treat associates).

Viewing 19 - 21 of 2,005 Reviews

Glassdoor has 2,468 AlphaSights reviews submitted anonymously by AlphaSights employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if AlphaSights is right for you.