Pros
AppleOne offers a competitive salary and benefit plan. They are a national company as well as offices in Canada, so finding a local office is convenient.
Cons
The in-house staff including account executives, branch managers, assistant branch managers, and recruiting assistants are told exactly how to run their desk and their day. It's the most micro-managed company I have ever worked for. Your day is organized for you to the extent that you are told what to do and how to do it for each hour of the day. This may work out ok for very junior level account executives or recruiters who are learning the business, but anyone who has worked in the staffing industry for over a year will be very uncomfortable. They also spend way too much time on training. A lot of traning may sound like a positive, but for those who have been in the industry for a while, will not like having a trainer sit in on their sales calls and interviews. They will try to change the style that works best for you, and in the long-run you could feel a huge loss in your confidence and creativity. You are also thrown in a "bull pen" type setting with no privacy and the pleasure of hearing every conversation another sales person or recruiter has with a prospective Client. Regional Managers will be present from time to time sitting in the "bull pen" to critique all of your conversations. Unfortunately, they will not pull you aside to critique you, but will do so in front of all of your peers. Reaching a peformance standard is expected by any staffing company. However, the performance standards are not altered relative to what is happening in the economy. The extra pressure placed on you during these times includes disciplinary action up to and including termination. As an Account Executive you are required to conduct approxiamately 15 interviews at a minimum each week with job seekers. However, it doesn't matter to AppleOne if you are really able to find that candidate a job. AppleOne cares more about what you can find out from the job seeker to increase business for AppleOne. Much of your interview time is to be used to "pump" the candidate for information. You are to "use" that candidate's job and interview history to increase your potential Client file. Many job seekers complain by phone and through various job forums that AppleOne did not care about getting them a job, only about finding out where they are interviewing so they can call that company for business. On more than one occassion, I was forced to call a company one of my candidates' was interviewing with on their own and try to "take that business" eventually ending that job seeker's candidacy for that position. Unless you thrive on being micro-managed, this is an extremely difficult environment to work in.
