Aquent reviews

Vitamin T is EXTREMELY metrics and numbers driven... as expected because it's a staffing agency, right? WRONG! Vitamin T tracks how many connects you make with contacts you call and how many orders you bring in per week. Most staffing companies care about your activity numbers. Though both of these are important metrics to track, realistically, the expectations are stupid. I don't have control over who answers the phone when I call... I can only control how many people I reach out to. I can call the same person 5 times and never get an answer, but I don't get credit for that because that's not what they're holding me accountable for. Again... STUPID. I get the cause and effect of it where one breeds the results of the other, but you should hold people accountable for metrics they actually can control. I also think it's stupid to track FTEs and not gross profit. Why are you so focused on how many hours and people are out working instead of being more worried about how much money they're bringing the company? Again... stupid. I got put on a performance plan for FOUR WEEKS because I wasn't hitting 50 connects and putting in 5 orders per week. Not only was the performance plan STUPID, but FOUR WEEKS? That's it? They should've just fired me then because it's not possible for any sales person in this organization to be able to hit certain metrics in such a short amount of time with no leadership or direction. To ask your manager to help introduce you to contacts and old connections they have in their network and to be told that there isn't any in a metro city is just absurd. What was my activity you ask? Well... EXTREMELY high since the expectations were extremely unrealistic. Yet, was I ever praised for making 500 calls in a week? Nope. Just condemned for NOT bringing in 5 orders and connecting with 50 people. Talk about undervalued. It's a revolving door around here for employees because of management expectations. I've never been in a company that held you accountable for metrics they weren't trying to help you reach. And let's not forget some other cons: Commission Structure is terrible, so if you're in a market that isn't doing well, you won't make any good money. Clique-y. It's all about friendships and relationships. Management will look out for you if you're their friend, but if you have no working or personal relationship with the manager, you can forget about them trying to help you. Privileges and incentives are given to friends of managers, not everyone else, so you can bet that you'll be promoted if you and the manager go out every Friday over the person who is actually the TOP performer on the team. Management will make up lies about you in WRITING and send them to HR. Managers who are in management shouldn't be. A lot of them use their own biased in the job that not only leads to neglect of employees, but a lack of investment in their growth. Company is more focused on the quantity of EVERYTHING than the quality. You will have meetings everyday talking about the same things. Your manager will ask what orders are coming in for that DAY, and you better have an answer ready. And if you don't have any to mention, he/she won't provide any suggestions or interject themselves in the process to help you hit your goals. Tenure is more important than ability, skills and production. If you're new and not producing, you'll be fired before the person who's been there for 5 years and hasn't produced. And they'll put the worst possible people in management and senior positions to train and then ask questions as to why the market isn't performing. Well... your management choice has a lot to do with that, Vitamin T. Most of the managers and senior level folks in the company input things in the system for the sake of having a number calculated, but won't ACTUALLY have done the work. I have friends who still work for Vitamin T who have so many complaints about the managers and the expectations. My advice... if you're in sales and looking to be successful, Vitamin T isn't the place. Trust me.

I implore anyone looking to work at any of the West Coas offices to reconsider - or at least do your due diligence so you know what you are getting into. If you are early in your career...you may be able to learn something from Aquent and then apply your learnings to a better company; if you are more experienced, you may find this environment childish, uninspiring and frustrating. This review is based on my personal observations and experiences, as well as what I heard first-hand from colleagues. Aquent is a big company. Working on the West Coast was awful. Two of my coworkers described the environment akin to "Mean Girls" - an analogy I completely agree with. I regularly questioned management's trustworthiness and even had confidential employee-employer conversations shared with other non-management employees. One of my colleagues who is also no longer at Aquent had a similar problem. Turnover is rampant. The ENTIRE office (with one exception) turned over TWICE in the time I was there. There were incidences I witnessed and heard about where employees didn't make their numbers and we're let go - even if the circumstances were no fault of the employee. I witnessed what some saw as a "habit" of thinking they needed more people and then hiring, but subsequently letting them go because the business wasn't there. I heard complaints about the "my way or the highway" philosophy - a behavior I witnessed numerous times. There was at least one instance where someone went into the office for their first day and never went back. Entrepreneurial? This is something that many people I encountered at Aquent simply laughed at. There is a lot of talk about being "entrepreneurial" which gets some interviewees/new hires excited (me included!). That excitement seemed to dissipate however as "entrepreneurialism" gave way to arts & crafts-like "campaigns", such as painted orange rocks delivered to clients to illustrate a "rock solid relationship". Not to mention the very typical Starbucks Gift Card. Untrustworthy? I witnessed numerous situations where leaders were friendly to someone's face, then talked poorly about them behind their backs. Other colleagues witnessed the same two-faced behavior. I witnessed leaders giving specific direction to an employee and then reprimanding that employee (in public) for following her direction when a problem arose. This is common - they tend to "remember" their own versions of events that do not align with other peoples' accounts of the events. I also witnessed inconsistent standards - it seemed like some people were rewarded/reprimanded and others were not - even when they performed the same way. Some of the people i worked with regarded this as favoritism. No Leadership Skills. From a leadership perspective, I have no faith in Aquent. They may be good at "keeping the trains on schedule" but they have no leadership competencies. This is evidenced by their quarterly State of the Business video conferences - sure, they know the revenue and profit numbers, but try getting an answer about how they determined the forecasted numbers or information on thoughts about the industry as a whole. When I would ask what was happening in our clients' industries that could affect staffing, they could not give me an insightful answer. When leaders came back from a Leadership meeting at corporate headquarters, they would tout the benefits of some hot new initiative. They knew all the buzz words but when anyone asked questions about how the hot new initiative ties into the industry, business world, our clients, etc., they had no clue. I began to question the leaders' business savvy. This is certainly not a comprehensive list of my personal experiences and observations, and experiences shared with me by other Aquent employees. Hopefully, there is enough here in my review as well as other reviews to help you make an informed decision about whether you want to work for this company.