They sell the Research positions as some amazing, profound career choice where you are going to be meeting and greeting the movers and shakers of commercial real estate. That cannot be further from the truth. Do NOT listen to their lies in the interview process. First, I will give you cons of Research and below that just about the Company itself.
Research is terrible. Don't do it. Your whole world will be ran by metrics that make no sense. For instance, how many phone calls did you have in one day that lasted 90+ seconds ... yes, you actually have that over your head. Not the quality of data ... you also have to read branding statements on every call. No matter if they are a new client (where I guess it could make sense) or if they have been a client for 8 years. YOU will be working in a call center. Don't believe anything else they tell you. You went to college for 4 years and paid a bunch of money just to work at a call center. Congrats. Oh - and if you do get promoted, even to Senior Research Associate, you will just continue to do the same tasks as you did the years before that promotion. It is such a huge waste of time and effort. Unless you absolutely love the corporate dance of brown-nosing and drinking the koolaid, then you will hate your time here.
You can absolutely tell that Baby Boomers are running the company based off a lot of current actions by management. Speaking of management, the managers you will have in Research are terrible - for the most part. If you remember the gossip in high school, then imagine that x7128378. Managers will railroad you depending on if you are a "performer" or not. Ugh -- just typing this out makes me wish that either a war will break out so I can get drafted and get away from CoStar or that I get another job -- it's not for the lack of trying. It's just that if you want to be in Commercial Real Estate, CoStar Group is a huge bruise on your resume and be prepared to toe the grey area in your interviews where you don't bash your current employer but also have to bash them because the person that is interviewing you is bashing them.
You can read a ton of reviews (and I suggest that you do) and see that the majority of them are all negative. The positive reviews you see, I would say the bulk of them are fake. You can look at the trends on Glassdoor and see the huge uptick ... a year ago Andy Florance had like a 30% approval rate, and now it's above 50%. Instead of fixing the culture and treating their employees with dignity, they decided to just have people write fake positive reviews. That is CoStar Group in a nutshell - instead of just fixing the issue directly, they find workarounds to where they can continue without having to actually change anything or spend money.
I have met people in several different departments from in all div isions that work is sales, research, marketing, IT, etc... I have rarely met anyone that enjoys working for CoStar Group. Those that I work with and run into -- they cannot wait until another opportunity comes along to get away.
Clients hate CoStar Group. We increased our pricing 200-400% over the past year or two -- with a huge increase when our main ex-competitor, Xceligent. Then they increased quotas for their sales teams across the board. Andy also decided to send out a huge, I don't know what you would call it... um ... marketing materials where the only point of them was to show existing clients that we beat Xceligent... from the brokers and whatnot I have contacted it, they thought (along with most employees of CoStar) found tacky
