CoStar Group reviews

I have been thinking about writing this review for a while. Now I decided to write it because it has been in my heart to do so and I want to be heard. A couple of months ago, I decided to leave my job of 2 years for Costar as a Tenant Research Associate I. I was very successful at my last job but looking to have more opportunities to grow. I was very excited to start a great career in a Fortune 500 company! The plus side was the beautiful scenery of downtown Richmond. I began training for my position. For new hires, the first 2 weeks are in a classroom where you learn the introduction of Commercial Real Estate and the last 2 weeks are in nesting. The first two weeks were great and I learned a lot. We even presented a Presentation for management in our department and I met wonderful people there. The last two weeks, it slowly went down hill. A couple of days into nesting, my trainer decided to audit my call I did on the first day. It was one of my first calls. In which I was shocked because I was just learning the system and interacting with the customers on the phone for the very first time in my Commercial Real Estate career. But she said the first audits for new hires usually are very low, so don’t worry about it. So, I did not, I pressed forward in nesting. My next audit was one of the best from the class. Just to let you know, that while in nesting, the amount of calls and interviews that you have done throughout the day is on a television screen in nesting. You can see how you are doing and compare yourself to your peers. This is very important to remember this for later. It is the most important information in this story. During the second week of nesting, the trainer had one-on-ones with everyone in nesting to review your performance thus far. This was a Wednesday or a Thursday, so we had a couple of days left in nesting before we go onto production. While I was in nesting, I was improving on my daily goals. As a Tenant Research Associate, you have to researched six tenants an hour with three interviews, which are calls that are at least 90 seconds. Throughout nesting, in comparison to my peers, my performance was right in the middle. I was not the very top person out of nesting nor the very bottom. During my one-on-one with my trainer, she told me that I had to make sure that I increased the amount of tenants researched and I told her that I will for that day and the days after because I was already improving and had began researching my daily goal already. Please remember this part as well, because this the the second important part of this story that will come up later. She told that to majority of the class. I know this because the class ate lunch together and used to talk about our day. And I did want I promised I made my goals for the rest of the week. On the last day of nesting, it was almost lunch time so I was there for almost four hours, my trainer pulled me to the side and taken me downstairs. She guided me to this room and it turns out to be her manager. I found out that day, I was terminated due to my performance. I was shocked because I had improved so much during my 2 weeks of nesting and that I actually reached my goals. But, he told me that I was not consistent enough for that. He also told me that my audits were not high enough. I asked him what he meant by audits. He began to give me scores of my audits that I NEVER heard of before and I told him that my trainer never mentioned any additional audits and had not reviewed it with me during my one-on-ones. I asked him what did I missed on my Audits? I was totally confused! He said that he did not have this information. I told him that this is my first time hearing about this. During this meeting, there was a woman on the phone, that was part of the meeting and told me that there will be an exit interview sent to my email address for me to send back on what I think should be improved on the company. Guess what? I never received an exit interview even after I requested it through an email. This is not even the worse part. Later on the very day, one of my friends that I met at Costar texted me to see where I was. I told her what happened and she said that she was sorry for me and I asked her if she likes her team and she said that she did. I asked her this question to see if she still works there and she is. Which is very interesting to me. Remember earlier in the story when I told you that everyone productions are on the television screen so everyone in nesting can see it. Over two weeks of nesting, my production was always better than hers and after the one-on-ones, she did not even reached the daily goals and she still works there! Mind you me and her are different races. Things that makes you really think! I could not believe my treatment from this company. I gave up a decent job to come here to just be unfairly let go. Now I am trying to pick up the pieces of my life. Some days are better than others but each day I strive to be what I want in life. I feel so relieved that I am finally telling my story. It is a huge burden off my chest. Someone close to me asked me, by putting this review on here how will it benefit me, I told them that I just want to be heard and understood.

If you truly value quality over quantity, this place is not for you. It is SO metric driven that it becomes toxic. It does not matter how hard you work, or how good your work is, if your numbers do not match up with that month's unrealistic metrics your name will be paraded on the bottom of lists ( office e-mails and huge TV monitors around the office) for everyone to see. You will feel torn between providing good customer service vs. harassing clients, focusing on amount of dials and calls vs. adding properties onto the system, e-mails vs. random projects, and all while being micromanaged. ALL calls are recorded or dropped into, even if they are not allowed to record in your market or jurisdiction. It seems that every month there is a new metric to hit, and upper management does not care how you do it as long as you get it done. However, don't be caught cheating the system because you WILL get fired while the person who does cheat and doesn't get caught get's recognition. Did I mention that your calls are TIMED? If your call is less than one minute and thirty seconds, kiss that update with the client bye because it WILL NOT count as a call, it WILL NOT count towards your contact update frequency, and you WILL have to harass that person some other time within the month to get credit for that update. You will have to deal daily with things that do not make sense such as launching a new system that allows clients to add their on listings, but still having a listing added metric of at least 3 per day. The job is so demoralizing. It does not do justice to the title of "Researcher", it is just a over glorified call center, and this is the reason why turnover is so high. People only talk about how miserable they are and how bad they want to leave the company. Quality work is not recognized, and I know this first hand because a DIRECTOR told me this. She literally told me that it did not matter how fast I had moved up, or how good my work was, I did not deserve a higher merit increase because I did not have the knowledge (uhh..if that makes sense?). The culture at this place is despicable. If you do not share the predatory capitalistic mindset that the company values, you will be miserable. You need to earn the right to wear casual on Fridays, as if we were children being bribed. Rumors spread like wild fire. Teams are pinned against one another to see who obtains the higher numbers or hit the metrics. I felt my soul returned to my body after I quit.