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      EF (Education First)

      Engaged Employer

      EF (Education First) reviews

      3.4

      61% would recommend to a friend

      (4,617 total reviews)
      avatar

      Edward Hult, Ph.D

      62% approve of CEO

      48% positive business outlook

      Ratings by demographic groups

      EF (Education First) has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 4,617 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The EF (Education First) employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Education industry (3.8 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      5K reviews
      1.0
      Jan 19, 2021

      Do not work for this heartless company!

      Educational tour consultant
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      Good Benefits Flexible Hours Literally nothing else

      Cons

      If you get a job offer from EF turn around and run as fast as you can the other way. Education First is nothing but a pushy sales organization. They will put you through a long drawn out training process to not even teach you how to sell their product. This company focuses on forcing teachers who do not want to travel with students to travel with them, they use very pushy sales tactics on those teachers and call them until they want to answer the phone and cuss you out. The recruiters will tell you how supportive the company is, but if you are not getting them tours, there is no chance you are staying. You get a sales coach who will tell you how to be pushy and then if you are not blame it on your personality. They do not pay that well and the commission structure is not great either, if you want to be in sales you can go somewhere else and make more. Let me tell you also how heartless of a company EF is. I started with them virtually and did not even get the chance to be with them for 90 days. They put me through a training that was more about policy then it was how to sell their product. I got set up with 60 crusty leads for several weeks, and then they wondered why I had not made any sales after calling through them for about two weeks. After that they gave me a about a 100 more leads who were so cold, it was deplorable. After working with those for 3 weeks, my manager who had met me twice gave me two weeks over the holidays (the worst time for sales) to turn things around. During that time no one reached out to see if I needed help or how I was doing, on top of giving me very unrealistic expectations. To ice the cake, they led me on for several days before letting me go, my manager pushed the meeting off three times which is unacceptable. They decided to fire me instead of lay me off after their failure not mine. I would not recommend EF to anyone, not a soul. They say how great it is, but if you look at the other reviews, you will see a pattern of rudeness and unprofessionalism. As I said before if you get an offer from this company take this review to heart and run the other way.

      avatar
      EF (Education First) Response
      5y
      Thank you for sharing your candid feedback. It’s disappointing that the training program did not live up to your expectations. Our Entrepreneurial Sales Development Program is a two year program, however our goals within the first 90 days are for our newly hired Tour Consultants to learn our consultative based sales process, understand and execute basic sales metrics (qualitative and quantitative), and for us to see improvement in sales skills. When it is clear that a team member is not progressing in this sales role, the trainers partner closely with the individual and their manager on a plan for improvement. Our ultimate goal is to help each person find success in their role, both financially and from a career growth perspective. We understand how disappointing it can be for everyone involved when that doesn’t work out. We appreciate your feedback and will take this as a chance to make sure we are constantly improving the onboarding experience. We wish you all the success in your future professional endeavors.
      3.0
      Jan 3, 2021

      Great place to work short term

      Tour consultant
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      -Travel. In a non-COVID world, you get to travel at a minimum of once a year. The longer you are there, the more you get to travel. -People. Those who work at EF are driven, diverse, excited, and friendly. They are incredible and make great teammates and friends. Everyone gets along really well. -Fun! There are lots of events put on by RED and other employees. They focus heavily on a “work hard, play hard” culture and the events are well attended and fully stocked with beer and food. -Training. Their training program for the TC role is incredible and so in depth. Even after your initial training, you continue to learn and get feedback often. Many people who leave EF say that EF gave them a great foundation to be a strong salesperson and made them a competitive hire. -Insurance. Their benefits are great. -Kate Berseth (President) is amazing. She truly cares about what Tour Consultants want and need and focuses on them as well as the overall state of the business.

      Cons

      -Turnover is astronomically high. Many reasons being pay, but particularly in Denver, once you become a Senior TC, you have basically climbed the ladder. Unless you are willing to relocate, you have no room for growth in the Den office. If you want to stay a TC, there are plenty more opportunities but do not come with any sort of pay increase. -Workload is unsustainable and inadequate compared to pay. Old systems result in additional time and steps to get simple tasks done. The job can be extremely taxing and it is common to get the recommendation to “come into the office on the weekend” when you feel overwhelmed and share that with mgmt and others. -Goals are set by mgmt without much reasoning for how they are set. Goals do not reset quarterly and instead continue to increase, so if you are behind one month, you get even more behind the next. -Lots of uncertainty during COVID. To a degree, this is understandable given the inherent decline in the travel industry, but the problem lies in upper management continuing to share their optimism for the future of the business with no evidence to support their claims. All in all, EF is a great place to work in your twenties, learn how to be a great salesperson/account manager, and then take that knowledge to another company that will pay you what you are worth.

      3.0
      Dec 17, 2020

      Good first job overall

      Senior territory manager
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      I started at EF right out of college and there were some things they did really well: 1. Incredible sales training program, a 1 month incubator style format 2. Exciting milestones to feel like you're working towards a real career 3. A lot of opportunities to get involved and learn a lot in your early career days 4. Travel (pre-COVID)

      Cons

      I came to EF because it was a brand I knew and loved. Under the surface I felt like they didn't always do right by their employees and customers. 1. They promise bonuses as if they're basically a given. I was a top performer and struggled to hit goals a lot of months because of the aggressive nature of them. 2. Also regarding pay, it's so low. It's ridiculous to be living in Denver and being paid half of what your fellow sales people are at different companies. Especially when getting the bonuses isn't as easy as initially promised. 3. There is NO room for upward mobility. They act like they're grooming you to work at EF forever, which a lot of people want, but only 1-2 roles open up per year and they're usually sales related and 15-20 people are interested in it. More centralized roles need to be moved to Denver in order to keep top talent within the company. 4. Most notably, and probably one of the last straws before I left, was the carelessness of our CEO. The way he handled COVID, BLM, and so many other challenges to the business showed me and many others in our company he genuinely did not care about us or his customers. He is condescending, and quite frankly it never feels like he wants to be speaking to us. I would describe his behavior as if he never really wanted to inherit the CEO responsibilities from his father who started the company.

      avatar
      EF (Education First) Response
      5y
      Thank you for your detailed feedback. It’s great to hear about your experience with our training program and career development, and I’m so glad you enjoyed all your opportunities to travel. We are all looking forward to the days when travel is a big part of EF life again. You’ve also provided some very valuable constructive feedback that we will certainly reflect on in our continual effort to improve. This has been a very difficult year for people and organizations around the world, and remote communication hasn't made it easier for anyone. I'm sorry to hear that you came away from such a difficult time with negative feelings about EF. I can reassure you that our leadership team has had customers and employees at the forefront of every decision. Our CEO shared his thoughts about racial injustice in this letter: https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/we-are-ef/a-letter-from-our-ceo-of-north-america/
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      ReviewsEF (Education First) reviews

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