Pros
Aquent has good benefits for full-time employees and contractors.
Cons
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.