Pros
You will learn a lot about systems, benefits, payroll, IT, interacting with clients, and how it all ties together. You have a chance to take on projects and tasks that will give you good experience for other companies and require you to think outside the box to solve for complex issues. You will be cheered and congratulated as you go along to keep you pumped up to succeed. And when you finally burn out and begin looking at other outside opportunities, you will feel more qualified to strive for roles that would have seemed beyond your reach prior to your time at Businessolver. Everyone who has read a review knows the basics. They have free food several times a week and free beer. They have chips and soda free for the taking. They have fresh fruit and flavored water and the cool collaborative desk layout that feels very modern and unique when you are used to beige cube walls. You will get business cards with an important sounding title that has tons of tidbits all about you along the back and take your strengthsfinder test to see what styles of people you work best with. You will work with people (if you are as lucky as I was) who are smart, talented, dedicated, creative, successful achievers and want to see their teams and clients be successful through it all. I had over 20 direct leaders in the various teams I was on in my time with the company. I had some leaders that I would happily stay late for, overcommit, figure it out, go the extra mile, and dig deep because they were leaders who cared more about my success than anything else.
Cons
Businessolver prides themselves on hiring “achievers”. It is a core trait that they love to see when they give you the strengthsfinder test. Being an achiever in this sense is defined as “known for having a great stamina for hard work.”. This is a prized quality for obvious reasons since “Achievers” tend to “win” regardless of the obstacle that is in their way. So, if you give them too much work, they will find a way to make it all happen regardless. The problem is that everyone has a breakpoint and within that, everyone’s breakpoint is different but there isn’t an actual strategy in place for when you need genuine qualified help to prevent you from hitting your personal breakpoint. You can raise your hand in “standup” looking for assistance but honestly everyone who is qualified to help is more often too busy as it is. Those with a willingness to help don’t have the technical abilities yet to provide technical assistance without heavy coaching or QA / correcting their work so asking for help can honestly create more problems than it solved in my experience. Management tended to function under the impression that if a person could lift a 100-pound weight, then you were given 110- pounds to carry. When you were successful at doing more then you thought you could, you were rewarded with praise or swag and then give 120-pound “weight” to carry. This cycle continues through implementation season then to OE and so on until you eventually break under that increased pressure. To step out of the metaphorical example, if a system or client resource was doing well managing 3 complex and 3 minimal work clients then it was reasonable to add in another client. If that client was integrated into the model well, then maybe 2 of the minimal work clients were moved away and 2 complex clients were added in place. Being consistently stretched to your max over time will wear you down to a breakpoint. What was most unfortunate and demoralizing was seeing others hit their breakpoint and leave the organization. This also had the after effect of leaving the team that remained behind holding the bag of clients that the resource had been supporting to that point. In my time with the organization I saw easily 30+ team members transition out of the organization and having had conversations with at least 15-20 of them, they all give similar reasons that follow this basic example. Meetings at Businessolver can be a bit much. Often system resources are included in meetings that they don’t belong in simply to cover for client resources without the technical aptitude to speak to basic system functionality. Couple that with 45 minutes a day (every day) of “stand up”, one on ones, required trainings, optional trainings, and your day gets a but overwhelming with just meetings let alone the tasks on your plate. In regards to leadership, as I references in the “pros” area I had over 20 leaders in my time that I reported to. This is a very high number. I know others had more than me but it wasn’t typically that high I don’t believe, though transitions are common. What made that especially challenging is that having that many leaders does not allow too many of them to get to know you or your skills, your clients, your requirements, or your goals too well so all too often I found myself explaining to some new leader why something wasn’t realistic or again and again what my goals within the company were. Now its no-one’s fault but my own that I didn’t achieve more of my own personal goals but it certainly doesn’t help when you don’t have consistently stable leadership that can champion you over time to help push you higher. You may have a leader today that loves you and talks you up and you work well with their personality and then next week you have a new leader that decided he doesn’t like you and your suddenly on the naughty list. I am not making that up. It happens… My final thought on the negatives is to remember that you can avoid some of these things by being more up front with your leaders before there is a problem. If you are lucky and you have a strong leader that is willing to go to bat for you then you may have a longer or happier career then I did. When you start to feel like every day is negative then step back and remember what the positives were that made you excited to be there in the first place. When the day comes that the positives no longer outweigh the negatives then jump ship fast. Don’t take the inevitable counter offer that you will be offered. You will regret it when you are paid better but even more overwhelmed then you were before. Do not think you will be the special one who is counter offered and retained and then not given more to do in trade for staying. Be prepared for quick changes. Senior leaders tend to jump on the newest bandwagon so strap in for Kanban or six sigma or leanership or getting naked, or whatever new think someone hatched over the weekend and was able to “sell” to the leadership. I’m certain looking back that if a vacuum salesman had been able to convince Rae that everyone would be happier with a new vacuum then we would have all been pushing around hoovers and forcing a smile.