Pros
Opportunities to get on the first rung of the ladder, student schemes may be available. Some colleagues were decent people. There were free beverages. It was probably somewhat better than having no job at all.
Cons
The recruitment strategy seems to be to hire young grads and/or very desperate people, and then demand that they work unreasonable hours, due in part to some poor management decisions. The work/life balance was rarely respected - the needs of the company always won. Poor remuneration and benefits - when I left, my salary almost doubled overnight. I felt that I was misled during the interview about exactly what the role entailed. I believe that you can tell a lot about a company by how they behave when you leave, and when I announced my resignation I was treated particularly poorly. From day one I was bombarded with literally hundreds of emails in every 24 hour period, and expected to read them all, even though 99% of them are totally irrelevant to your role (or even the country that you are in). If you do not read them, be prepared for the fallout when a deeply coded instruction sent in the early hours of the morning which does not mention your name, business unit, or even country, is missed and attempts are subsequently made to heap all of the blame onto you to avoid implicating directors/managers. Internal communication seemed to be a real issue, not helped by overuse of corporate-speak. There did not appear to be any kind of senior leadership whatsoever when I worked there - to this day I could not name the CEO if I tried. The entire business strategy seemed to be to lurch from crisis to crisis until sold up the river by whatever PE firm owned the company that week. An exceptionally cliquey workplace - you'll do well if you're prepared to fawn over and ingratiate yourself to the 'right' people and behave in a completely two-faced way towards your colleagues. If you do this, you will be rewarded with promotions involving extra numbers after your job title, with no other tangible benefits.
