Pros
-You develop core professional service skill sets that transfer well independent of where you want to go in your career long term: project management, time management, stakeholder management, negotiation, persuasion -You get exposure to a company during an important point in its growth: Third Bridge is no longer a small company, and it must meet goals outlined by its Private Equity backers, which allows you to see how a company goes about innovation and strategy to meet proposed revenue/EBITDA targets -You are exposed to a wide variety of investment strategies and industries, allowing those who are curious to learn basically everything they could want to learn about the investors who drive capital into markets/companies, and the operators who grow (or attempt to grow) those markets/companies -The culture and people are very strong - you like everyone you work with, and if you are willing to put in the time and effort (which is required of any entry level job), you develop faster and further than with 99% of other companies.
Cons
-Like most entry level jobs, the work can be repetitive - the level to which many feel the work is repetitive depends on how much they invest in the research process - if you treat the Expert Network industry like a call center, it becomes one; if you treat it like the opportunity to speak with important thought leaders about their industries, you basically learn for a living -Work/life balance can be challenging, as Connections is the service delivery arm of Third Bridge - the company can't control when a client is coming in with a request (Sunday morning, 9pm on a Friday) and your job (if you're a Client Associate) is to be responsive to that customer need -A couple that is trying to scale has its stumbling blocks, and Third Bridge is no different - sometimes processes are outdated and technology is slow to develop, and given so much of the team comes to the organisation for 2 years and then leaves (standard Graduate program), information retention is difficult
