I don’t know where to start, this was for me a stressful environment. In the Client Solutions role your performance is metric based meaning that you need to hit your numbers to keep your job. Every month these metric expectations increase at the cost of your free time and mental health. While you can hustle and work hard to make your numbers your success is largely out of your hands as projects often change in scope, or get trashed all together resulting in you wasting hours, or sometimes days worth of work. The job itself is kind of salesy and gimmicky, you’re convincing experts across different industries to come consult on one off projects, half the time when you do recruit an expert they aren’t picked up by the client and you waste their time and yours. Due to these ever increasing expectations the environment is pretty stressful making the people you work with miserable to be around. Some of the best times I’ve had at GLG were spent venting with coworkers about the job. Overtime isn’t “mandatory” but everyone on my team, and I worked overtime every week to meet our targets. When I was struggling to meet my goals I consulted with some of my team members who were finding success and they told me they do work off the clock on the weekends. There is this kind of unspoken rule that taking lunch is frowned upon, my trainer told me a story about a guy he started with who insisted on taking an hour lunch every day, needless to say he didn’t stay with the company very long. Lunches are commonly eaten at the desk, with your eyes glued to the monitor. The pay is good for being fresh out of college but not good enough for the consistent overtime and weekend work. I found that I was trading away my life, and youth for a paycheck that I couldn’t find the time to spend. I found that the experience I gained at GLG wasn’t really transferable into other industries or fields, I didn’t really build an expertise in anything in this role. I would suggest to a new grad to go into a position that pays less but with more growth where you can build skills that will be marketable in the future instead of wasting time here. I found myself subject to frequent micromanagement, often the regurgitation of the same micromanagement I received last week. The micromanagement leads me to believe the middle management team has too much time on their hands. The office environment is “open concept” meaning that you have tables of 6-8 desks right by one another for the sake of “collaboration” this means you’re often sitting right by your manager, or even the VP of the department so try not to mess up or you will hear about it in real time. Initially going into this job I thought the hybrid work style would lend to a more flexible lifestyle, being able to work from anywhere. Even at home you won’t have the time to eat away from your desk. Your actions and performance are tracked by your managers, and every call you make can be listened in on at anytime. Most parts of your workflow can be seen an audited by management as you do it. They’ve found away to keep the pressure alive even when you work from home. Although it wasn’t physically demanding this job left me feeling so emotionally and mentally drained at the end of the day I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy life or the fruits of my labor. Sunday nights were often spent dreading going back into work. If you’ve just interviewed with GLG they will highlight the many fancy benefits they offer their employees, and downplay the oppressive workflow. Heed my warning, and Godspeed.
