Take the negative reviews here seriously. When I started at GLG I was spooked by the reviews on here, but I was told that these reviews were made by 'disgruntled employees, people with bad attitudes', etc. Now, I am one of those people making a negative review, and I can tell you that I am not just someone with a bad attitude. I am just telling you the truth: come to work here if you want to meet new people and make a decent salary, but don't expect it to be anything more than that. If you have no other options, go for it but be careful to manage your own expectations and keep them as low as possible. Now, here is what I think:
Plenty of downsides.. Mid-tier management is horrendous, I truly have never seen anything like it. They receive no serious training on how to manage people, and most have been promoted only because they were great at their previous role, which has nothing to do with managing people. The micro management you will experience here is second to none. If you make even a small error, expect to be scolded like you were you by your mother when you were five years old, but this time by a 25-28 year old with zero experience and no idea how to treat or manage anyone.
The incentives at GLG are backwards. Do a great job on a project and get your client to take 5+ calls (versus a normal of two), and you will be criticized by the business development team for not pitching a survey. Pitch a survey, and you will be criticized for not following up on your survey pitch and calling the client after you email them. There is always something, and no amount of hard work is ever enough. The best part is, if you do a great job and deliver great results for your clients and manage to increase their contract value come time for renewal, you will not receive ANY reward for your work at all whatsoever. If you manage to be the sole point of contact for a client and work on all of their projects, and if you do a great job and beat out other competitors and increase their contract value by over 300% (real example), then your manager will be commended by upper management and the Business Development team that he/she did a great job with that account when YOU were the one that did all of the work. Oh, and the BD team gets a nice salary increase/commission for all of your efforts.
You will not be appreciated for your hard work here. I've seen people get promoted for no reason, when their metrics were SIGNIFICANTLY worse/lower than other employees'. I am trying to avoid specific examples in this review, but when I inquired about the reasons for why I was not promoted and someone else was (someone with much, much lower metrics) I was told to, and I quote directly, "just try not to think about it too much and keep working hard". A few months later, that someone that was promoted left GLG for a better role (something that happens very often). This is how GLG decides who gets promoted: two times per year, there comes a day that upper management will go into a conference room and close all of the blinds. You will have no idea what is going on in that room, or how you are being evaluated. Maybe a month later, you might get promoted or you might not. If you don't, no one will explain to you why you were not. If you ask, you will receive vague explanations like "they work with different clients, that is why they were promoted when they have much worse metrics" or "you are doing great, it just wasn't your time".
Very strange environment, and you will spend most of your time copying and pasting from one page to another, or scouring LinkedIn for the perfect expert. You don't learn anything about the industries you are doing 'research' on, your clients do not respect you and expect you to deliver whatever they want at all hours of the day. Expect to work 8-6 (sometimes more, depending on the team) and expect to have to work 'weekend coverage' as well. Basically, if you are coming to GLG, lower your expectations.
