Pros
To preface my cons- I am a current employee and looking for a new job. I have not been fired, pushed out, or ostracized. This is simply how I feel and people need to know.
Cons
The expectation is that you will be the richest among all of your friends. They’ll pump your head full of this mantra and it’s simply. Not. True. If it is, you need to surround yourself with better friends. Keyence is not highly regarded among people in the industry. You will have a ton of unhappy people you run into on a regular basis due to the fact Keyence has been calling them for years on end. You will find yourself going above and beyond for people just to get stepped on and treated like a piece of equipment. My best advice is to take the job but don’t stay any longer than 2/3 years max. Companies pay A LOT for your experience and Keyence will be a stepping stone. To start you’ll be making cold calls- a lot a lot a lot of cold calls. This does not stop until you reach director which is pretty much impossible. You will either have a multiple state territory which will lead to a ton of overnight travel you have to pay for out of pocket and it will take weeks to get reimbursed, or you will have a small territory where hitting goal is really hard to achieve. The pay as you grow in your professional career becomes more and more mid. You’ll start to notice the bonuses are really not as good as they say they are when you start. You’ll also start to notice the travel will really start to take its toll and you spend more time trying to hit metrics than you do actually selling. This company is metrics driven at the expense of its employees. Your best bet is to really grind it out and get promoted really quick to manager and then ride it out. If you get stuck at SSE you will never become at director unless all of the stars align and a lot of people quit. This is not a forever company. The people at the top got in really early, they were in the best territory with the best product line, or they switched to a new product line with less competition. It is really really rare to get to director in the same product line you start in unless you are super lucky. Management really is hit or miss. You could have a really really really bad manager or a guy who’s super cool but is not a manager that will help you get promoted. You will either drink the Koolaid or you won’t and they’ll pick up on it. They promote who they like when it really comes down to it. I’ve seen people in my office out preform others in their division be #1 in sales and #3 in metrics- they didn’t get promoted because the director said they weren’t “ready”.
