Manpower is an excellent place to work but career growth can be difficult to identify at times.
Pros
Manpower is a very respected and established company in Milwaukee with a very nice corporate HQ located downtown. Things like free parking in a secured structure and a subsidized cafeteria are nice perks for a downtown location. There are lots of career growth opportunities if you are aggressive and ambitious, particularly if you are new to the workforce and have just started your career. The fact this is a global company offers many opportunities to get exposed to both national and international business experience. The culture at Manpower is infused with a dedicated group of individuals who are very passionate about their business. The overall environment is friendly and professional. Overall I enjoyed my 11+ years of employment there. I had the opportunity to progress from a relatively new employee with limited skills to a Senior level professional with a very diverse skill set. I was exposed to numerous areas of business (both internal and external) and even had the opportunity to travel internationally. The people I worked with made this a very enjoyable place to make a living.
Cons
My biggest challenge came in the way of developing my career when I had developed a more advanced skill set. While Manpower is a very respected staffing company, the internal HR department was difficult to work with. After I had worked at a position for a year or two and became an expert at that position, it was very challenging to identify available career opportunities within the company. While it is ultimately up to the employee to advance their career, Manpower would do well to make it easier for candidates seeking career development to better identify the options available. Over the course of my employment I also found it difficult at times to ensure that my pay was competitive with the rest of the market. Further, it was next to impossible to understand what salary band you were in much less where you fell within a particular band. Although I tried to let Manpower take the proper action and let the annual reviews run their course, the only way I successfully attained a competitive salary was to go out and have other job offers in hand. I attempted to avoid having to do this, however when management was unresponsive I repeatedly had to seek other employment opportunities to justify my increase. The reason this was done was to justify remaining at Manpower since I truly enjoyed what I did - it just did not make financial sense when the pay for my skill set at Manpower was 8-10k below what the rest of the market was paying. This pay discrepancy occurred at 2 separate occasions during my career.
