The TMP Chicago office is a revolving door for talent with major problems that start from the leadership-down to create a toxic work culture. In my first months there, it was odd to find so many employees in many departments openly joke about who will be “here today and gone tomorrow” and this is not because it’s so advanced, but because it’s so inefficient. I read on an employment site before starting that they regularly announce to their current employees to write good reviews and I also witnessed this being true when I got there. They have to make current employees write good reviews to counter all the negative experiences they’ve created.
To someone switching over with tenured Consumer side experience, it’s important to know that you will not be set up for success at TMP. The "career pathing" idea they sell is total baloney and the old playbook of Recruitment Marketing and those who were working on it since the 90s shut out growth because they’ve either never been at a modern agency to see the gaps or they fight being “too much” on an agency model or they just don’t care because they are VPs in constant sales mode of TalentBrew. What a shock to find that they appear like an agency but lack all the necessary processes and offer little support to employees working at all hours to make up the difference. There literally were people who went to the hospital from work-related stress issues and when they returned nothing changed for them so they left.
Even on their largest accounts it was a constant struggle to try and keep clients. The VP roles are overselling constantly and there aren’t enough people to cover the work. It’s not uncommon for Accounts to cycle through 5+ people in 6 months. Work is undervalued and there is a tragic lack of diversity in leadership which only perpetuates the culture problems. It’s required to play into the fraternity that is encouraged by the office leader as they would openly make fun of employees in staff meetings regularly and didn’t take action when complaints were filed. If you are trying to come from a decent company you should avoid this place because there is no 401k match, no actual support, lots of drama and because of these it is the bottom of the barrel.
