Exciting high growth business experiencing common modern-day challenges to creating a sustainable growth model
Pros
To put this review in context, I am someone who had an extremely positive experience at the company over a seven year tenure. I joined at the end of 2010 and left at the start of 2018. I can only speak from the point of view of the London office and two of the three main business units (Connections and Intelligence). During those 7 years the company went from 1 office (London) and approx 100 employees to 6 global offices and roughly 700 employees, achieving an average 40% YoY revenue growth. For me personally I was able to benefit from all the positive aspects these ingredients enabled: (i) quick promotion and accelerated career progression, (ii) vibrant and dynamic team culture leading to strong working and personal relationships with colleagues and clients, (iii) good pay. Summary of main pros: Excellent place to start your career if you are unsure about what to do post-University. If you are already set on a vocation or trade, this may not be the place to start. During your first couple of years after Uni you will be able to adjust to working life alongside many other graduates in a similar position in a very warm, welcoming and fun environment. On the work side you will get a chance to explore many different sectors, build up general commercial awareness and develop a highly transferable soft skill set. Company culture and the point about “it’s the people that make this a great place to work” modelled on similar foundations as Bain & Co consulting firm which led to it’s successful growth in the 1980s particularly (both Third Bridge founders worked at Bain). Namely; creating a “one firm culture” through (i) promoting common standard of quality, (ii) emphasising global training programs (there are global offsites in hot places), (iii) fostering interoffice communication, (iv) sharing worldwide expertise (employees get the chance to do inter-office exchanges), (v) service model organised internationally by client and (vi) responsibility for both client relationship building and delivering the service given to research teams directly. Room to grow professionally and opportunities exist (needs to be driven largely by the employee) to work across different departments and offices internally. This offers the chance to build a very rich and diverse portfolio of experiences while you are the company and you can expect to learn a little bit about a lot of things in a short space of time.
Cons
For every employee like me benefiting from the environment there was probably another one or two who did not have as positive an experience. In my view many of the negative reviews and experiences mentioned on glassdoor are a result of the high growth environment and the cons associated with growing revenue very quickly and the inevitable scramble to ensure your operational processes, technology and talent grow at the same pace to keep up with the high client demand being created. Depending on what year you join the company your experience could be quite different from those that joined before you just because of the 40% YoY growth and the changes that brought about. If I was a case of “right place, right time”, then others may have also been a good fit for the company but the clients / team / manager / context they joined in might have been going through a particular phase of change that led to them not experiencing the same positive ingredients that I did. Summary of main cons: Linked to above, there are not many individuals at the company in mid and senior management roles (me included) with prior experience of managing a business growing revenue at 40% YoY. With 11 years’ under their belt now they are always getting better, but at times it can feel like “blind leading the blind”. You can look at this as either a positive or a negative. As a consequence of this once you reach middle management after 2 / 3 / 4 years it can be difficult to find role models / senior figures to learn from outside of the Founders. In the research teams there is a large population of the workforce with 0-5 years’ experience, but a very small population of individuals with 5-15 years’ experience. Many of those that are there do a good job, but their capacity is spread thin. In the effort to keep talent growing at the pace of revenue there is increased temptation to compromise in the hiring process and in the past many people have joined that haven’t been a great fit. This has the double negative of turning those individuals often into disgruntled employees while also de-motivating the team members who are a good fit and looking to do well at the firm.
