Westat reviews

Low pay, no mid level jobs, salary increases only done at review time. I was hired as a Research Assistant and have been working at the company for 5 years. Despite no longer doing entry level work, my title (and pay) is still Research Assistant. They like to add on additional tasks and duties but won't increase your salary to match your tasks. They'll also hire outside people for supervisor or management level positions rather than give opportunities to staff that have been there for years. Frustrating place to work after a few years.

As many have pointed out Salary is below industry standards. Raises are negligible. They have a dual supervisor model which is intended to protect empolyees but it rarely works as intended. Your personnel supervisor is supposed to be your advocate while your assignment supervisor monitors your work assignments. Here's the problem with this model...a lot of times your personnel supervisor is directly involved in managing your project so it ends up being a huge conflict of interest. Nepotism runs rampant and getting attractive assignments is often based on "who you know" rather than "what you know". As another poster said lots of cliques (In some cases you would just as easily mistake this place for a high school campus). Management is a joke! Total lack of people skills and professionalism. Very unclear directives. Some of them downright verbally abuse employees and get away with it. There is no recourse. You are encouraged to ask for new roles or assignments but unless you know the right people you rarely get assigned to want interests you. Most of the positions end up being dead end.