Pros
Company - Every job is what you make it. For the most part, the office is filled with smart, fun and engaging people which makes for a pretty decent atmosphere. Euromonitor is a growing company with a fairly good product which is a definite plus. Advancement - Early in your career it is all about moving up and, for the size of the company, there is actually some opportunity. You may not get a huge new title, but they do make people “Senior” and that sort of thing. I am not sure what people expect when entering an organization of this size, but there are not going to be layers and layers of management to move into. Benefits (not really a pro or a con) - The 401k has a 3% match, very standard with other places. Health insurance got less expensive this year. The PPO is still pricey but covers almost everything. Do people see the headlines and read about what is happening with healthcare in this country? 15 vacation days to start, above average compared to other places I worked. Started pre-tax transit this year (finally), big plus. I have seen better benefits at smaller companies and worse benefits at larger companies. It all depends what you compare it to. Euromonitor is not Google or Yahoo and to compare the benefits to those companies is just silly. Could the benefits be better? Absolutely! They just need to spend more money! But many, many companies seems to be in cost-containment and cost-sharing mode with benefits these days. Events, etc - Company events and parties are better than average. The summer event is held on a week day and you go there instead of the office (first time I have ever seen this and it is great). Fresh fruit every week, good coffee, beautiful office, quarterly-ish happy hours. The policies for travel, expenses, office, etc, are not remarkably better or worse than any place out there.
Cons
Leadership - Senior leaders (ie London management and owners) do not seem to provide any long term vision for the organization. They try to disguise this by saying we are an "entrepreneurial" company but in reality that is no longer true. By nature, a mid-size company like Euromonitor needs objectives, strategy and vision with budget, resources, plans and systems to support these efforts. Ideally, this would be accompanied by charisma and leadership. Local managers in Chicago try - some have awkward or unfortunate personalities and some are restrained by the owners/senior management - but it’s not like they are bad or evil people. Working in any privately-owned company you are subject to the whim of the owner(s). Honestly, the ownership can be a bit odd, not employee-friendly, make things unnecessarily difficult, and get in the way of progress, but why not focus on your job and what you can do rather than things out of your control? Salary - Salary is on the low end of adequate and they need to take a serious look at adding a real bonus program for non-commission people. The minimal bonus (1-2%) at Christmas is really not motivating and seems cheap when the company is doing well. It would be smarter to put something variable in place tied to the company's success or create a bonus pool to distribute based on merit. I suspect when the economy improves, Euromonitor will find that people can and will leave to earn more money elsewhere.
