Pros
- Whenever the office hosts a client event, leftover food is shared with employees in the kitchen - There is a mediocre, overpriced sandwich shop located in the building lobby - Missing phones/jewelry are promptly turned into HR - If you survive a year, you are rewarded with a fleece jacket - Access to M&Ms in the lobby, which can be used sparingly to “address the occasional sweet tooth” - Job itself was good - if you enjoyed writing book reports as a kid, this is the opportunity to basically do that full time as an adult under the guise of “research”. The company does offer some real benefits, including strong work-life balance such as the ability to work from home.
Kontras
For starters, the open concept office space breeds germs and people are constantly sick through winter, which isn’t a deal breaker but it does get annoying. However, the biggest con is that despite having regular reviews, Mintel does not give employees annual pay raises - nothing, not even cost of living. Management generally thinks the strong work-life balance will make up for this, but very high turnover suggests it's not working. To get a salary increase, one must make a lateral move, receive a promotion, or work on the food team. Despite some departments supposedly having established career paths, the requirements for moving up the career path are murky at best. Managers were actually told that they couldn't share the promotion requirements with employees, making it hard to know what skills you need to work on in order to actually get promoted. Promotions are also very budget-driven and not performance-based. In other words, they’ll tell you that if you do XYZ you’ll get a promotion, but the reality is you might have to wait a full year until the next fiscal budget in order to get that promotion. Also, promotions are basically title changes, no change in responsibilities, so you aren’t actually boosting your resume. Essentially, these career paths were created to give the illusion of career growth, even though growth doesn't actually exist. Additionally, because of high turnover, managers are friendly with their direct reports and avoid confrontation, but this friendliness means that they rarely provide the constructive criticism that people need to improve their performance. As a result, people can be clueless as to whether they are a high performer or if they’re struggling. The Mintel culture is also OK for some, but not for everyone. There's a set of Mintel lifers who thrive at being big fish in a small pond, and seem to be constantly patting each other on the back. If you manage to slip into this “in-crowd” you’ll be taken care of at the company. If not, working there can be awful.