Pluspunten
Learn a lot about businesses and develop more commercial awareness. AMAZING job for honing soft skills, specifically communication, given you interact with c level execs from top companies around the world daily via email and phone, and also you interact with your own clients at these massive global firms. I now feel comfortable interacting with anyone in a professional setting which is very cool! Get a base level understanding of the whole PE/consulting/investing/M&A ecosystem and you can use this knowledge when applying to other jobs in related industries - this is maybe the biggest and best transferable thing and should be spoken about more internally too when discussing key skills to learn at prosapient. The job itself is really easy (you are offering people money) and quick promotions look good on your CV - all that is required to succeed here is a bit of grit and work ethic so if you’re a lazy snowflake who can’t roll their sleeves up don’t bother because competitive colleagues (like me tbh) will eat you alive and laugh at you behind your back about how bad you are at your job. Nice unlimited commission scheme. People are a laugh. Easy to make friends as most people are in their 20s and down for a drink and socialising after work - this is also great because you avoid dry chats in the kitchen with 50+ year old colleagues you have nothing in common with which are routine in other companies. If you’re really good at your job they pay for you to go to other offices on what is basically a holiday given you’re obviously free to explore outside of working hours. If you’re outstanding at your job you are trusted to meet clients in person and cultivate relationships - this is a great skill and transferable to basically any job and is the ultimate sign of respect internally as if you are trusted to meet clients in person, only then are you TRULY rated by management. Some have left expert networks and moved to client companies like PE firms and top tier consultancies for example (hasn’t happened at prosapient that I know of… yet) and I’m sure they leveraged their good relationships with these clients to do so. Company outings are great and the office management team are lovely people who do an amazing job. Because the company is a small size you can learn about other functions easily (product/operations/commercial, etc) which you can’t do in larger companies given how rigid they are. Casual dress code is an amazing pro and makes it easy to go out after work and not wear a suit or whatever doing an activity or in a club looking silly
Minpunten
Staff turnover overall is quite high but this is standard in this industry as people know they won’t be here forever. The reason this is not a long term career is because past a certain tenure you aren’t learning anything new and get very bored of a job in which you are basically prospecting and cold calling all day. You don't learn any hard skills at all and ultimately these are the skills which get you high paying jobs outside of industries like sales for example. There is also not much upwards mobility once you become a people manager - once this happens you basically have to start looking elsewhere as you hit a ceiling and aren’t progressing into a new role OR learning any additional skills which can help you in your career. There is no learning and development department or person or training of any kind in this company whatsoever but the idea is being floated for the first time - hope this materialises! Internal recognition isn’t great and is tailored to solely the biggest accounts with no spotlight at all on the many people working on growth clients, as they generate less revenue - this is EXTREMELY demoralising and contributed to many top performers leaving. Similarly, targets and compensation is the same across all business units even though certain client types simply take more expert calls than others. This is intrinsically unfair and is another demoralising thing / reason why people leave. One huge con about the leadership team is they abandon large scale change projects and incentives related to targets, commission, commercial efforts, etc, with little notice or no announcements at all and this stuff almost exclusively impacts entry level employees who are the ones generating all the revenue. The company could be doing a lot more to win new clients across all sectors (PE, VC, Corporates, Consultancies, etc) as there are SO MANY entities that take expert calls and prosapient are barely scratching the surface at present (understandable to some extent given the size of the company). Work life balance is non existent given it’s a client facing 9-6 job so if you care about that you might have a hard time adjusting here as you're expected to respond to clients at basically all times between 9am-9pm. Some people complain that clients are rude to them but honestly these people just need to get a grip as this occurs in literally any client facing role as end of the day it’s a transactional relationship - if you can be a good middleman between client and expert then you will be great at this job. Criteria for promotions aren’t super clear and are quite one dimensional (number of consultation calls booked) when there are people who may make excellent managers who will never get into those positions because they don’t hit totals as high as others who will hit those numbers but have less of a knack for managing people (less empathy, patience, not as good at teaching, etc). Lots of the managers have only ever worked at prosapient post university and this lack of experience shows when it comes to motivating teams, conflict resolution, etc, not to mention there is no training at all on managing people to go back to the earlier point on L&D. The culture in other offices is so different and almost feels like separate businesses in a way which isn't great as ultimately you want this to be homogenous