Friendly environment with good perks - Account Manager All Response Media Employee Review

As other reviews have said its a great way to get your foot in the door for grads, particularly if you are looking to join the digital team, offline however is a little less transferable if you are hoping to get into marketing over traditional media, so I'd recommend being sure what you're applying for. The team are honestly lovely and very sociable, there's a large drinking culture so if that's what you're looking for as your first post-grad role then its worth the learning experience, or at least it was for me.

While some reviews are quite harsh and generally left by bitter members of staff, there are some elements of truth worth noting: Pay and Staff Retention: - There is seemingly a reason why they primarily hire grads and struggle to retain middle management: they pay as low as they can get away with particularly across the lower end roles, and there aren't really any benefits. ADs are dropping like flies and understaffing consistently causes issues among the team and their moral. No Work Life Balance Benefits: - Although roles are often advertised as hybrid they're not, you get 2 WFH days a month but have to give them what they deem is 'a good enough reason' to get it approved, additional WFH requests have to go through senior board members and above. - The hours are 9-5:30 with no flexi-time aside from the odd Friday but again you can't take this every week as only a small handful of staff can be approved at a time. Workload and Pressure on Employees: - If you are coming in entry level this may not be too apparent upon starting and does largely depend on which team you end up working on, but the company has a generally recognised reputation of being a bit of a "sweatshop", new business is constantly being taken on but due to the other cons mentioned they struggle to retain experienced staff for long enough to gain a grasp on the workload resulting in heavy pressure and often unfair standards being shoved onto MEs SMEs and AMs. A bad day or a hangover from an afternoon spent in the pub is occasionally transferred from certain senior members onto specific members of their teams leaving people feeling singled out. Depending on how lenient you are, I would say there are some questionable characteristics of a few of the more senior members of staff but other reviews blow this slightly out of proportion.

...none, absolutely zero good things to say

Staff are treated badly which trickles down. You feel like you are never doing enough. Issues flagged never get dealt with. Prominent sexism, racism and questionable beliefs. Toxic work environment means people feel intimidated when they have the desire to leave. Absolutely no communication about anything. Business only continues as they recruit entry level people, who haven't worked at a normal, functional agency before, so believe the antics at ARM are completely normal (they're not). Antics include (but are not limited to) creepy male employees, senior members of staff missing client calls as they've gone to the pub and straight up gaslighting if you disagree/ have an issue. If you don't fit in, good luck, you'll be ignored and dismissed. I know that this review will get dissected, ridiculed and gossiped about from senior management and beyond, so a quick hello to them all✨