Pros
Its a good company to start your career and learn . The pay is average, its people-oriented, has friendly working environment and the fact that it is a family owned -big corporation creates a rare business culture.You can have the opportunity to change various roles inside the organization and gain valuable knowledge. Mars has a long great history & reputation in the market and it will help you in your future career.
Cons
The family's 5 principles are written everywhere but are being selectively followed from top management teams across units. I feel that the quality of the people hired in all levels the last 8-9 years is very low compared to older generations ( in terms of values and skills). In addition, during the past 12 yrs a lot of talented senior associates with many yrs of experience in Mars (10-20 yrs) have left the business. This has created problems in the Mars talent pipeline...Skills, hard work and results are not valued any more, you only need to pretend that you are working and build good relations with the higher management in order to be promoted. The top management teams around Europe are focused more on politics, and holding their positions at any cost ( even at the expense of mars...in the long run)! When results are not good they don t take responsibility...its always someone else's fault...the economy, their team, the unit's structure, the previous GM etc Risks are being avoided, decision making is too slow, too many procedures and standardization at the expense of entrepreneurial spirit, top to bottom approach.