If you value your personal wellbeing and happiness, look for employment elsewhere.
Pros
IntegrityRisk hires recent graduates and those with little labor market experience. You will also improve your writing skills and your foreign language reading skills in this position. Most of your colleagues are friendly and helpful, despite the fact that everyone is exhausted and overworked.
Cons
Working at IntegrityRisk proved to be the most challenging experience of my career thus far. There is absolutely no work-life balance, no flexibility, and the pay is barely enough to scrape by in the DC Metropolitan Area. Prepare to arrive home so exhausted that you can’t even think, let alone apply for other jobs to escape this nightmare of a company. Management is extremely dishonest, consistently misleading, micromanaging, and nickel-and-diming employees every step of the way. A culture of fear prevails and prepare to be driven out if you show any sign of unhappiness or make any suggestions about how to improve IntegrityRisk’s toxic work culture. Concerning pay, expect to make a below average salary for the DC Metropolitan Area, while putting in 8-10-hour days, plus commuting two hours, as their offices are located at the end of the Silver Line in Reston, VA, and IntegrityRisk does not permit working from home under ANY circumstances, unless its overtime or one of your on-call weekends (more later). You’ll make enough to pay your bills if you live in a shared apartment or a basement studio, but you won’t be able to save any money, and will probably end up going into debt if you have any kind of medical or other emergency expenses. Regarding the health benefits, while IntegrityRisk does offer a no-premium plan, it comes with an extremely high deductible and high copays. It also does not cover many services, such as diagnostic testing and lab work, until the deductible is met. There are also a limited number of in-network specialists that are Metro-accessible, which often means having to go to DC to see the doctor, and having to take a PTO day, as IntegrityRisk’s offices are located so far from DC. Be aware, if you have any kind of expensive or chronic medical condition that requires you to undergo any sort of diagnostic testing or take expensive medication, you will most likely not be able to afford your medical bills or will go into debt working at IntegrityRisk. In regard to work hours, management is extremely inflexible when it comes to when employees put in their hours. They expect you to be in the office from at least 9 am to 5 pm, no exceptions. If they do make an exception for you to go to the doctor or take care of an important errand during business hours, they expect you to make up the hours in office immediately, which could mean coming in at 7 am or staying until 8 pm, given how far away IntegrityRisk’s offices are from DC. Although IntegrityRisk has the capability to allow employees to work from home, they only allow employees to work overtime from home, and they refuse to allow them to make up hours from home under any circumstances. In addition to the absurd lack of flexibility and substandard medical benefits, the PTO / time-off offered by IntegrityRisk is also extremely bare bones. IntegrityRisk offers 15 PTO days per year, in addition to 10 paid holidays. The company does not offer any sick days, so expect to use your vacation days if you fall ill. In addition, while conveniently omitted during the hiring and interview process, IntegrityRisk expects you to work 4-6 weekends (8-12 days) FOR FREE per year and does not compensate with extra PTO time or extra pay, although they are charging clients more for these cases and pocketing the extra profits. Expect to work the week between Christmas and New Years’ Eve your first year, for sure. Also, if you are planning to take more than a day or two off, be aware that management is notorious for taking an extremely long time (i.e. several weeks or months) to respond to PTO requests, if they respond at all. Finally, if this review was thus far insufficient to paint an accurate picture of the type of people you would be working for at IntegrityRisk, allow me to stress that you will be consistently disappointed and deceived by management from day one. In your interview and in team meetings, management will say that it is in the process of implementing a 401K / retirement plan, a promise they have been making since IntegrityRisk’s founding and, which, three years later, has yet to materialize. The company makes incessant promises of expansion, which is difficult to fathom in a context where turnover is so high that most employees only stay for 6-12 months. In your interview, you will be promised a pro-rated bonus, raise, etc. at the end of your first year. Do not believe it unless you get it in writing, as management has no intention of keeping this promise, nor any other verbal promises they make. In summary, take your time and look for a better opportunity at an organization that treats their employees with basic human decency. Life is too short to work for a company like IntegrityRisk.