The pay is bad. Like really bad. They hire you young and ready to work so you don’t have anything to compare it to. There will be many red flags in your interview (which you will probably ignore because everyone is pretending to be nice to you.) Your manager/team lead will have ZERO management experience followed by no formal training. They’ll keep your eye on the prize by telling you that “they are grooming you to be manager.” The work hours don’t seem bad until you get looks for leaving at 5:30pm because they expect you to stay late….everyday! In fact, they have a prize for working unreasonable hours.
Along with the pay being bad, the vacation days are worse. People come in sick because they don't want to spend their days actually being sick. Everyone comes in the office sick and coughing and then they want you to do 40 high fives with each other whenever someone makes a sale. You’ll know I made a sale because I get to ring a gong and EVERYONE gets up from their seat, walks over and listens to me talk for 5 minutes about the deal I just closed. The other day I was up there screaming so people can hear me because they blast music from 8:45am until close. This isn’t your tranquil spa music this is blasting as loud as possible to create energy when really it just creates angry clients because they can hear profanity in the back ground.
I remember reading Glassdoor reviews before accepting the job offer last year. I thought “oh its just an upset employee who wasn’t the favourite…I’m sure its fine.” It is not fine. Its actually the opposite of fine. Do yourself a favour and avoid at all costs.
The quotas are set unreasonably high and if the office is not on quota (which is pretty much always), the directors don’t know how to handle it. They freak out by blaming their teams for not working hard enough even though each person is prospecting until 11pm every night. You will not be receiving your bonus payments monthly, even if you do consistently hit targets. You only get your bonus after collections period ends. This means you have to wait sometimes for 4-6 months and subside on your pathetically low salary, which is barely enough to cover rent these days. And that's if you perform well. Don't believe the recruiters, they lie to your face.
Now: the product. The product is not good. That's all there is to it. And Top Hat's reputation in the university sphere is even worst. So not only do you have unrealistic targets, you also have those two factors to deal with. So have fun with that.
I would be weary of any ambiguous 5 star reviews for this company as when I was there we directed to go to this website and leave a good review to artificially boost their score to attract more unknowing candidates. I know the recruiters do it whenever a negative one pops up. And I know that employees are asked to do this regularily.
You might think you have the opportunity to make a lot of money but make no mistake, this company is absolutely horrible. Very soon after starting a total of 10 people left and were replaced. The turnover here is ridiculous and they literally have meetings year after year to figure out how to keep more employees. In order to explain this turnover to any new employees they tell them that those people just didn’t want to work or were lazy which couldn’t have been more incorrect. There were tons of people that left that had stellar sales records and worked incredibly hard; they just hated the company and how it took over their lives.
On top of all of the stress of trying to sell enough product each month to hit high quotas the directors micromanage to a ridiculous degree. The dashboards and culture here create an environment that can be accurately described as a “big brother” atmosphere.
Also, the upper management surround themselves with “yes men” as they are so absorbed in their own opinions on how to run things they are not open to hearing ideas their employees have. This is a terrible quality for any leader to have. In fact, at one town hall, when someone asked about parental leave, the CEO and CMO went off about how their employees ask too much of them. Look at this pool table! Look at the food we give you! Why are you complaining? The CMO, verbatim, said "ask not what Top Hat can do for you, but what you can do for Top Hat". Your employees continually ask you for parental leave, fair industry-level wages, and flexible hours, and you turn it around and throw a temper tantrum. This type of attitude sums up Top Hat perfectly - management can criticize you, bully you into working more, and expect you to smile, but when you offer them advice on how they can do a better job, they freak out.
Leaving this company was one of the best decisions I have ever made.
You’ve been warned.
