Pros
The company’s mission to help people find jobs is admirable. These products do help streamline the hiring process. They work hard to build their corporate culture and put in the effort for company meetings highlighting wins across various teams.
Cons
This is a very challenging role with long hours. You will act as an independent contributor. You will be on a “team” but there is no team structure or support to rely on. You will be given more work than you can support. As a result you will be working 60 hour weeks attempting to keep up. (It won’t help) You clients can tell your maxed out and your manager will tell you to either “figure it out” or say “phenom isn’t for everyone” This is a strong escalation culture. Clients will escalate everything because they are trained to do so. You will then be pulled into meetings with VPs and occasionally the CEO where you will be cursed out and asked to explain why this reached their level. Meanwhile the topic at hand is something completely out of your control. Your counterparts on other teams are also stretched to thin and will not be able to join you on client calls or prep meetings. You will be given a 30 second notice or no notice at all to this standup. As a result clients will be angry and escalate. You will then be reprimanded for not controlling the calendar of your coworkers. The product changes rapidly. The training provided is very high level and typically outdated. (Note - you will not actually have time to complete your training- so it doesn’t matter that it’s outdated) You will be in front of clients with limited information on how the tools actually work while they ask you for feedback or knowledge transfer. When you try to ask other Engagement Managers or your Manager you will quickly discover that no one knows how the products work. In 6 months the EM team saw almost a 50% turnover rate. This role doesn’t last long for most. It was not good for my mental health. I was very anxious during my time at Phenom. I knew I was failing my clients and stressing over my schedules. While I felt like this I kept getting reassurance from my boss that it would all work itself out, but when you miss due dates and have no actual support it just digs deeper into that hole. This isn’t a role that some just aren’t cut out for. This is a role no one should have to put up with. Phenom needs to make some major changes to get a project support staff that will stay for more than a year. My last con is the company push for Glassdoor review in your onboarding process. You will see most reviews for phenom are posted within a persons first week of employment. You can’t give a bad rating when you don’t know what you are in for yet.