Spencer Stuart reviews

Unfortunately, I had the worst working experience of my adult life while at Spencer Stuart. In retrospect, I can say that this was due to three main factors: The consultant I was paired up with, lack of support from the local administrative manager, and a total lack of resources making my job overwhelming on it's best day and impossible on it's worst. As an EA, your experience at Spencer Stuart will be completely dictated by the consultant you support. I have seen amazing consultants at the firm, who are smart, caring people who have trusting and productive relationships with their assistants. Please, if you are considering a role with this firm, in your interviews you would be wise to ask to speak with or meet associates and assistants from the practice group you would be working with. You are likely to get more candor from these folks about what the workload is like than the consultant and the administrative manager. I was not allowed this during my interview and therefore got a very rude awakening when I started work. My consultant was a difficult personality, who was distrustful of everyone they worked with and a very poor communicator, to say the very least. As I started to realize that things did not feel quite right, I vocalized my worries to my local administrative manager many times, who was powerless to help, or, lacked the training or knowledge to be able to help. The reporting structure at this firm is very skewed; While you are working intensively with one consultant, your official manager is the administrative manager. When conflicts arise, you are encouraged to go to the administrative manager rather than the consultant, which to me made zero sense. My consultant would complain to the admin manager who would then tell me the consultant had an issue with me. This creates a very passive aggressive environment. Finally, the lack of resources is a very big problem at this firm. There are no document production specialists, scant IT people, little to no resources in the local offices (all corporate services like accounting, HR and training are based out of their Chicago office), so you often find yourself doing a lot of these tasks on your own. This coupled with the fact that many EAs carry a crushing workload can make you feel like you are drowning. I've seen a few reviews on here stating that long hours are expected but over time is frowned upon. I can't agree more. I would work 12 hour days and the legitimacy of my overtime would be questioned by both my consultant and my administrative manager. Also, this is a very conservative firm. New ideas and practices are frowned upon. Consultants are running at break neck speed on their searches so they often revert to the "same old way" of doing things, because they can't afford to take the time to learn new systems, new ideas and new software. While I understand that side of things, that's not a sustainable business model, especially in this day and age.

As mentioned in the pros, the company puts an ungodly amount of work on the Associates. I can't speak for all offices, as I'm certain things operate differently in each location, however in the location where I worked you constantly felt like you were drinking from a fire-hose. You are expected to be amazing from the start, and even after you finally get to a point where you are doing a phenomenal job, you are rarely made to feel good about it. The culture is one of "what did you do wrong this time that you could do better next time," even if you knocked something out of the park. I can appreciate this mentality if it's truly a method to develop employees, but sadly that is not the case. Of all the roles at the company, the Associate is the most critical, however they are arguably the most underappreciated, most underpaid for the amount and level of work they are expected to do, and most abused. In my interview I was sold the idea of a good work/life balance when you work at Spencer Stuart. That could not be farther from the truth if you are an Associate in the office in which I worked. The first year I worked until 1am most nights and rarely got to see my husband. Lastly, if you plan on starting as an Associate with the hopes of working your way up to the Partner level, good luck. They will sell you the idea that its possible to get there when you interview with them, but believe me when I say that it is RARE that they ever promote someone to that level from within the organization. Ironically, their hiring standards for Associates are incredibly high. This is such a conflict because they hire the best and brightest Associates and just hope that they never want to move up in the organization, which in and of itself is hilarious. Smart people want to advance in their careers. This is a huge reason why Associates get burnt out and leave after 2 or 3 years.