Where do I start.
- No strategy. The company has no long term strategy for the future and the growth of the company. They grew to quick, lost 75% of the business they expected to win then made a third of the company redundant over roughly six months.
- The leadership team are woefully under qualified for the positions they hold. Most of which were promoted weeks before the redundancies started. How can you promoted a leadership team who are leading a failing company?
- The sales team are nice enough, but their sales record is embarrassing. There's no pipeline, no marketing team left to generate a pipeline and no understanding of how this can be improved. This means they end up targeting existing clients for sales and bleeding them dry until the client either complains or stops responding.
- Too many cooks. This was a consistent problem during my time at 383. There are too many people who want a say in what's next for your client and more often than not, they ignore the people closest to the client. Unless you're saying what management want to hear, they won't listen.
- 383 are a start-up who think and act like they're a major agency. The pricing and bid model often come in way higher than competing agencies often ignoring client budgets all together. This drives the lack of new business and pipeline.
- Company mood. Outside of the management team, the mood within the company was very poor before I left. This was highlighted during company wide calls and largely ignored.
- A lot of the best "talent" within the company has already left or is leaving and I expect that to continue.
- 383 is a "fake it till you make it" company. They will quite often oversell the labels they work with making it seem like they've completed work that they played a minor part in.
"We have loads of experience in X" without mentioning that experience came 5+ years ago and hasn't been repeated since.
Advice to anyone considering a role at 383. Personally, I would stay clear. On the outside they look great, when I accepted my role with the company I felt very positive, but when you're on the inside you'll quickly see you've been told a tall tale.
If you join, treat it as short term. The second they lose another client or two, which will happen, they will let more staff go. 383 will either be closed down in a few years or stay as it is, a small start-up, it's not the company you join to build yourself or a career.
