Pros
• If you’re lucky, you will form close bonds with other associates joining at the same time as you. These will be your closest confidants and will help you navigate this crazy, cult-like environment. • On the surface of it, the pay is good. However, if you break it down to an hourly wage (and factor in the unavoidable overtime), this job is vastly underpaid. • If your number one priority is climbing the corporate ladder, spending all your hours at work, and you don’t mind sacrificing your hobbies and relationships with the outside world, this is the place for you!
Cons
• Bright eyed graduates, do not be fooled or taken in by the high starting salary - this place is hell! Be aware that behind all the smoke and mirrors, AlphaSights is just a glorified recruitment firm. Your job will be to spend all day trawling LinkedIn, relentlessly hounding senior experts to work with you, and trying to set them up on 1hr calls with demanding and arrogant clients (who are usually more junior than the experts themselves). These experts are kept totally in the dark about who they are speaking to, can be pressured into soliciting confidential information by the clients, and will be messed around, rescheduled and cancelled by clients at the last minute. If you as an Associate have any kind of empathy, this will be extremely challenging to support. • AlphaSights promotes exclusively from within, so they end up pushing the few associates that have lasted in this job for 2 years into positions of power, bearing in mind these people have only ever operated as individual contributors. They have had no training or incentive to develop soft skills that are essential to leading a team. Be prepared for micromanagement, lack of respect for personal boundaries, and unnecessarily enforced rivalry between you and other associates. • Be aware, AlphaSights will love you while you’re pulling in big sums of money for them but as soon as you are faced with any kind of personal issue (burnout, other medical problems) that might require empathy and support, you will be abandoned. You are nothing but a number to them and if you leave, you’ll be replaced tomorrow. Don’t forget that.