Pros
Good location. Made some really good friends. Most people who're involved in the actual research are genuinely nice. Decent coffee maker. There 3 of them .... dead posh. You do find out some interesting stuff.
Cons
For a start, fake reviews being posted on here showing 5 stars with no cons.... if you are, or have genuinely been in research you would have at least one. Who leaves a job with no cons or thinks the world shines out of this company's back side while people (evidently by the reviews on here) are ready to top themselves .. ? Real stuff. A day in the life of costar. Call targets .. yes I know you need to make calls... (que costars patronising response) but the call targets take precedence even when u have obtained enough information that would take you a full day to type up. Meaning , you are still required to make 'x' number of calls.......even though u have spent the past hour or two scrapping a massive website for information which you know is up to date and have the information ready to put on for our clients. Lots more calls ARE required however, it then takes you even more hours to input this information. (Even for a fast typer) After this, you'll need to repeat this process several times throughout the day, leaving you with an abundance of information and little, to no time to key any of it within a reasonable timescale. This happens often. More often than they would have you know. When the focus is on calls and not data (calls range between 8 to 20 calls a day , depending on what time of the month upper management are at), this means you have to repeat this process by however many calls you have to do that day (FYI just now it's about 10 calls per day). What you are left with are staff (not team members) frantically trying to add information at such a speed that quality is overlooked. When you are selling information in the form of analytics etc..., I'd say quality is a pretty important factor. Or at least it should be.. which means in the real world you get little, if not zero respect from clients, as information is often wrong, incomplete, or just completely missing. Quite right too.. the way things are, why should we get their respect. We train for a month or so... shout a script off and give them the same rhetoric each month whether they like it/us or not. Interrogate people for information with little to no tangible feedback for them ...so it doesn't matter how much we say it. People won't see the benefit until they know an enquiry , a business lead, an email comes from someone who actually uses us to find them. Surveyors trained for 3/5 years AFTER completing a degree ! You are expected to quote silly statics that have no real meaning to one specific person, are in fact quite misleading in the UK... and say this almost verbatim each and every month to the same person .... ? Tell them we are the best and they should just take our word? They give us the information from their business they fought very hard to win and ... it's as described above. They (clients) might not know the full story but they sure get the jist.... evident by the fading relationships with clients, and evident fading respect they have for you when you speak to clients on the phone. I would say that if you think this is a good introduction to property you're very misinformed. If anything it will ruin your reputation and possibly even how people will perceive your integrity .... namely by the scripted , repetitive , prescribed and boring branding statements... coupled with the constant in accurate or missing data fueled by unproductive targets. If you're paying someone £25-£33k per annum who can't give a benefit at the right time, in their own words , which has an impact relative to that specific person.... more fool you. That's my rant and while I could have just covered this off in a few words I really don't think it would have done it, it's full justice. It's a frustrating job and the money will never be enough unless you create an atmosphere and workplace WORTH going to each day.
