Graduates Beware - not a good job - Conference Producer Hanson Wade Employee Review

Blatant disregard for all graduate welfare. They’ll exploit your desperation for a job and work you unapologetically to the bone * Your commission is completely independent of the work you do. It depends on profit of individual events over which you have very little control. In my entire time here I’ve never felt this to be fair on any events (of which I have now completed 5) * Base pay is terrible - look at other offers on indeed. Even if you start here, after 6 months you would be qualified enough to jump to a much better paid position elsewhere. * A lot of what you do is LinkedIn, emails and cold outreach. just all the time. If you don’t like this then this is absolutely not the job for you * Genuinely quite painful harassing senior people - you are expected to chase leads all the time, which feels very salesy/uncreative and can be demoralising when no one replies (common) * Revolving door of employees. Unbelievably high turnover rate which is extremely demotivating. You should question why it’s so high as well. Senior management seem to be doing very little about this - clearly investing in junior employee talent is of no interest to them. They will recruit 50 grads in the hope one limps on into a management role * Their slogan is Win together Lose together but this is not seen in practice anywhere in the business. If your event fails you will be blamed and only you will suffer. You can then be punished by being put on a PIP scheme during which you will be micromanaged beyond belief, and in most instances these people resign * Conferences are incredibly expensive but deliver very little beyond the talks. Quite budget in feel when you're there. Even things like coffee are limited which is wild. * Lure you in with the promise of commission, but can take a while (7-9 months) to receive anything at all and amount can be very small/negligible * Ethical concerns. Carbon emissions from constant flights. Also hard to tell whether the events positively impact the community or whether they are just driven by money and drive out smaller not-for-profits from being able to deliver real value * Morale very low in production department at the junior lever. Stress, burn-out, welfare sick days etc are all extremely common. Management are happier as they make money out of your hard work so what’s not to like - they don't seem to care about the stress they put you under however. * Metrics are difficult to hit and out of your control, yet you are unable to progress or get pay bump without hitting them. As mentioned, this can be purely luck based * They demand a ‘commercial mindset’ but this hardly affects you in junior roles - it’s just to benefit senior members. They then claim that their turnover is due to employees not having a commercial mindset when it's actually due to all the reasons listed above. * If you are young, you value your work-like balance, and you don’t want to be chronically stressed, then this is an absolute no go job. Please avoid if you have any possible alternatives.