Pros
I was part of the small team that contributed and saw the Oxford office successfully grow to become what it is today. I woke up each day happy to go to work. I loved my job and customers. I can proudly say I had a very low rate of cancellation of completed sales/orders. All around great atmosphere, great managers (to a certain degree only!). These sales managers are flexible with you only if you perform well. So this was at my advantage and I made most of it. Coworkers are generally good although lots of moaning about everything. Don't listen or just pretend to follow but don't follow. At the end of the day if you're a positive person, no coworker's negative mind can bring you down. Fresh office, everybody is generally cool. I laugh and joke a lot and I've always tried to give everybody that vibe and energy. Can't work with sad and ungrateful people. My daily thinking was: "We've to spend the next 10 hours together... yeah..let's rock it!"
Cons
Low salary: But you can top it up by exceeding your given targets... Sometimes salaries & bonuses were not paid on time. Imagine if you have bills to pay... High percentage of unfairness: I would not put race into this as I believe this has nothing to do with this. But after working for this company for more than 3 years, ALWAYS exceeding their sales targets & focusing on total customer satisfaction and maintaining the lowest cancellation percentage as possible (tracked!), still I was never promoted. One of the team-lead purposely leaked the name of the person she wanted in her team. It was not me but a person who performed less than me and was at the company less time than me. The thing that I never understood is "Why create an internal job advert when you know your preferences?". No clear or possible career growth within the company: You've got to be a "friend of" to get promoted. They like sending "fake" internal roles and take from outside. When they have a clear idea of who they want in a particular team, others are lured to believe in the next opportunity. Strange and unhelpful HR team: A coworker expressed her concerns to HR, this person was sacked like a dog. Continuous and unexpected changes: Could be good or bad. But I was happy with this. instability: People come and go continuously, even at senior managerial level. Not a good sign for a stable company. While working as a talent supplier my point of contact was miss xxx this person made my job harder. She clearly did not want me to work with her or for the best interests of the company as she made everything hostile for me. She would set up appointments/interviews with my candidates and not call them. She did not care... But because I loved TripAdvisor so much, I would cover up and take the blame so candidates would not know. She clearly did not like me, It took her 3 months to send me the contract, and only after my ex-manager's push! When asked why she was treating me this way, she could not even give a proper answer. Poor ex-managers could not help on this occasion. Because of her, this time around I had no other chance but to turn the TripAdvisor page for good. This girl acted like it was her dad's company. Sad! Do I recommend this company? Make your own decision. Nobody loses, you either win or you learn.
