Fantastic place to start a career, but not to remain
Pros
+ The work the company does is fascinating - working with the biggest firms in the world, in some of its most exciting locations, advising on massive projects and high-profile controversies + Being the biggest and best-known company in most of its fields means good access, good profile and peer respect. A lot of doors are open to CR, and by extension its employees, that its smaller and less multi-faceted competitors can only dream of + The different workstreams mean your colleagues can come from a hugely diverse array of backgrounds: journalists and academics, ex-police officers and spies, former military employees, auditors, IT specialists. That makes for pretty interesting conversations + A truly international company - lots of employees will have the opportunity to travel (as I did) and movement between different offices is encouraged + Given the potential reputational challenges of much of its work (man-guarding, investigations, kidnap response...), the company does strive to have a strong culture of responsibility and ethics - and will say no to projects that don't fit that culture + The company has really tried hard to professionalise - from its client relationship management software to its human resources function to its travel function - every year, it seems to be behave more and more like a blue-chip firm and less and less like a quirky employee-started and -owned business, and that's overwhelmingly a good thing
Cons
- It's still a security company first and foremost: the other parts of the company do have to play second-fiddle, receive less management attention accordingly, and the business will always chase the fat physical security contracts first, often to the detriment of the other business lines, its own reputation, and frequently confusing large revenues with small margins - This is also reflected in a management structure in which "old(er) white men" are still massively over-represented, and a services background and time spent in "dangerous places" are both more highly prized than business acumen - This in turn leads to a steady exodus of talented mid-level staff, who simply cannot see long-term opportunities when the same old/entrenched faces are likely to continue to fill the upper roles forever - regardless of how well they actually perform - The company's strong market position, and the neverending shortage of geopolitical crises and criminal actions boosting its sales - as well as the absence of anyone from outside the privately-owned company really asking the management team any difficult questions - make it a little lazy and complacent. The sales and marketing functions are both way weaker than they should be as a result, reflecting a belief that "the clients will come to us; we don't have to go to them", enabling inferior competitors to take away more business than they really should - Standards of output can vary by location and function; the company's heavily regional model does lead to different parts of the business competing with each other rather than collaborating, and doing things for clients that would probably be best done by others elsewhere
