Toptal reviews

So I’ve been with Toptal for a year. I’ve applied to almost 45 jobs and haven’t been hired once, not even an interview. Getting into Toptal was exhausting it takes about 40 actual hours if time. Once in it’s an even more time waster. I’ve worked at 2 big 4 consulting companies, and 2 large billion dollar tech companies only to be told that I didn’t qualify as a candaiate when I have over 18 years of experience in that job. You have to apply for every position and you learn within minutes whether you are selected or not by recruiters. And don’t be a person of color you really don’t get selected as this theory was tested with a coworker I recommended to the company, she’s been on 2 projects and I have been on ZERO and she has less experience and a higher rate. Don’t waste your time or effort with this company you are simply one of many in a data pool that recruiters have their favorite to select.

Cons everything else. There is absolutely no structure and everyone walks on eggshells. The recruiting team started a junior program with absolutely no structure and year after year it never makes it past the third month. It is supposed to be a 8-9 month program. It’s obvious this is a ploy to bring in cheaper labor. There are disparities in training as juniors are put on different rotations and trained by different leads. I reached out to my team lead for guidance several times and they instead refer me to other juniors instead of helping us themselves. This is detrimental bc juniors do not have all the answers and it is like the blind leading the blind. Then when mistakes are made the blame is put back on us. Additionally, these people gaslight. We paused hiring for several departments and people grew concerned and started looking for other jobs. A director level employee then mentioned that people would be reallocated and it’s “on us” if we make the decision to find another job and it’s a waste of time because we aren’t going anywhere. 2-3 months later they laid off 30% of the recruiting team with a one day notice. They knew what their profits looked like and still lied to us and made us feel like we were crazy for questioning our job security. All of these people are still employed while lower level individuals lost their jobs. They promised that they would hire them back after a few months. Instead, A few months later, even more people were laid off including several senior recruiters. Also there is absolutely no organization. Updates to processes and workflow are not recorded. We’re told to refer to a playbook that is not up to date. Team leads then call us out on following the wrong work flow even though that is what is outlined in the playbook. And they never apologize when they realize themselves and the playbook were wrong and not up to date. I mentioned using another company to organize our data. A team lead shot down the idea and said it was a waste of time to discuss it. There is also no respect. One of my colleagues was let go due to “poor judgement” but she was following the instructions of a senior recruiter (again, leads aren’t directly training. Other employees are). They announce terminations in a team slack channel and discuss why they let you go. The colleague that was let go, the team discussed her termination for at least two days. In team zoom calls as well as slack. It was obvious that they were making an example out of her and using her termination to intimidate us. When they terminated her, a team lead mentioned that she was up at 11pm going through weeks worth of this junior’s work to find mistakes to present in the termination meeting. Leaders are that out of touch. They’re scraping together reasons to fire people when they don’t like their personality. Additionally, they had access to her slack messages for a school program which had nothing to do with this role. Which leads me to believe that they interfere with our personal devices. We don’t get company issued laptops and use our personal devices So this is a HUGE invasion of privacy. Another employee quit and the directors told us she was fired due to performance. They also talked about that “termination” openly and made it seem like she was a poor performer when the reality is, she was the anchor of her team. They respect absolutely no one. Everyone talks down on the CEO. They pause recordings on zoom meetings to do so. Additionally I’ve never met a group of people that come to work and talk down on their own children and families as much as these people do. Like we get it. Having kids is tiring. But nobody cares. You made that choice. They’re miserable at home and working for the CEO so they take it out on us. Also, team leads are constantly late to meetings and one on ones and use their kids as an excuse. I guarantee you that lower level employees will never be able to do that. There is also a lack of work life balance. Several employees log on in the evening to finish their work. Employees joke about finding gray hairs and the way this job has affected their health. Overall there is a lack of accountability, respect, and morality at this company and especially within the recruiting team. Don’t work here even if it’s the last job on earth. It’s not worth your sanity. Lastly, be mindful of reviews because a lot of these people are in the freelance network and not actual employees of the company. They use the product (talent network) and have good results but that doesn’t mean that the culture is positive for actual employees.