***If you are a potential applicant I strongly urge you to take this seriously***
I am only writing this as I truly wish I had taken the Sales & Analytics reviews on Glassdoor more seriously when applying for the role (obviously ignoring the one-liner responses submitted by HR/Mgmt)
If you are starting your career you should not be enticed by the good graduate starting salary or easy visas (salary growth/bonus are minimal) but rather focus on relevant knowledge & experience that you can gain, career progression opportunities and a stimulating work environment - Bloomberg Sales & Analytics role scores Extremely poorly in all of the above!
The job description for a position in Financial Analytics & Sales is a complete misrepresentation at best or an intentional scam at worst.
Let’s start with Analytics - Analytics is the term used to describe the the Bloomberg help desk, it is a glorified call center which is micromanaged to the minute and monitored as if it were a primary school. This is where you will spend 90% of your day answering numerous chat questions at a time from Bloomberg clients which must be resolved within 30mins. If you are comfortable with repeating the phrase: “Hi, you are through to the Bloomberg Help Desk, how can I assist you?”, +50 times a day- then this job is for you. Due to the call center environment, your days and weeks are scheduled in advance with no flexibility. Your lunch hour is set for you and any time you are not answering questions or not at your desk you can expect management to be reaching out to you for an explanation (this includes toilet breaks ?!?!) After doing this type of work for just one day it will make your mind fry... now imagine doing that for 18 months and more...
The next thing to ask, is what about the questions that you are constantly answering, surely they are financially orientated or analytical in nature or just mentally stimulating... the answer is NO to all of the above! You spend your days answering the most mind-numbing and stupid questions related to computers settings (my printer isn’t connected to Bloomberg) and how to find data on the terminal (which function can I use to see a share price) or how to use the terminal (show me how to change the color of my chart) and when you become an Advance Specialist the questions are just about navigating the most outdated and overly complex user interface since the internet was invented. There is nothing which requires analytical application or thought!
So clearly, anyone who understands English will agree that this is Nothing remotely close to Financial Analytics! There is no skills or knowledge that you gain that are applicable to any company other then Bloomberg so you’ll have to brush up your CV to make it sound like you did anything of value. The basic financial markets training that you go through is at high school level and the rest is memorizing terminal functionality. (That’s the steep learning curve you will hear about)
That’s it... that’s your job, day in and day out. There is no meaningful work, nothing lasts longer then 30mins and the management are constantly on your back about every minute that you are meant to be answering questions to the point where toilet breaks, sick days, train delays, coffee breaks are recorded and tracked. The quality of management is nothing any ambitious individual would want to aspire to... they are simply babysitters managing how many questions are answered, how quickly they were answered and how many positive survey are received after questions.
The incentive system is deeply flawed as it is ALL about quantity and not quality - this runs through the whole company. As Bloomberg's business has matured so has the Sales department which is now very little to do with selling and more to do with collecting as many business cards as possible from existing clients so that you can reach your “Visit Target” for the year or its simply cold-calling clients to force feed unwanted functionality, all of it tracked and monitored to the minute.
The culture is toxic! Everyone, every single person, wants to get out of the help desk (ADSK). So we have to put on a pretty face and pretend that we care about the meaningless work thatwe do, the only problem is that the next move to Sales (only career progression option available) is not a move any ambitious, clever or hungry person would want...
Take this advise seriously or it will be you writing a similar review after 3 months from joining.
Best of luck job hunting!
