Do your research.... - Junior Key Account Manager Meltwater Employee Review

According to Linked In Meltwater has 2,277 employees. How many of the over 2,000 employees do you think are part of the Human Resources department? The standard ratio is 1:100 – so you’d guess that at a minimum there would be 23 HR staff. Meltwater also has 58 different global offices listed on their website – so some might think that there’s an HR person in each office to help advocate and manage the needs of the employees? When you look on Linked In you’ll see that there are roughly 22 HR professionals so it should fit within the expected 23 HR employee ratio….When I gave my exit interview, I was told there’s only a team of 3 people managing the HR department – I’m imagining they meant just for the US (which holds over 700 employees). I worked in an office of 40 people that ranged in age from 21-27. Most of which had never worked in an office setting before Meltwater and came right from college. From what I understand – most of the Meltwater offices are like this – small sales offices with only either Account Managers or Inside/Outside Sales reps – unless you work in San Francisco, their headquarters, or maybe their NYC office. I had previously worked in an office setting for a larger company for over 3 years and was lured into Meltwater because it had a young start-up feel - I was promised that I would move up quickly within the ranks to become a manager and make more money. The reason I bring up HR at the beginning of my post is – there’s a serious lack of respect, employee appreciation, work/life balance, empathy, and psychological safety – specifically in the DC office of Meltwater. This wouldn’t all be solved by a larger HR force but it certainly wouldn’t hurt. I want to assume that a lot of the major issues that I'll detail below are because there is no transparency from office to office to HR and no one truly looking out for employees - especially newer employees in the workforce. In the time I spent at Meltwater I felt I lost sales acumen. There are no true training or support programs for employees. I was there to dictate emails specifically to the “Meltwater Way” and was fed lines on the phone as if I didn’t have a brain or a thought of my own having worked in software sales. And any thought I did have was not the right thing to say. Not only did I not rise quickly within the ranks (through no fault of my own) to become a manager, but I was also not even given a quota in a timely manner and made less than $90,000 in one year instead of the $130,000 OTE I was told I would have no problem reaching. The software itself is not very stable or innovative, in my opinion, having used it all day every day for over 6 months and having come from a software background. The communication internally about the product uptime, enhancements, and updates is pretty much nonexistent in any kind of formal way – except for a website and internal emails that are not often updated. Not to mention the infrastructure to support the sales process is excel documents. I hope to never again use that amount of excel documents or spend the amount of time in excel filling out information that should be generated by a proper CRM. The amount of emotional blackmail that is used to keep employees in the roles, working as hard as possible, and as long as possible is absolutely appalling. I truly was horrified by how I saw some employees being treated and the sales practices that were being used consistently to try and hit quota. While I enjoyed working with my fellow account managers – there’s something seriously wrong with the overall culture and management style. My confidence was the lowest it’s ever been in my career working for Meltwater. I look back and worry for the other people working there and their future and hope they can get out soon or that they make some serious changes to the office. What was most upsetting was the feedback that was given by many employees fell on completely deaf ears. Meltwater is so set in its ways and is not at all adapting to the demands of the rising workforce and their needs. Everyone is different – but I encourage all candidates to ask A LOT of questions – think about what’s important to you and stick to that when interviewing. Ask if you can shadow a current representative at the office so you can see firsthand what happens on the floor at their desk. If you’re in a bad situation at work right now – it’s not going to help to move into another bad role or company.