Essentially, the CST role is a high-pressure, high-volume, recruitment role. We are looking to close 40+ 1h calls a month to hit targets, so outreach is correspondingly huge (yet manual). Clients paying for the experts are picky (which is fair enough as there is no point wasting time if expert cannot answer key questions), but requires fast turnaround (within 2-3 days, 1 wk generally). The experts you are trying to reach themselves are senior executives who are extremely busy and receive numerous such requests.
You work across many projects (10+) which all have daily deliverable expectations with clients chasing on progress. Because it is a commoditised service, a lot of times you do work that leads to nothing because the client either has moved on or found calls from competing expert networks. Stressful professional service role, very reactive and no control over your day-to-day work. Always feels like you end the day with a longer to-do list than when you started the day. Poor work-life balance, your personal life will take a back-seat.
Specific cons below:
Unrealistic metrics - on average individual performance at the London office has been hovering below targets (and below hurdle) for over 2 years, company blame frontline associates for low productivity, but fails to recognise poor tech and management, and low morale as root causes. (of course there are outliers who hit and exceed targets massively)
Poor company morale and overtime - You are responsible for client project outcome immediately as an associate (i.e. you are assigned a project angle and you will be fully responsible delivering on it independently), so there is huge pressure to perform immediately by month 2.
Unrecognised but expected overtime, standard hours 8:30-6:30 but generally goes to 7:30p for 2-3 days a week, plus you are expected to be responsive out of hours and on weekends if anything urgent comes up. Change from 3-2 hybrid to 4-1 (only WFH Friday), everyone is coming in just to sit in front of a desk because management wants to people to be present to manage.
High employee churn, lots of people leaving after a few months. Management sometimes fire employees without prior discussion if you are not performing (notice period is just 1 week), puts sponsored employees in a terrible position for a first job if they moved to London.
Need to work across global timezone depending on your experts, everyone has done calls late evening at home (9-11pm) to reach US experts in the UK because you cannot afford to wait for working hours in case the expert won't be free tomorrow.
Clients/Experts can be difficult to work with - clients are even more high pressured consultants and investment professionals, your experts are c-suite industry professionals. Most people are nice but they are just difficult to reach, lots of rescheduling calls.
Bad tech - no CRM, all emails are sent manually one by one, no lead tracking, scheduling, or productivity tools. Our only tools are the internal platform, google workspace, and Slack. Platform is not streamlined or designed with the associate in mind, only for clients and management. We have a proprietary internal database without any automation for associates. For each call you schedule, you are always anxious whether it actually goes through.
Poor productivity - you are responsible for a lot of things (scheduling calls, expert onboarding and compliance, client communication, in addition to delivering on your 10+ projects) and absent tools to keep track, there is a lot of attention spent keeping track of the numerous projects and disruptions. Makes it impossible to focus on the task when there are urgent disruptions every 15min. If things get missed, you will feel the pressure.
Poor management - managers and VPs are internally promoted and lacks management skills. AS promotes high performing associates as managers which may not end up being the best managers. Have heard stories of colleagues' mental health affected because of taskmaster-esque management by certain individuals. Most managers are not "process improvers" and do not have a mind to make associate's lives easier, but instead just adds to it because they are overworked themselves, and lacks the attention required to oversee project delivery, let alone professional development beyond whether you are hitting your targets.
Cookie-cutter metrics of success - Related to above, to succeed in this company means hitting a bunch of metrics. You will not feel appreciated for anything that does not contribute to metrics, and you will be evaluated almost solely on metrics, even if they pay lip service to your other positive behaviours. Super ambitious targets (>20% YoY growth), pressure cascades to front line associates.
