Equifax Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Equifax

Pros – Equifax used to be a great place to work, but the corporate values changed in the past few years. With any luck, the senior leadership team will begin to realize that they have some serious weak spots in their ranks, and will be able to take this company back to being a respectable place to work

Cons – Management at the Senior Vice President level has fallen apart. Several additions to this level in the last couple of years have been very dissappointing, and have caused the work situation to quickly go down-hill.

Advice to Senior Management – Please review your Senior Vice Presidents, especially in CIS Marketing. You have added several people at this level who seem to be intelligient people, but have absolutely no skills at managing teams, and don't seem to have any interest whatsoever in gaining any knowledge of the actual functions of their teams.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Equifax

Pros – A brand recognition
Complex projects
Good people to work with

Cons – Terrible senior management
Wasted resources due to inefficiencies
Long hours

Advice to Senior Management – Hire good people, and focus on keeping them happy and motivated. Don't look down on them. They are the reason you've made your millions and drive Porches.

Former Employee – worked at Equifax

Pros – It is normal company not great, pay wise better than industry

Cons – * No work life balance
* Lot of politics at least in the group I was
* No free sharing of information within group, may be job security issue

Advice to Senior Management – Management was changing a lot with new GE leadership at top, but immediate supervisor (Director) was bogged down with lot of work so ultimately pressure would come to everyone under him or her.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Equifax

Pros – flexible work hours
time off work for personal reasons
telecommuting

Cons – no growth opportunity
excellent work is not rewarded or recognized accordingly
inequality in promotion tactics
career killer/old-fashioned supervisors

Advice to Senior Management – old-fashioned supervisors should be reintroduced to a more current management style
excellent work should be rewarded and recognized always

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Equifax

Pros – - It's a good place to work, the environment and the people contribute a lot to the professional development
- The payments and benefits are always punctual and you are well-paid compared to the average of the market
- A very different place and market to work, you can learn a lot about the credit market

Cons – - Some of the professionals are clearly stagnant and 'slacky' or even apathetic and they prejudice the innovation and the improvement of the company
- The turn over is very high, even in high levels. And the worst part is that the knowledge and know-how of some processes and projects are gone with the people when they quit.
- There are almost no investment in marketing research and publicity to make the company more famous and well-seen. Consequently we don't grow in Brazil.
- Network counts more than competence

Advice to Senior Management – Feedback is essencial. Solving problems and detecting our issues and the responsibles are as important as recognizing talents and good jobs. Make the employees feel like part of the team, willing to grow with the company.

Current Employee – been working at Equifax

Pros – -Good benefits package
-Annual Incentive Plan - performance-based bonuses
-Defined Benefit Pension plan PLUS Defined Contribution Pension plan (with RRSP 25-50% match for up to 6% of your before-tax income)
-Employees are overall treated with respect and integrity
-"Economic moat" - Credit Reporting Agency (TransUnion being the only competitor on Canadian market)
-Moderately-sized IT department and company in general.
-Salaries above average (due to great profit margins, being an economic "moat").

Cons – -No career path
-No opportunity for training and promotions
-The officially stated "meritocracy" does not manifest at all
-The yearly performance reviews lack objectivity, performance and creativity/innovation are not recognized and awarded
-Too hierarchical, lack of cooperation between various IT sub-departments
-Business-driven IT environment, as opposed to a technology-driven one. In terms of technical solutions, mediocre approaches are chosen instead of better ones. Fear of adopting other technologies.
-Too Mainframe-centric IT environment. The MF guys are considered the "kings" and the rest of the people (Unix and Windows people) count significantly less for the purpose of allocating new projects.
-Inept senior management. Too many changes of direction, from year to year.
-Recent offshore initiatives are destroying the IT departments. A lot of layoffs and the offshore devel teams (coming through TCS - Tata Consulting Services) are not delivering sub-standard quality.
-A "watch your back" work atmosphere, sink or swim
-Officialy, it's supposed to tolerate the English and French languages equally, but a bias exists towards French (and the quebeckers tend to form their own "nest" and "circle" and the English spealing peers from the same team feel excluded, marginalized.
-A sort of protectionism is manifesting between the various IT OUs - especially between US and Canada. The Canadian teams come up with very good solutions and infrastructure projects, but they are ignored and only US dictates.
-Too much interaction and reliance on IBM as technology partner, and not having its own data center
-The use of Lotus Notes/Domino infrastructure instead of something more user/Microsoft friendly.

Advice to Senior Management – -Rick Smith seems to be a good CEO and very enthusiastic. What should be changed is the way how the Senior Leadership team is held accountable. Also the IT leaders are not the best ones.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Equifax

Pros – Good Compensation
Flexible Schedules
Some Telecommuting
Relatively good benefits
Some very good people to work with
Some projects allow you to work with some state of the art technology

Cons – Completely clueless senior management
Silo development
Extreme amount of the development is being outsourced to save money, so it is done on the cheap and we get developers who have absolutely no experience and no skills. Fully 90% of the work received from the outsourcing groups is of substandard quality to the point of being almost useless. But hey, it was cheap.

Advice to Senior Management – As far as the IT development goes, they need to get some people in there who understand how modern software development is done. The outsourcing groups need to be held to a much higher standard, in all the time that I have been there, I have never seen any software received from an outsourcing group be reviewed by any senior level software engineer. Stop bringing in your cronies from GE who view the IT development as a group of widgets that can be swapped out to India. You are sending all of our intellectual knowledge off to a group of companies that want to take that knowledge and then compete with us overseas.

Current Employee – been working at Equifax

Pros – Excellent industry with a lot of growth potential globally
Flexible work arrangements are supported at the corporate level
Pay is above average
Benefits are excellent

Cons – Offshoring is rampant and some managers are willing to take a hit on quality for the short term cost savings
Flexible work options are at the discretion of the managers...can be overridden for no reason
No training budgets in years
No career path in IT, promotions rare
Each org unit is isolated and protectionist, functions like mini-private companies

Advice to Senior Management – Create career paths in the technology organization. Enable clear paths for advancement. Think long term on offshoring and realize the human impact.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend