General Mills Reviews in Minnesota

Former Employee – worked at General Mills full-time for less than a year

Pros – The culture is very collaborative and the people are friendly. They have a lot of company sponsored (paid for) events which make you feel valued and appreciated. They have a broad three day on-boarding class which gives you an excellent overview of the company, and uses real-world business cases. The salary and benefits are excellent.

Cons – General Mills has a very unique internal language that is hard to learn. The job-specific onboarding is more of a trial and error approach than a well-documented or well thought process. I sat in my cubicle and took notes while the guy training me played on his Iphone, and tried to remember what he had done in the past. The work life balance is poor, and while no one tells you to work nights and weekends, it is necessary to put in extra hours to keep up with your work. It is not uncommon to receive requests at night or on the weekend.

Advice to Senior Management – Spend more time with new people, and make sure proper documentation is in place for newhires.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at General Mills full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – good work-life balance, competitive pay, nice office.

Cons – The majority of the advancement opportunities are continually hand fed to a select few people. Either be one of the chosen ones or plan to get dumped on again and again. Oddly enough, the few people that seemed to get all the handouts also had a parent working in senior leadership. Funny how that works, huh?

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at General Mills full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Great people, good benefits, great training, great brands, flexible work spaces/schedules, resume builder

Cons – Hated it. Oppressive culture, slow and political bureaucracy, lack of automony, must play the game to get ahead. Many rave about General Mills, but I generally hated working there...gotta be honest. I met some amazing friends and learned a lot, but I found the culture soul-sucking. It's very corporate, you are always being watched and evaluated. Was sooo happy to get out of there. If you fit, it's great, if you don't, it's pretty torturous.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at General Mills full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Compensation: For AMM’s coming out of MBA programs, GMI has one of the best compensation packages. From a starting salary POV, they are near the top. However, do not expect to negotiate as there are many willing/able AMMs willing to take the salary offered.
HQs: All the amenities you can ask for: daycare, gym, gas station, café, running paths, and company store.

Resume Padding: From the time you set foot on the GMI campus as an AMM you are highly sought after by executive recruiters. You will learn the fundamentals of marketing and emerge as a well-regarded general manager and marketer.

Working through adversity: One of the benefits of working through a high process/burecratic organization are the skills you get to get things done, work around barriers, and persevere. This will serve you will in your career.

Class of 40+ AMMs: GMI adds at least 40 AMMs every year to their roster. Short-term this means you have friends in the less than appealing city of Minneapolis, and long term this means you have an extended networking of friends/colleagues.

Well-known brands: Let’s be clear, the company is struggling because of lack of relevancy with consumers. However, GMI’s brands are well-known and as a result provide a halo on your career and experience there.

Cons – MBA recruiters either lie or do not know the truth: Make sure you ask the tough questions when evaluating GMI. There is no clear path to promotion, yes there is high turnover, no Minneapolis is not a fun town, no you do not get a chance to pursue new ideas.

Highly Political: Most AMM’s that start at GMI have solid work experience and have navigated multiple organizations, however you have never encountered an org with tough political battlegrounds. Sales and Marketing knock heads (sales folks don’t like being told what to do by smarter AMMs). MM’s are fighting for their lives to get promoted, so they still the show from their AMM’s and through them under the buss when times are tough.

Diversity recruitment dollars are aplenty, retention is non-existent: Let’s face it, GMI spends lots of money to recruit AA and Hispanics to Minneapolis because it is not a desirable place. Most that live in small/medium sized cities prior to B-school love it, but if you have spent time in NYC, Chicago, LA, SF…you won’t like Minneapolis. They call it the “Minnie-Apple”, but this is a joke. AA and Latinos leave or are forced out within a few years of being there.

Career in Marketing does not equal project management, HMM, or grunt work: Most vocal frustration from AMMs is the morale due to long hours. Recent cuts have only made this worse. Expect to work 70 hours as a 1st year AMM and just under that as a 2nd year and beyond. Most of your time is spent writing agendas, recapping meetings, and ushering people to do their job. About 20% is marketing.

Bad Managers: GMI has a “Great Managers” program developed to improve the quality of people managers in marketing. GMI’s outside consultants have indicated that just 1 out of 3 Marketing Mgrs can be called a “Great Manager”. This is pretty sad. Your experience at GMI will be entirely dependent on your manager: their political clout in the organization, their ability to protect their AMM, their ability to grow you as a person/marketer/general manager. Even sadder is that the “Great Managers” typically leave. People management and developed is not entirely valued – just inquire about some of the most recent departures at the MM level. MBA recruiting will be more than happy to answer any questions you have about this.

Career Control: No you don’t get to choose where you go, what rotations you have, or what brand you work on. A “council” and “senate” do. People that do not know you tell you how to spend your career.

Advice to Senior Management – You have heard the feedback, now time to implement.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at General Mills full-time

Pros – -Very good health insurance
-Nice corporate office with plenty of "creature comforts"
-Ethical and genuinely interested in doing the right thing
-Strong work-life balance programs; but most people are too overworked to take advantage of them

Cons – -Compensation equity issues and lack of pay for individual performance
-Limited advancement opportunities for stellar performers and high potentials; leads to a culture of extreme competitiveness for a limited number of development track roles in Sales & Marketing
-Very hierarchical "yes" culture, which is overly process driven
-Not a good place for experienced hires and longer term employees who aren't at Director level

Advice to Senior Management – Give the self-congratulatory rhetoric a rest, and stop investing in internal propaganda to attempt to salvage employee morale. Instead, figure out who your key performers are, identify your diamonds in the ruff and do everything you can to retain them - as in offer generous raises and development options to deserving people you intend to keep. Also, reign in the egos of a small yet infectious handful of insercure self-serving managers and ineffective "leaders" and get them out of the organization before it's too late. Just because someone is in a leadership roles doesn't mean they've earned it or deserve to keep it if they are part of a system killing the spirit of the organization.

– I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at General Mills full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Strong brands, friendly people, great retirement (still offers a pension and 6% 401K match), good benefits (full medical/dental), "Minnesota Nice" culture

Cons – People being replaced by processes, average compensation (50-60% percentile for CPG), bureaucratic career path, slow to react in the marketplace, difficulty retaining top talent (quality of the people is decreasing)

Advice to Senior Management – If GMI wants to remain a "best place to work," they need to treat their employees better - value education, compensate in the top tier of CPG (80-100% percentile), change org chart to reflect more merit driven culture

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at General Mills

Pros – - Good brands to put on your resume
- Flexible work time (i.e. can leave at 5pm and finish rest of work from home)

Cons – - Highly bureaucratic / political organization. This organization is not a meritocracy. Cannot challenge management. Must support upper management's ideas even when they are not the right thing for the business
- Mills claims to be innovation but their idea of innovation is more along the lines of taking a big box of cereal and putting it in six little boxes than actually coming up with a truly innovative process or product
- Rotations are long. It will take you 3-4 years of rotations before you get a real promotion.

Advice to Senior Management – Remove the bureaucracy in the organization. It's hindering the company from growing faster. Instead of growing the company is continually persuing mediocre ideas thought of by mediocre management.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at General Mills

Pros – Salary is good as are benefits.

Cons – Very long hours. Working for the sake of working and for showing off to the higher ups within the company.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at General Mills

Pros – Great people to work with, very talented people throughout the company, good training opportunities, they do care about work life balance, great facilities.

Cons – Promotion pool can get and stay full for a long time, strong performance reviews do not drive promotions, performance calibration system is demotivating.

Advice to Senior Management – Change the performance calibration system, reconsider how the constant push to network drives promotion decisions.

Current Employee – been working at General Mills

Pros – - Benefits package
- Nice facilities (HQ)
- Summer hours

Cons – - passive aggressive culture
- work/life balance
- promotion to MM is too long and uncertain
- no candid conversations
- work is largly adminstrative and "entry level" for the talent GMI hires
- you will quickly find yourself behind your business school peers at other companies (responsibility and promotion)
- complacency with status quo

Advice to Senior Management – Learn to embrace construtive/direct feedback

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend