Acxiom Digital Reviews

Pros

Learning everything you can about the Digital realm.

Cons

No leadership.

No serious management.
No promotions

Pros

This is my first job and it's a great experience. Everyone is young and really fun to be around and the work environment is very cool and casual.
- The kitchen is always stocked with orange juice and milk.
- People work from home a lot. My friend was able to work half way across the country for weeks to be near her friend. I think as long as she did her work no one seemed to care.
- There is always a ton of free cereal.
- Management really listen.
- People come in late as long as work is done it seems okay. Lateness isn't so frowned here, people known for coming in after 10am are promoted as long as they do a good job and are friends with the right people. Be friendly and stop hiding in your desks people!

Cons

It's good for entry level but maybe not much else. I'm a little embarrassed to tell people I work with e-mail. I hope the experience here will help me land a better job doing what I really want but I don't know how to express all I do is e-mail.

Advice to Senior Management

None. They are doing a good job as much as I can see.

Pros

- Able to learn a lot within first year
- Gain valuable corporate experience and exposure to high end clients

Cons

- Career development was stagnant with too many levels before getting a promotion and raise
- Work get boring or redundant after first 6 months to a year

Advice to Senior Management

I don't think management is at fault but just the overall career development structure needs to be looked at and reviewed.

Pros

- The people and culture here are great. Everyone is very friendly
- Kitchen is stocked up with sodas, milk, filter water, tea, coffee, cereal, fruits and bagels.
- The management is flexible with giving you paid days off with short notice.
- Working from home is allowed if needed
- The management style allows us to work more freely. People can come in late and take coffee breaks as they please as long as the work gets done, no one complains.

Cons

- Depending on the accounts you work on it can get stressful as it is a very fast paced environment and we are asked to do a lot.
- Longer hours with no extra pay can be normal but there can also be times with no work so it does balance out depending on the staffing.
- The turn over rate at the company is high.
- Many of the entry level positions do not include a year end bonus. So your hard work may go unrecognized.
- Promotions take a long time and the salary can be low for the amount of work we do compared to other similar jobs.
- Depending on the position promotions may reach a ceiling very quickly and there is no easy way to transition to other positions.

Advice to Senior Management

The high turnover rate is a result of lack of career movement and lack of competitive salaries. This needs to be corrected quickly before you lose all your employees to the competition.

Pros

Above average pay
Work/Life Balance
Opportunity to transfer laterally into consulting, product management or account planning

Cons

Acxiom started out as a data powerhouse so not all senior managers get digital media
Cross team coordination is rather weak when creative, account, data, media all have to come together

Advice to Senior Management

Hire and retain top talent

Pros

Friendly environment.
Good benefits.
Convenient location.

Cons

Compensation is not competitive in Bay Area.

Pros

It's a friendly, casual environment. NY office has free fruit, bagels, cereal, and drinks. Good resume-builder for someone fresh out of college. Management is approachable.
You can listen to music when you work.

Cons

Careers come to Acxiom to die. Content specialists are more likely to win the lottery than any chance of promotion. When I left there was no career path whatsoever for the content specialists. The associate account managers have marginally better options. Salary is awful and well below the NYC standard for someone with the skillset of a CS.
Advanced skills are not valued in any way. They will just stick you on any account regardless of what you're capable of doing. They won't have any advanced work to give you even if you ask. Sometimes they won't even have work to give you at all, and they'll just tell you to "enjoy your free time."
Lack of professionalism among some employees regarding attendance.
They give you lots of PDO but it's hard to use because nobody has the time or desire to cover for you.
Training is minimal or nonexistent.

Advice to Senior Management

There's a reason you have an alarmingly high attrition rate: salary is terrible and there is no room whatsoever for promotion. Start valuing individual skills and allocate people with skills to positions where they can grow. Offer better salary and something to work toward.

Have team outings or something fun to raise morale.

Pros

Opportunities to learn, especially if you are a self-starter. Great for learning how to work with people, in teams, with technology. If you are good, you'll get more opportunities there and more chances to learn more.

Cons

People are complacent. It's not a place to stay at unless it meets your needs for a job, okay compensation and whatever else you need in a job. Not a place for the driven, very intelligent and highly motivated except as a starting place.

Advice to Senior Management

Historically the managment is weak. Don't understand the meaning of leadership. Newer staff members might be better.

Pros

The people who are there are awesome to work with. One of the best reasons to work for/at Acxiom Digital, everyone is pretty helpful and nice; good entry level job experience/skill building, get what you can out of it and move on.

Cons

- Long hours
- people being promoted for seniority reasons and not necessarily skill level - major fail
- not enough proof readers / queue gets backed up
- no real action taken on issues that are brought to managements attention
- bad coffee

Advice to Senior Management

If you're going to ask the opinion of your employees it would be nice to see some sort of action plan that is taken and actually followed through and follow up with that employee, instead of rehashing the same issue every month.

Hire more proofreaders.

Salary should be more competitive to what other companies are offering in order to keep people on.

Pros

Free bagels, soda and coffee.
People are generally nice to each other.
Lots of PDO time.
You get to work with a lot of fortune 500 clients that you can put on your resume.
Casual work environment.
Lower management is good to work with and receptive to feedback.

Cons

The content specialist position is called "entry level" but has no career path and does not give you any meaningful skills with which to advance your career. The level promotions that you can get (level 1 2 and 3) are basically meaningless except for a modest pay raise and have no value outside the company.

The senior management seems to be in a cost-cutting and outsourcing mode. They laid off all of the developers in California and moved that dept. to Asia. They also cut some in New York. Who knows if they will cut campaign services? I think Acxiom Digital is being squeezed by Acxiom the parent company, and there will be continued pressure to cut costs at the expense of the employees.

If you give your notice that you are resigning no matter how far in advance you lose ALL of your PDO time and are not compensated for it. So if you work here, take all your vacation time before you quit.

Acxiom is #12 on the list of worst places to work in America on glassdoor.com.

Do not work here for more than two years unless they offer you a real promotion.

Advice to Senior Management

Real technology companies value their employees and talent. If you cut pay, benefits and outsource the better jobs, you send the message that your employees are not valued.