American Appraisal Reviews

Pros

Balanced work and life there

Cons

Limited space for future improvement

Pros

Like others have mentioned, the staff in the trenches are great down to earth types. I've made many friends here and am still in touch with them.

Cons

You’ll work long hours and have very little time to live your life. No respect at all for a personal life. The hierarchy makes little sense. Why would you have the legal department in charge of the Administrative Assistants or I.T.?!? Corporate policy regarding business processes is regularly written, but rarely followed or enforced. There are groups that just ignore the rules and do things the way they want without concern for what’s best for all departments involved in a project. I felt bad for anyone that wasn’t billable; they were viewed as lower class citizens and treated poorly.

Others here have said it’s like the company is in a constant state of restructuring and I completely agree with that. This company is always looking for ways to reduce costs, but not in a sensible way. Redundant departments are all over the globe. Resources are geographically isolated from each other. Poor leverage of talent; it’s hard to find out who you can engage on a project based on their skills in a specific region. I can’t speak of locations outside of the U.S., but here offices kept moving to smaller suites and people are starting to feel packed in. Employees are catching on and jumping ship. Their best talents are leaving regularly for other firms. A few people told me that months after I left they fired the entire I.T. department, except for one guy, leaving them to mostly fend for themselves. And it wasn’t like the technology was current! I can only imagine the problems people are dealing with now.

You’re paid less than market value and get poor benefits. You certainly don’t get what they claim. They hadn’t made a contribution to 401(k)’s in years. While they say that they offer tuition reimbursement, anyone that asks for it is turned down. Health insurance costs are reasonable if you’re the only person on the policy, but quickly get out of hand if you have a spouse or dependents.
Before I left there were signs that they were trying to communicate the financial strength of the company. However, there were still too many cases of silence in the overall direction of the company. You’re either a made man and in the know or expendable and kept in the dark.

In the end, American Appraisal is poorly run. This is not the same company I started with.

Advice to Senior Management

You try to come off as an elite group, but in reality it's like the blind leading the blind. Get out of the way and make room for those than can actually do some good.

Pros

Small company where life-long friendships are likely to be made.

Cons

American Appraisal likes to reorganize. Growth is not the goal -- rather reduction of expenses is the goal. The company has been without c-level leadership for at least 3 years. The ship is sinking, and the marketable employees are jumping as quickly as this economy allows.

Pros

At the beginning of my tenure there, the company was a great place to work. Training opportunities were there for the asking. Management actually knew (and cared) about the employyee as a person

Cons

Once Ron Goergen left the firm and Joe Zvesper took the reins it just wasn't a the same place. Joe is a nice enough guy, but not suited (nor tried for that matter) to the company's corporate culture. Employees used to be a top priority then. Certainly not now. Zvesper has detached himself from almost any interaction with the staff other than the upper management people he bought in from the outside. He often refferred to long time employees as "legacy employees". Like being loyal was something to be looked down on. Slowly over the last four or five years, they have moved out anyone who had long term ties with the firm and gotten away from their original appraisal firm model. They have bought in a lot of people from accounting firms who don't have a filed view of the industry and are constantly making decisions based more on how much money they can save rather than how much money they can make. Poor, very poor management model

Advice to Senior Management

It's probably a little late to fix much of anything. You stopped listening to the "troops". Your key assets were ALWAYS your people. Not the carpetbaggers you've been bringing in.

Pros

Pay is good for junior level employees
Location is great

Cons

No respect for work/life balance
Upper management doesnt know how to communicate with lower level employees

Advice to Senior Management

Hire some people that know how to connect with others across the board

Pros

Overall your peers will be very friendly, helpful, and down to earth. There is truly a great pool of personalities here and as a relatively small firm, you will likely form close bonds and lifelong friendships.

A good stepping stone right out of college.

Cons

The executives don't seem to understand how to grow the business as evidenced by many failed endeavors. Very quick to give up on an idea instead of seeing the process through. A complete lack of vision on their part and an environment where no one is willing to stand up and make decisions of any kind. As a result, not much ever really gets accomplished. There was always the sense that they were in a constant state of restructuring.

American Appraisal will commonly create a new position, go through the recruiting process, even convincing someone to leave their current employer, only to decide a few months later that they should not have created the position at all and fire the new employee. The termination process can also be very cold. I don't know the actual numbers, but it seemed like there was always a high amount of turn over.

In most cases where someone leaves the firm, that position is rarely restaffed, so this would not be a circumstance for someone else to move up the chain, most of the time. There isn't much chance to move forward in your career at all. This might be a good first job out of college, but you'll quickly out grow the company and need to start looking elsewhere.

Advice to Senior Management

It should not take months or even years to make the simplest of decisions. If your executives are never willing to pull the trigger on anything, maybe they shouldn't be your executives.

Pros

It is a medium size firm, a safe private employee ownership firm, has a global international coverage, has good work environment, has well IT support, and opens opportunity for continuous professional development and education.

Cons

Though some company decisions and acts seemed to slightly lost in touch in the last view years during the bottom of the recession, overall everything is still in control. I have no cons against the executive decision.

Advice to Senior Management

So far the company management decision appear to be in the right direction. However, in adjusting the firm business format and professional sources to meet market demands need to be more careful.

Pros

The company has lots of turn over so if you don't like your manager wait a week. I would never work here again

Cons

It was just to much work for too little pay, i hope to find something in the same industry sooner rather than later.

Advice to Senior Management

I am do not know joseph p zverper, but i can say that he seems like a nice guy and I never really worded hard so.. hmm.

Pros

Good place to start from college.

Cons

Innovative minds are a threat to management.

Advice to Senior Management

Welcome 360 leadership.

Pros

If you want to obtain airline and hotel points you can easily do so here.

Cons

There are many downsides of this company. I rated everything a (1) based solely on my experience with the company. This was an honest assessment and not one based on a that of a disgruntled employee. As a new employee there was no support or training from management or co-workers. From my experience your schedule for travel was given to you at last minute. For example you may be told on Friday that you need to book a flight Sunday for the week, returning late Friday evening. There is no per-diem for your time away from home. Only a very modest food allowance. The company is an appraisal company that doesn't require you take any appraisal courses during your employment. They do not support their employees in becoming licensed, I think the main reason for this is because they want to keep your pay as low as possible. I know people who have been there close to a decade and have barely gotten raises and no this was not due to performance issues. This company also does not support diversity in anyway be it ethnic or gender. The benefits are not good in any way.

Advice to Senior Management

I would say the company needs to be revamped from the top down. Senior management needs to place experienced leaders with good communication skills in place of the inexperienced managers who are currently running many of the offices. A comprehensive training program should be implemented for new hires. Licensing should be required for employees who are preforming duties of an "appraiser". The company should assist these employees in obtaining licensing be it by having deadlines for qualifying education or making it mandatory to have an up to date assignment log. The main issue I see with American Appraisals is the incompetent, disorganized employees at all levels.