Bernard Hodes Reviews

Pros

Bernard Hodes allows for freedom, and builds an excellent platform to learn about Employer Branding, Social Recruiting, and Digital Marketing.

Cons

Lines are crossed with respect to having policy, so it negates any policy that is put in place. Happens everyday.

Pros

Able to work on interesting, cross-discipline projects and support great clients.
Supported work-life balance (part-time role).
Worked with great people, open to sharing information and supporting or helping others.
Some innovative products/services to close client recruitment gaps.

Cons

Each region operates differently (pro and con), but pricing and level of support can be inconsistent for clients.
Direct leaders fairly capable, but organization lacked overall strategy and direction.
Organization cut or let go really strong, capable people in the past and some of those remaining aren't strong consultants to their clients. Others remaining get overworked because they perform well.

Advice to Senior Management

Set a clear strategic direction and communicate it effectively. Have more consistency in the level of support different regions provide to clients. Too many disengaged and overworked people in the organization. Do something about it.

Pros

Good work life balance at this company

Cons

Hard to advance unless you are really verbal.

Pros

Great learning environment since when others get laid off, you get to work on their accounts too.

Cons

Layoffs, Drama, lying to clients about the team, bad attitudes/morale

Advice to Senior Management

Better pay, recognition and examples of leadership

Pros

Great co-workers and smart people in creative and client services

Cons

Terrible leadership. No idea what they are doing. Total lack of integrity

Advice to Senior Management

Retire

Pros

Friendly place
Large company environment but still has small company feel
Tenured employees available
Individually smart staff
Part of Omnicom

Cons

Lack of vision from executive staff -- no roadmap
Inability to integrate all of their solutions into a cohesive offering
Lack of resources, training -- new employees will flounder as they will not know who to go to
Getting killed by the competition in digital
Still stuck in the old ways and flip flops on key organizational decisions and structure

Advice to Senior Management

Start from scratch.

Pros

- work/life balance - take as much time as you need
- friendly co-workers (most of them)
- nice building (42nd between 2nd and 3rd in Manhattan)

Cons

- no clear vision of what we're doing
- 1980s thinking... not sure they even get the Web, much less social media
- senior leadership holes up and never gets out to the network or clients
- extremely poor internal communications
- silos everywhere

Advice to Senior Management

Get out of your offices and go out and meet the clients, see what's really going on in the world. Communicate with your employees more often, more candidly.

Pros

Nice London office, and the restaurant is great!

Cons

No management skills, Communication was awful! General cultural attitude was poor and there was a lot of back stabbing. No compassion. Known in the industry as a terrible place to work.

Advice to Senior Management

Get some management training! Learn how to cultivate your team or clear out shop at the top!

Pros

The benefits are good. There are weekly snacks in the New York office.

Cons

No communication from the top and little effort to engage employees (despite those being the cornerstones of what Hodes tries to sell to clients).
No raises in the past three years.
Massive layoffs hurt morale, irreparably.

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate honestly about the state of the company. If raises aren't possible, offer other incentives. There are loyal people at Hodes, but they won't stay in a stagnant/failing company for long.

Pros

- Employees overall are nice and much older than your typical large scale ad agency which you would expect individuals normally to be 19 - 28 years old on avg.
- One of the world's largest agencies that specialize in recruitment advertising.
- A very robust salary which is nice during these times of the economy
- My role was condensed to all primary functions as tedious responsibilities were outsourced to our Account managers which is pleasant to avoid invoicing/IOs and other tasks.
- Higher management are very open & polite which is something I'm fond of in any agency.
- Facility is clean and quite peaceful... a little to peaceful in certain times.
- Work Life balance is superb. Working past 6pm is something that rarely occurs hinged upon the amount of work you're capable of completing at a given timeframe.
- Location was great where I have access to convenient transportation.
- Surprisingly great benefits in terms of coverage

Cons

- Environment is very dull and lacks exuberance.
- No training sessions
- Based on a much older crowd, life outside of work is non-existent as everyone have families and other obligations. You tend to miss going to exclusive networking events working under a large Agency with strong media contacts across different industries.
- Career advancement is something I can't comment on due to circumstances but account planning teams tend to be small around 2 - 6 people which I presume upper level roles are rarely open.
- Specialization of recruitment strategy has it's lack of true "Think Outside" the box strategies since we're solely focused on ROI constantly as opposed to delivering on both true branding & efficiencies together in my opinion.
- Redundancy is something that is part of this organization due to our specialization in this field unfortunately.
- Interaction is minimal as everyone has an office and open cubicles are very limited especially communication.
- All agencies have their pros and cons but in this particular case you'll notice how dull & un-challenging it can be at times which may encourage you to join other large agencies as training & challenging projects are not offered at this particular district. People may find this comment peculiar but I enjoy learning as much as I can and being challenged as ultimately your competing with others who are highly trained in your field and poses a threat to future opportunity down the road. I'm very pro-active in terms of developing my skill set and learning as much as I can.
- The agency has many many great positives which is hard for other people who work extensively especially those who work after 12am constantly to understand these cons I've mentioned but it's overall boring many times but you have to identify ways of improving and learning new things.

Advice to Senior Management

The agency as a whole needs to improve the environment to encourage better interaction and the work itself. Training sessions in the 2011 year is integral to better performance on large scale accounts overall. We have to remain competitive in this field in order to grow exponentially in this robust market & provide the best optimal service we can provide against our competitors.