CDW Reviews in Chicago, IL Area

Pros

Free food from vendors, hours are casual depending on the manager you have, management is generally pretty fair to it's employees

Cons

message management from up the chain of command was lacking, there was a serious lack of mentorship in advancing a career within the company. Frequent 'changes' of commission structure are frustrating, and always mean less money in the Account Manager's pockets.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop slicing away benefits, your employees notice these changes. Management is tongue-forked in it's simultaneous lauding of corporate profits while taking away benefits that are no longer affordable. The company and MDP are plenty profitable, and many employees feel they are being taken advantage of.

Pros

You are extremely well trained in product knowledge and how to utilize company resources. You are provided with solid benefits.

Cons

The leadership theme is "micromanagement" from the top down. There are high goals set with high expectations. If monthly goals, set by managers, are not hit then commission is not payed. Every task is closely measured and subject to scrutny.

Advice to Senior Management

The accepted management style when i left in 2008, was extreme micromanagement. I constantly felt that i was being asked to maximize my output to achieve goals set unrealisticly high. I was not profitting or gaining satisfaction from my efforts.

Pros

Excellent resources for additional training from vendors. Less micromanaging than you would expect for an inside sales jobs.

Cons

accounts are very picked over so be prepared to find your own and cold call,

Advice to Senior Management

quite the politics and give the best accounts to the talent not your friends.

Pros

The company has a young workforce.

Cons

The downtown Chicago location has a Frat house atmosphere.

Advice to Senior Management

None

Pros

you learn alot about technology generally

Cons

training has changed from 3 months to 6 weeks
corporate america is terrible
leadership of the company is weak and communication is meager
turnover is apparently

Pros

This rating system needs a bit of a work, I'm a bit more then satisfied but dont think its perfect, so I'm giving CDW the benefit of the doubt...
Tons of resources. I have friends at other technology companies and they dont have 5% of what we are able to offer customers.
Self powered. My managers have never micro managed me to death, allow and encourage me to take time off, visit customers, ect.
location, have to throw this in, its right across from Union Station. I dont even come from the burbs but for those that do its awesome.
Coworkers, work with a lot of great people that are great at what they do

Cons

Some of this will sound contradictory, so bare with me...
Coworkers, since CDW is such a large company I think we get desperate to hire at times. That being said I have seen some morons
Starting off in Sales, it can suck. Base pay isnt much and you need to grow your account base
Work from home still isnt readily available for everyone, in sales you need to be at a top % of your group to get this perk. I feel like we are a bit behind the curve here. IMO proven people that know what they are doing should get to work from home once in a while

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up with perks that other companies are offering in the same field. Do whatever you need to do to keep your senior staff or they will go elsewhere and take market share. Its also better to not hire someone that hire a moron

Pros

Good location
Learn technology - if you are into it
Well known Name in the industry

Cons

Over saturated - to many reps
High Prices tough to compete and make money
Management constantly on your back
Used to be about building relationships now just about how many phone calls you can make, so naturally you have people calling airports/theaters to boost their phone numbers to keep mgt off back.
While some older reps easily clear six figures a year in their sleep. for a new person impossible, you will have to wait 10-15yrs for some of older folks to leave to get their accts. otherwise you will be lucky to make 50-60/yr.
There is a reason why they hire so many reps, high turnover rate.
Used to 100 best places to work for years, not anymore since it was bought out.

Advice to Senior Management

Go back to old ways and let your reps build relationship and grow business. not just make pointless calls. A happy employee = happy customer. While I like the industry and saw potential to make it long term, management drove me out of there after 4yrs.

Pros

When you make nice sales you see nice results

Cons

If you want to really really work really hard you can make a decent paycheck.. must have the good accounts. It can be an uphill battle

Pros

No dress code enforced, you get to use a computer with dual monitors, most of the people are young (under 35)

Cons

No professionalism, upper management is very incompetent, strong focus on "effort numbers" even if you are one of the top sales representatives, lack of communication from upper management on new initiatives, while you do about 80% of the work- you take home only about 1% of the pay, no career path

Advice to Senior Management

While your best employees don't often show up as an "asset" on your balance sheet, the revenue and profit each employee brings in can be measured. Use that as a metric in measuring your best sales representatives as opposed to the "number of phone calls" a sales representative makes.

Pros

In reading other reviews of my company I decided to write my own. To anyone questioning if they should take a job offer from this organization, let me make it simple: DO IT! CDW is not simply a "springboard" into IT sales or any other role for that matter; it is a mansion with endless doors of opportunity. Sure, starting as an Account Manager may be difficult, stressful, and in some respects underpaying, but mark my words that if you put in your dues and simply perform at or beyond your expections (and I'm not talking sales #s, I'm talking effort), you WILL be noticed and you WILL be successful. Want to be the front-line liason between customer and vendor making upwards of $200K a year? Work hard and your time will come. Want to move to Marketing? build relationships with your vendors and you will have advocates to back you up. Interested in Management? Develop your sales skills, display leadership abilities beyond your peers, and you WILL be noticed.

I grew tired of reading people's complaints of this organization's habits of "promoting by popularity and not experience," or "underpaid, work like slaves and make no money".....read reviews from ANY other job on glassdoor and you'll see the exact same complaints. What makes CDW DIFFERENT is the fact that its very culture enables self-starters and hard workers to indeed move where they want to be and make the kind of money they want and deserve. CDW coworkers, from Account Managers up to Senior VPs, treat each other with respect. Executives have an open-door policy and will answer any question you have for them. The company is culturally diverse, and career paths are outlined for those who wish to pursue them. Again, the same complaints you see over and over again can be said about pretty much every other corporation; CDW however stands a cut above the rest in terms of empowering its coworkers (CDW's term for employees) to always be striving for promotion, and getting them where they want to be...nothing comes easily, and you have to work hard to get there.

Cons

sometimes the different sales groups tend to compete with one another, be it inside vs. field executives or even managed services teams. We would all benefit from a more structured alignment of groups working together for a single goal....which I believe the VPs are already working on.

Advice to Senior Management

Please dont take for granted the more tenured Account Managers who have put in their dues to earn large customers; we're losing some great talent due to territory shifts, and our largest customers cannot be easily replaced by new and fresh Account Managers. Other than that keep up the great work!