Competitrack Reviews

Pros

At Competitrack there is a steady working schedule, there is overtime offered, great benefits and, from what I can see, equal treatment of employees. This is a great place to work if you want to get your foot in the door to do some office work (especially data entry). The pay might not be great but, if you are just starting out, it is fair, especially if you earn the bonuses. At Competitrack you are taught to work hard and, from my experience, the management does a great job in helping you make sure you do achieve the bonuses. If you are a hard worker, you are praised for it. If you have a positive attitude and are a self motivated individual, this is a very pleasant work environment.

Cons

The bonus system can be a bummer at times and the base pay could be a little bit more. Since there are a lot of employees there and the preferred form of communication is e-mail, sometimes communication isn't relayed as proficiently.

Advice to Senior Management

Meetings should be held when there are any major changes in client requests because sometimes actually telling and showing employees as a group what changes need to be made can be more effective than sending out an e-mail.

Pros

Growing company; leader in its industry. Very competitive salaries/ bonus, excellent benefits and vacation/ holiday package. Upper management is accessible, fair, and very open to suggestions and input. Top performers can have a strong influence. Many opportunities for learning, keeping up with technological innovation and advertising trends.

For hourly employees (Ad Coders), steady work, opportunities for Overtime, many positions include hourly productivity bonus. Various shifts include morning, day, evenings and overnights. Casual dress.

Cons

Many entry level Ad Coder positions pay $8-$10 per hour to start, and it can take several months or more to start earning the hourly bonus, which is not guaranteed.

Pros

It's a terrible job market and there is a high turnover rate thus just about anyone who can type 35 wpm and has a high school education can easily get a job. There are some very competent and nice management people there but their hands are obviously tied.

Cons

Management does not give promotions based on tenure because they refuse to give pay increases attached to the actual promotion. A person employed for one year has a better chance for a promotion and a pay increase from $10 to $12 an hour. People hired 10+ years ago were hired at a higher rate of pay and they are punished for this by management refusing to give promotions with a pay raise attached. Just imagine going on an interview for a promotion with more responsibilities at the same rate of pay.
Therefore the people who have been promoted are inexperienced in handling the job and mostly inexperienced in handling people as human beings. This would not be tolerated anywhere else at any company. It's laughable to see the incompetence of some "young" management trainees.

Advice to Senior Management

Look at all employees closely. Sometimes you cannot judge the book by it's cover. When promoting inexperienced management trainees, spend more time on how to handle personal, human situations as well as the technical aspects of the job.

Pros

-No one is over your shoulder watching you work.
-There is plenty of work to be done
-Overtime is offered a lot
-15 Minute grace period when clocking in, so your not officially late.
-Slightly better than Minimum Wage

Cons

No matter how much work you complete daily, it is never enough. We are told to be super fast, and with no mistakes but we get not feedback on rules or daily procedure. VP's make the overall rules but this sometimes gets lost in translation as they don't see what we deal with on a daily basis. Often times the program we use to Code ads doesn't work as it should, and the developers don't care.The Bonus system is Bogus.

Advice to Senior Management

Just Listen to the staff. Competitrack has an extremely low Moral & turnover rate, because it appears that we are just factory workers and not people.

Pros

It's a great jumping off point for people who really can't find anything at all to do. It could be a wonderful learning experience as far as this particular industry goes. At the least, you could learn terminology and how processes work.

Cons

You will feel cheated when you get your check. Solid answers are not given once you are past the usual "new job" questions. The hours are not flexible at all. The management presents itself as incompetent. In the TV department, you are told to work fast, and to work hard, but Management has no clue as to what goes on as far as everyday workload, in it's own department. The people doing the actual work driving this company are made to feel like livestock, as opposed to talented workers.

Advice to Senior Management

If you aren't going to pay a fair wage, at least remove the bonus/error system that makes so many people feel cheated. Have your management staff actually learn to do what the rest of your lower staff have to do for their small wage. Don't act like you are giving this amazing gift with this job. It's a job, not a career, and it is well established that there is no upper movement possible. This company has a heavy turn over because all the smart people can't/won't/shouldn't stay long. Most only stay for a few months.

The bottom line, it's very evident that Management of this company doesn't intend/want to actually succeed. Treating your staff like mindless cattle will never work.

Pros

Entry level position. It's available...umm....the last shreds of your dignity are gone when you walk into the place for the first time, so no fear of losing that.

Cons

Any position where that the hiring manager treats like a sales pitch is usually not a good sign. I had just moved to New York to and started working there as sort of a "I'll work here until something better comes along" scenario. Here are a list of dishonest practices and huge cons:
1. A faultly pay system. A coder will make a "base" of 8 dollars an hour, but earn up to fifteen an hour based on how much he codes. More "points" are deducted from his coding for mistakes, thus taking his pay down. The 15 is virtually out of reach and most employees at the 8 an hour flat rate will make between 8 and 9 bucks.
2. Dishonest about vacation. After working at competitrack for 6 months, I was denied vacation because I did not average 40 hours a week. Instead, my average was roughly 39.8 hours I KID YOU NOT!
3. Terrible hours. Shifts start at 6:30 AM. Remember, this is an office!
4. Stingy management: End of year raises were suspended for all workers due to "poor economy" two years ago.

In short, Competitrack is one of the worst companies at exploiting workers I have ever seen. They have a health care plan no employees can afford, horrible hours and bad pay. I've worked professional white collar jobs for the past 8 years(I manage 7 full time employees and a budget now), and this is the single worst job I've ever had.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop trying to deceive employees. If you can't afford to pay them a real salary, don't pretend like you can and that it's based on performance. Stop being overly suspicious of the employees wasting company time. Any company will tell you if you want qualified employees 1) You have to pay them 2) You have to stop searching for every chance to deny them pay/benefits 3) Trust them to do their work. If they can't, let them go.

Pros

Being an advertisement tracking firm, the office is 24/7. The TV coder's job is to watch tons of commercials, file them into the co. database, and do a bit of digital video editing to log them in. Once you memorize the categories they assign to commercials types, various acronyms, how to use the software, and the little rules involved in what they'd take (depends on who's paying them), the job isn't hard. All this is done in front of an office computer, from which you'll have access to years of commercials.

Cons

They can spy on your desktop, since the comps are networked. Since they're severely backlogged, they're anal about productivity. Lunch break's only 30 min. If you want to walk and order from the local Subway and back, that's already 10 min. gone. Lunchroom doesn't even have free coffee. Sign-out sheet's needed for every break you take. If you show up late, but stay late and put in a lot of work, they don't appreciate it. Their machines can log exactly how much work you've done, but they don't use it to objectively gauge your value to the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Use the computer records to find out how much work each coder is actually contributing. Just looking over their shoulders proves nothing. In the early morning hours, people are usually chatting around cubicles, wasting time despite the backlog. Post-morning, nothing has changed except for who's doing the supervising, which gets ridiculously strict and makes the afternoon hours very stressful. You try keeping your eyes glued to a screen, ears plugged with headphones, and hands poised on a mouse and keyboard for 8 hrs. a day with a 30 min. lunch break and see how easy you'll find it day after day. We're adults. We can pace ourselves. And the machines can tell you how hard we're working. Your small-minded, petty rules overseers can't. And it's just demeaning to get chewed out for small things that don't matter.

Pros

The vacation and holiday package is generous. There are some genuinely hard-working, friendly people there who do the best they can with the tools and skills they've been given.

Cons

There is no commitment to excellence. Standards are low, and senior management assumes that they have all of the answers, which they do, because they do not communicate or collaborate with their talented staff. Staff can make suggestions, but they're probably off-target and won't be implemented because they don' t have all of the information to make educated suggestions. So it's a vicious cycle.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat your staff with respect, and consistently view, and treat them as educated professionals. It can be scary to ask for help and advice, but not everyone there wanted to be treated like lemmings. Identify the remaining talent, give them the information they need, and tell them that you value their opinions and talent, then create an environment of true leadership.

Pros

It depends on the department, but you might find it a very down to earth atmosphere. You meet all kinds of people from different social backgrounds. There is a temptation to fall into a group mindset, which is a plus or a minus depending on how you feel about people in general. Vacation and holiday policies are pretty decent, although I've heard that is no longer the case. If you work hard and smart, and are able to rise above petty squabbles and behave in a professional and mature way, with a penchant for thinking quick on your feet, you will be hailed a God and promoted accordingly.

Cons

There is little to no communication between all levels of production. Meetings are held on a sporadic basis and only serve to make everyone feel better about not doing anything fruitful in-between those meetings. Inexperienced management personnel emphasize discipline over production, engendering resentment and counter-productivity. Morale is despicably low, and the turnover rate is appalling. Management in particular is severely compromised in its questionable social relationships, resulting in a complete lack of trust that permeates the office as a whole. There is a general feeling of holding one's head above water, for fear of drowning in the incompetency. Not good.

Advice to Senior Management

Trust your subordinates. Treat them like grown adults, some of whom are older than you, and you will have a work force of grown adults producing the heck out of those work stations. You have power and that can lead to weakness and temptation to use that power to oppress others in order to satisfy your own ego. Resist it, because it will only perpetuate a vicious circle of staffers trying to get over on management and vice-versa. You have to take the higher ground. That's why you're senior management. Your job is to manage, not to police; to enhance production, not stomp out inadequacies.