NCS Pearson Reviews

Current Employee – been working at NCS Pearson full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Marjorie, the CEO, is a wonderful woman!! We are contributing to education in a great way. If one is to do sales, it might as well be for a good reason.

Cons – Education industry is in a rough state, causing lots of changes.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep up transparency during changes and transitions.

Current Employee – been working at NCS Pearson

Pros – Commitments to work, quality & security

Cons – No vertical growth in teams

Advice to Senior Management – Lower Level teams needs motivation & growth

– I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at NCS Pearson

Pros – not to push, no over time

Cons – slow, lack passion, and opportunities

Former Employee – worked at NCS Pearson

Pros – The pay was great and is based upon your performance. You get several breaks throughout the day which is nice.

Cons – you have to score really quickly to make top pay. But scoring too quickly can cause you to miss too many validity responses, which can send you out the door even if you are a great scorer.

Advice to Senior Management – take time to pick out some good validity responses so your best scorers dont get removed from scoring that particular prompt.

Former Employee – worked at NCS Pearson

Pros – location - great area of the country
industry - opportuity to really make a difference in educating
most other employees - many employees are very committed to helping make the business better, and the education system better

Cons – management - many only out for themselves
political atmosphere - who you konw, not what you know
management - do not recognize high achievers, believe employees are interchangeable
some lazy and underachieving employees - cause everyone to work to the lowest common denominator

Advice to Senior Management – Do not look at all employees as being equal and 'plug and play'. Some employees are better than others, recognize this and reward them. Work to make underachieving employees better, or encourage them to work elsewhere.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at NCS Pearson

Pros – High work ethics within the project management team and excellent leadership. The company has a high dedication to respect personal lives but in return is asking for full dedication to the job. HR is very supportive and benefits are good. Overall it sometimes has the feel of a big family besides the size.
Pearson always strives for improvement and the application of latest methodologies and technical developments.

Cons – Opportunities to grow are limited. There are very capable senior managers that have to make up for other seniority that take advantage of the company size and pose a bad example.
Because of the growing speed of the company departments start viewing themselves as gate keepers, introducing their own rules and forgetting to view the company as a whole. Communication and working with each other are lacking in some places. Between some groups is a disconnect with makes it challenging to fulfill promises made to the customer and deliver to contract.

Advice to Senior Management – Great wealth of excellent people and motivation to provide the best product out there in many groups. But the disconnect between departments and the identification with the product, especially of groups that are removed from the customer, leaves room for improvement to enhance products and make Pearson even more successful.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at NCS Pearson

Pros – I was a temporary employee scoring standardized student exams. The benefits of doing such a position are:
* Freedom to work as much as you want, as long as you meet the minimum commitment for the project and within
* For some projects available work hours are extensive, e.g. 5 am - 11 pm ET
* You can do this type of work all day long as if it were a regular job, or in bits and spurts throughout the day
* Reading student responses, especially for writing projects, can be very interesting
* Support staff are friendly and helpful and available during most of the scheduled project hours
* More advanced projects pay better and provide bonuses for high performance

Cons – * The pay is not that great. Above minimum wage but with no benefits and limited work available, it's hard to get the dollars to add up.
* Feedback on performance varies by project. On one project I received constant quantitative feedback on how fast I was scoring, and how accurate I was. On another this information was not available in the system, whether due to intent or a technical glitch I don't know.
* You might apply in the fall and not get picked for a project until spring of the next year or even the year after. So it's great to be able to do the work when you get it but it isn't something you can count on.
* Communication was sometimes lacking. On one project the pay ended up being below the projected rate because the average scoring rate was much slower than planners anticipated. By the time this was addressed the project was nearly over.

Advice to Senior Management – Seek detailed feedback from scorers during and after project completion to find out what's working well and where there are opportunities for improvement. Establish a system to respond more quickly when scoring for an item is not proceeding as expected.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at NCS Pearson

Pros – casual office environment .
using newest technology ( trying new things all the time ) so that it's easy to find another job
college town

Cons – the software itself is not complicated, and most of the time you just fix the bugs or add a small new function, not much innovation

Advice to Senior Management – real good management .. if do not hire so much interns who are not familiar with the development it would be better

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend