Nielsen Business Media Reviews

Pros

Many learnings achieved. Various client exposure

Cons

Work/life balance is not met. Salary is low. High turn over

Pros

The best reasons to work for Nielsen are the (perceived) high-profile media company , compensation packages, including 401K, health benefits and sales bonuses.

Cons

The upper management runs this fascist office as his personal fraternity house and staffs his chapter with pretty little (incompetent) sisters and sports-befuddled brothers.

The parent company is so entrenched in print media, which is in a continued downward spiral, causing them to make rash decisions and resulting in poor hiring choices of under-qualified employees.

There exists a completely confusing corporate direction with little or no regard to anything other than bottom line performance standards. Employees never receive compliments for meeting sales goals, working well with clients or attempting to create a fair and enjoyable teamwork atmosphere.

Senior Management bases decisions on outdated and irrelevant accounting reports vs. customer feedback.

Advice to Senior Management

Try spending time and money to locate and hire qualified professionals to drive your business, open clear channels of communication and grow the fragments of good business that is still available.

Instead of focusing on historical successes, think creatively and work WITH your account base to be the arm of their company that realizes value from exhibiting at your trade shows. For example, do you really think you should waste time forcing your salespeople to MAKE their account base waste money on digital web banner ads? Your websites suffers from trickle traffic and there is absolutely nothing to gain by the lack of exposure.

Re-purpose your trade shows not to perform strictly on momentum, hobbled by a marketing department that is proud to send 5¢ postcards and email bombardment to attract exhibitors and attendees.

Pros

A great place to work for those who are self starters and self motivated

Cons

Little support or leadership from upper management and those in leadership roles.

Advice to Senior Management

The leadership needs to lead and communicate clearly to empower the team.

Pros

The people were amazing. The work and atmosphere was perfect without any issues. Overall good job and people.

Cons

Too many projects. To many buffers between QA and business. Some miscommunication would occur. Hard to obtain documentation.

Advice to Senior Management

None at this time.

Pros

Publication at the time was well regarded and the subject matter was fun and interesting. Nielsen benefits were excellent even though the employee contribution costs increased each year, which was to be expected.

Cons

Other than cutting cost or find a buyer to buy the publications, senior management had little in the way of strategy for transitiioning publications to the digital world. Content was treated as a commodity and eventually, in depth writing and innovation waned.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest in staff and content. The digital space calls for trial balloons and experimentation in order to discover what works. Create a work environment where staffers can try ideas without a fear of retribution during the learning process.

Pros

The lower level employees were very good to work with and were very good at their jobs.

Cons

Upper management did not value their employees at all. Absolutely no positive feedback for a job well done only the thought that you could have done better. Good people are pushed out of their jobs or are left with no chance of promotion. When customer service takes a back seat in a tough economy, there is a problem.

Advice to Senior Management

Clean house in upper management and you'll be much better off.

Pros

Large company with well known products, up to date work technology, great pay

Cons

Investment group owners more concerned about shares than products or employees; giving one person the job of 5 people in order to maximize operating costs but product quality suffers; inflexible about time commitment outside of your job

Advice to Senior Management

Think more about employee productivity that is positive and more motivational rather than drones to make the share numbers look good.

Pros

Very repubtable media company in the industry
Above Average Compensation and benefits
Some Opportunity to travel

Cons

Very cost driven company, they count pennies and then ask you to search for them in your desk drawers!
If you don't agree with management, than its a "take it or leave it" attitude.
Senior Management make decisions based on management and accounting reports vs. customer or employee feedback.
Male driven office. Perceived chauvinistic attitude from Senior Mgt. This is Atlanta, think good 'ol boy network and the few women toward the top have the biggest kiss ass attitude I've seen.

Advice to Senior Management

Cutting costs drastically has led customers to associate greed with Nielsen Business Media. Customers are leaving the Alpharetta office quickly because of Senior Management's decisions and arrogance. Pretty simple concept: Customers want to experience value and be thanked for their business, not be nickeled and dimed, which they are. Value your customers and it will return 10 fold, especially in a recession.

Cutting staff and services have led employees to be stretched so thin, mistakes are made, customer service suffers and morale is low. Bring IT & Finance back to the US, outsourcing these departments to India will come to haunt you. The lack of cohesion internally between India & the US led to significant mistakes that were consistently made when dealing with customers. These huge probelm are costing you more in the long run. An example is when Finance in India double and triple applied customer's payments to their outstanding invoices. Customers called to get refunds, confusion ensued and then US employees had to clean this up. It was a complete mess and India didn't take any responsibility and was very unhelpful in trying to quickly resolve this huge problem.

Lastly, Greg, don't forget the little people, you know the "worker bees" who keep the sinking ship afloat. You were a Marine once, "semper fi", make this your mantra to your employees. Employee interaction isn't a bad thing but I do realize a spreadsheet won't talk back to you. This may mean you would have to <GASP> talk to lower level employees.

Pros

High profile media company with quality products

Cons

Disengaged parent company, improper structure, lack of leadership

Advice to Senior Management

Have a plan and stick to it

Pros

My supervisor is a good person and is very considerate of me.

Cons

The company has limited opportunities to advance one's career. There has been rampant layoffs in the past year and most still to come.

Advice to Senior Management

Leadership does not appear to be making the right choices, and the morale is very low, since most employees are aware that their pink slip is coming soon