SEEK Reviews

Pros

- work-life balance
- best in world standards
- done wearing shorts and sneakers
- fun but ocussed

Cons

A bit of a boys club
Sometimes a bi of a jewish boys club

Advice to Senior Management

Live the values more

Pros

- successful business
- smart people who are passionate about what they do
- fun, informal culture

Cons

- small with pretty flat structure, so limited room to grow
- most of the growth has been achieved already
- some people have stayed on past their use-by date (too comfortable)

Pros

People at seek are approachable and open. There is of course politics everywhere but there seems to be less of it here than most places. Its a successful company with an optimistic outlook

Cons

Has the feel of a family run business sometimes. Which is mostly good, but sometimes means decisions are made without a clear line of sight or responsibility.

Advice to Senior Management

keep doing what you're doing. This challenge will be harder and harder to achieve as the business grows but it is fundamentally what will give the business an advantage in the market place and continue to make it a great place to work.

Pros

Sound fundamental business with good future
Clear strategy
Market leader
Great, passionate and inspiring people!!!

Cons

Flat structure - little room for promotion
In adequate incentives - the big money is for very few!
Delusions of honesty
Tough to leave!

Advice to Senior Management

Please delegate decisions to empower staff much more - particularly operational decisions
Have a clear and agreed operational plan. No problems if that changes but there would be efficienies if we had a base case plan to work from
Do more, analyse less
Share the huge profits more

Pros

Great culture, forward thinking leadership, a real interest in developing staff, profit sharing, great work life balance, a fun place to work.

Cons

I don't see a lot of downside, maybe a flat structure so not really the ability to be promoted upwards.

Advice to Senior Management

You are doing an awesome job. Paul and Andrew have created a great company that I love to come and work at.

Pros

SEEK has won numerous awards over the years as being a great place to work and these are well deserved. Big streegths are very social work scene, relaxed enviornment, great offices (from 2007), high performing and very successful company with a positive vibe in the workplace. People who work hard and get things done tend to do really well. People don't work long hours and there is a really strong focus on the happiness of the workplace and the workers as well as the company performance.

Cons

There's a disconnect with the relaxed / social / party culture and the fact that its a high performance workplace. A lot of people get mixed up by the culture thinking that it means you don't have to work hard. Just because the CEOs can wear board shorts in the board room doesn't mean its a holiday camp and working in the call centre doesn't involve call centre type work. There's a tough intellectual playing field of seriously smart people at management and more senior levels which means its hard for more junior people and newcomers to present ideas and get them implemented. The company retains a lot of staff because its a good workplace, but this is a negative sometimes because it cuts off new ways of doing things. Its not really very clear to a lot of people how decisions get made but the company performance shows that smart decisions are being made. In some departments like IT and Customer Service, the external perception of what SEEK does in these areas is quite different to the reality - IT is not really a core part of the online business that outsiders might think it would be. The economic environment in 2008 means that sales culture which is used to having it easy will be quite demanding and tough for the next couple of years.

Advice to Senior Management

There's a risk that the executive and senior management are becoming more isolated from the shop floor as the company grows.

Pros

Seek is a very social place with lots of fun social events, lunches, after work drinks, the worlds best work Xmas party and lots of good looking young people. They have a well equipped break room with free espresso coffee, table tennis table, galaga etc. Seek senior managers are talented, strategic thinkers from a consulting background who make a lot of good decisions about the direction the organisation should go in. If you develop strong friendships and social connections with the inner clique who run the place then you can do very well and look forward to early promotion at a young age.

Cons

Seek senior managers are very hands off and have delegated their people and process management responsibilities to a group of young, inexperienced team leaders and managers. As a result there are some poorly organized processes and working methods which make it very difficult to meet expectations and there is a lot of politics and favoritism toward the IN group.

Anyone who threatens this group of young managers and team leaders by criticizing the way they do things or by competing with them for promotion is undermined and forced out through a ruthless campaign of false accusations, constant criticism, faultfinding, humiliation, malicious gossip and slander. Some managers turn a blind eye to this. Seek HR and other managers blame the victim and participate in the harassment.

The result of these poor human resource management practices is that quite a few high achieving people who challenged the status quo have been forced out with serious psychological injuries. Some have been unable to work again for some time.

Working in this environment is like being a high school student in the movie "Mean Girls"

Advice to Senior Management

Recognise that you have a serious cultural problem and fix it before you end up in court.