Softchoice Reviews

Pros

Coming out of college, a great compnay to get your feet wet with. Young people, young manager, easy going work environment. Dogs in the office and casual dress. They will train you and let you learn the business.

Cons

Growth isn't always based on ability, but also your ability to join the gossip group. It feels a bit like high school or an episode of the office at times. They make it tough to seperate work and family while still growing. They endorse unprofessional behavior at times as long as those individuals are hitting numbers. They build a culture of work hard, play hard. The same mentality is going to limit their high end growth potential in the industry.

Advice to Senior Management

Stay connected to day to day sales activity and don't focus on the bottom line. Grow yourself by doing and leading, not just managing.

Pros

The benefits serve quite well and the occasional happy hours are nice.

Cons

Supervisors/management are hardly there for you- they often place unrealistic expectations but aren't there to guide, support, or encourage professional growth. Hardly any work/life balance, they make you crank out results/sales in additional to providing excellent customer service to clients- the workload of 3-5 people get placed on just you alone. The job can be extremely stressful, definitely a cut-throat company and I not recommend this place to anyone.No positive feedback to employees and supervisors only look out for themselves and how they can advance faster. There are many other company's in this industry that will look out for your professional growth, health, and happiness, so choose them instead.

Advice to Senior Management

Consider hiring more reps to spread out the workload. I think many complaints I've heard and experienced myself come from the feeling that we can't meet expectations and hence we become burnt out. The company is placing a tremendous amount of pressure on the reps- hire more people instead of allowing overkill workload.

Pros

-good culture
-fast paced training that will make you learn alot over a short period
-excellent internal resources to help you sell
-relaxed environment where boss doesnt hover over your shoulder
-cold calling made easy where customers are receptive and wiling to do business if you listen to their needs and wants

Cons

-expect too much sometimes when hard to sell in competitive industry
-commission takes while to build up
-complex products selling at times

Advice to Senior Management

doing great, give you the advice you need to succeed

Pros

The benefits at Softchoice are pretty good. Some individual managers were good. Unfortunately, it seems the best ones are no longer there.

Cons

As any public company, decisions are based upon quarterly results. Some things are not easily quantifiable, but management believes they are. Sell, sell, sell...everyone...any way possible.

Advice to Senior Management

I think management would do well to realize when they do not have the answers and seek some professional advice.

Pros

Decent benefits, dog friendly environment, fun events/happy hour

Cons

Worst possible training for new employees, no positive feedback-only negative. No one to guide you in the right direction or show you how things are supposed to be done correctly. Management doesn't care to see you succeed and when you aren't meeting expectations they let you go without warning.. Too many politics involved and too little focus on performance and growth as an individual within company.

Advice to Senior Management

Happy employees make good employees.

Pros

Contrary to what some of the naysayers have said below - I think this is a great work environment!!

Cool office, great people, competitive benefits, lots of opportunity (I still think this and I have been around for a while), fast paced technology industry, good development programs, regular performance appraisals, weekly one on one with my manager, solid company reputation and financials are strong.

Cons

Unfortunately people who don't want to be here for whatever reason stick around too long... probably because they realize the grass is not always greener. They should hurry up and leave so this isn't such a downer for everyone else. We actually have pretty good employee morale otherwise.

This is an environment of lots of change and we're super busy...this may put pressure on work life balance for some.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the focus on creating a great work environment. Employee surveys are good tools and we should be able to see more actions coming from them.

Pros

Benefits package is second to none.
Informal work environment if you're not in Sales.
Trendy office with dogs

Cons

Poor pay scale in Operations. Gap in salary between a worker and a manager is stark, especially if the (newly promoted) manager has no management experience.

Too many managers and not enough experienced people doing actual work. This leads to one person being relied on for a number of non-overlapping tasks.

Bring your dog to work is being abused by newbies, so this means there are too many dogs with different personalities. This leads to conflict and distractions for others without dogs.

Forget about raising your concerns to HR partners. It seems that sole job is to protect management and ensure the workforce is duly subdued. Concerns, complaints and even outright reports of discrimination are swept aside as 'misunderstandings'.

Training department that doesn't know how to use the internal tools, and disavows actual training of new recruits.

Advice to Senior Management

You want to make sure you have your finger on the pulse of Softchoice? Mandate regular (quarterly) company wide reviews as part of ongoing improvement. Make these truly anonymous and confidential. Compile these results and have an independent external agent review and make recommendations based on these. Relying on internal checks and balances has failed you before, and it will fail you again.

Pros

Corporate culture, Dogs at work, Employee gym, Great people, Six sigma training, innovative technology and a industry leader, charitable organization, green team, everyone has a voice, great benefits, 2 volunteer days.

Cons

The pay I think could be better depending on position. This is really the only con I can currently think of

Advice to Senior Management

Most of the managers I find have a good grasp on how to lead and motivate people and are an asset to Softchoice.

Pros

if you want to sell every IT part in the world it's a great place to be. They compete with CDW and other online resellers while trying to sell high end solutions.

Cons

Softchoice is a very rigid place to work. You are measured on so many metrics it's hard to get work done. Selling a solution is painful as you will be beaten up for not selling Microsoft licensing. If this is your first job out of college then its a great starting place, but everyone leaves after a few years. Just know that going in.

Pros

The place had amazing benefits.

Cons

Extreme micro-management. No communication from management of how they expected the job to be done, just how it wasn't done right. No consistency across departments (some departments would come in at 9:30 and leave at 4:00, while others were expected to be in the office from 8:00 until 6:00). No positive feedback, only negative.

Advice to Senior Management

I would make sure that all management is on the same page when it came to the employee experience. I would also encourage a little positive feedback from time to time. It's nice to be told when you're doing a job right, and not how horrible you're doing.