The Nielsen Company Reviews

Pros

personal development, full market view, presentation skills

Cons

Focused on data from retail audit

Pros

- Good work / life balance
- Competitive benefits and compensation

Cons

- Too many moving parts - requires special effort to coordinate across all the various groups
- Promotions can seem unfair

Pros

Wide array of tools makes career growth accessible and domain knowledge acquisition easy
International company with international culture makes office life interesting and creates personal growth opportunities for employees
Good work is rewarded, if you are talented you can go far in a short time
Management is open to change and thrives on innovative thinking

Cons

Numerous business units often leads to beaurocracy and inertia
Capacity constraints were frequent leading to unfavorable work/life balance
Some business units can be disorganized and work in silos

Advice to Senior Management

Keep going; current trajectory is positive and making Nielsen a company to watch and a better place to work.

Pros

Many opportunities to make lateral moves.

Cons

Not a lot of promotional opportunities.

Advice to Senior Management

Too much emphasis on developing just graduated college talent vs. experienced talent.

Pros

freedom to make your own schedule

Cons

job security-3 big layoffs in less than two years

Advice to Senior Management

stop with the layoffs

Pros

It was wonderful and inspired experience with intelligent people in Nielsen.
Academical culture is the best Pros. that you've never experience other organization.

Cons

It is difficult to keep work and life balance in The Nielsen Company.
Too many request from clients sometimes.. you definetly need time management skill!

Advice to Senior Management

Please just consider of making efforts to promote the welfare of the employee.
More training for entry level analyst to increase their knowledge of related industy.

Pros

- Free communication btw manager and analyst
- good training program
- resource sharing

Cons

- there may be bottleneck of your career after several years
- some projects can be rush

Pros

Nielsen offers great brand recognition for your resume making it a great place to start your career.

There are a lot of young people working there which creates a good workplace atmosphere--if you don't mind being supervised by people 1-2 years your senior.

The company is turning around and might be profitable again soon.

Their business model is changing rapidly; this could create some good opportunities.

In Chicago, they have an office in the burbs and the Loop making it easy to choose which office to work from. Also, it seems easy enough to work from just about any major city in the US.

Cons

Frat-house management techniques--for example: my first week there, the VP noticed i left my computer on my desk over night, so to "teach [me] a lesson," he hid my computer so I'd think it was stolen. When I complained to HR, they just said, "that's the way he is!"

Benefits are terrible--They only match 1/2 of your 401k contribution which vests after 3 years. Health insurance has a $1000 deductible. This makes it impossible to work here if you have kids or ever plan on retiring. Pay is also on the low end.

Highly political atmosphere. Because they hire an army of young people, supervisors do not critically evaluate performance. Instead they rely on superficial traits and biased feedback from directors.

I never really had the chance to work with people who were really experienced and knew a lot about the industry. All the people I interacted with were young folks hired out of college with no real-world experience.

Way too much outsourcing. I almost think then next move will be to hire IRI to do their analytics!

And the worst part of the job: you have to work with clients who don't give a damned what your reports say.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat employees with more dignity. Remove managers who have a record of disrespecting employees. Improve training programs.

Pros

flexible work enviroment, WAH, attire, etc.

Cons

Poor benefits, constant layoffs and cost cutting, big paydays for Sr. Execs.

Advice to Senior Management

Bonus policy is terrible.

Pros

interesting industry - tv ratings and all the interactions are fascinating. lots of IT and technology, although they are trying to move as much as possible offshore

Cons

you are competing with indian contractors who are replacing US citizens (story on CNN and fox news). pressure cooker atmosphere is many areas.

Advice to Senior Management

pressure cooker atmosphere and constant layoffs = lower productivity and lower profits. Make a clean cut for functions that are offshored and assure competent folks of a minimum employment time.