Unilever Reviews

Pros

Many positions and room for growth

Cons

Poor development of talent in certain departments

Pros

- Ok Benifits
- Free product/company store
- Pay for relocation for most job changes
- Good people to work with
- Opprotunities to advance, in sales functions this may require a move
- Managers who do care about their people, however all of the "rules" some times get in the way of doing what is right for people

Cons

- The "rules" they will promote you and give you more work however they claim the rules don't allow you to get the full salary bump needed
- There is no way to move up in Unilever without taking on managment over people and some people just aren't cut out to be managers and get forced into jobs they are not good at to get promoted it leaves you with some very bad teams to work for
- There is not a lot of connection from the sales team to upper managment to give direction or have an understanding of what its really like in the trenches.

Advice to Senior Management

They have a good vision however they do not do a good job carring this out on individual teams.

Pros

Exceptional best brand practices and training

Cons

HR is horribly insensitive and antiquated, family mobility's a must so it's hard on two career families and kids.

Advice to Senior Management

Fire your HR officers and develop more family friendly career paths.

Pros

"Agile working" so you can get your work done where and when you need to. Yesterday I left work at 1pm so I could see my daughter's concert at school then I worked from home the balance of the day. I'm in a global job so some days I have early phone calls but I can take a long lunch or end my day early - - as long as I'm getting my work done (and I have a lot of work with high expectations), no one is checking up on me.

Also, if you like to travel and can get in the right job, you can see places you wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Cons

Workload can be heavy at times and late changes to what is expected can cause last-minute rework. The company is big and spread all over the world so sometimes communications are difficult due to time zones, cultural and language differences.

Advice to Senior Management

The pace of change creates a lot of waste as people try to figure everything out. It would be wonderful to have fewer re-orgs and more time to make the organizations we already have just work better.

Pros

Great company to start your marketing career and gain multi-brand experience
Given a great deal of autonomy and leadership opportunities early-on
Solid marketing training for new MBAs
Extremely well-respected marketing organization with powerhouse brands
Many international opportunities into U.S.
Smart, hard-working, professional peers
Business casual dress code
Employee-paid shuttle van from Manhattan to NJ location

Cons

Close to no opportunity at Director level or higher
Career development can be too political
Imports Manager+ talent from outside U.S. for U.S. roles (cheaper)
Consolidation has led to extremely heavy workloads
Bureaucracy can hinder speed
Not very innovative
Not enough cross-pollinization between Foods & Personal Care

Advice to Senior Management

Create more opportunities at the Director level and above
Train Managers to manage (some are extremely smart marketers but terrible managers)
Break down barriers and elitism between Foods & Personal Care

Pros

good salary, perfect colleagues, stability

Cons

so-so career development, no manufacturing plants thus job tasks in Supply Chain are not so interesting

Advice to Senior Management

1998-2001 years were better then all time after. Try to return back to initial standards

Pros

1) Unilever has a very relaxed company culture, making the working environment less-stressful compared to other companies.
2) Due to its global nature, employees at Unilever are accepting of colleagues' differences; everyone here is very kind.
3) Unilever has a key focus on bettering the world and the environment, which makes me proud to work here- this is difficult in today's society where 'corporations' in general have bad reputations.

Cons

I have one more meeting with my line manager before the year ends, so perhaps this is premature, but as of now, I feel like I haven't gotten the feedback that I need to move forward in my career- this includes good and bad feedback. I am unsure of my performance since my start date and thus, my place here.

Also, I have recognized that there is a certain amount of discord between teams at Unilever (some people ignoring ways of working, cascade processes, etc) that causes issues in some of my projects. I think there needs to be more connection/bonding between groups (i.e. brand, claims, CTI, CMI, Clinical, formulation).

Advice to Senior Management

I think the promotion process should be made a little bit more clear (between 1A, 1B, 1C, etc) as I unsure what exactly I should be striving for. I need more guided goals.

Pros

Unilever has a great reputation for taking experimental steps towards innovative marketing communication. It's also a great training organization, with high emphasis placed on training new hires. My manager has also been really great in helping me seek additional training to support me in my projects. I was quickly given real projects and real responsibilities upon starting at Unilever, so I've learned a lot!

Cons

It's a fairly bureaucratic organization with a lot of processes to learn and manage. As such it's not always as nimble a marketing organization as it could be...

Advice to Senior Management

Cut down on process work or empower admins to help their teams with some process work to free us up for more strategic thinking and implementation work.

Pros

great culture, great paid opportunities, amazing learning and growth potential, great brands working with, feedback given throughout the internship, great feeling arriving at work

Cons

big company, large corporate feeling at times, many different people to work with on one issue/proiect, hard work, high bar to meet

Advice to Senior Management

might be great to increase online promotion of opportunities at Unilever and in each division. Overall amazing experiences so far!

Pros

Unilever is truly a company that cares about their employees. I feel as though I have recieved such an incredible amount of training and unique experiences that will help me shape my career with them in the future. There is no lack of respect or acknowledgement for the completion of good work at Unilever and it seems like an outstanding place to build a career.

Cons

Some aspects of the communication between Human Resources and employees as well as Human Resources and Field Management has room for improvement but small changes stand to make big differences on this topic.