What is the hiring process like at THG?

Good hiring process. First received a quick call to discuss the role and then in more detail through a Teams call. After that, I was notified in less than a week that I got the role! Training is very chill and you are really guided through all of the processes, so that you can be completely ready for the role. My role is fully remote, which I think is great! Would love to see more fully remote roles available at THG.

No bad experiences so far!

Summary: THG is an amazing place to work if you like a place that is fast-paced, I would go as far as to say THG is one of the fastest workplaces I have ever seen. THG also offers oppertunies to work with new technologies and allows you to build your experiences and skills with those technologies. The best thing however at THG is the people - some of the best people I've ever worked with have been at THG. More details: I spent eight years at THG and view that experience as time well spent. The company provided me with unique, career-defining experiences and equipped me with a broad transferable skillset. What truly set THG apart was the unparalleled opportunity to collaborate with exceptionally talented individuals who actively pushed me to develop my own skills even further. Although THG's fast-paced type of environment can be overwhelming at times, for those of us who thrive under pressure, THG most certainly provides a rewarding challenge for those who want to develop their skills, or even be pushed towards developing skills that you might have never pursued otherwise. The discount codes and on-site store were a very handy thing to have, however their usefulness does only go so far if you're not inclined to the beauty or nutrition products that THG mainly provide.

Summary: THG suffers from poor senior leadership, lack of transparancy from multiple divisions (such as payroll and the people teams), and provides very little compensation in relation to the amount of work you are expected to provide. More detials: I dedicated eight years to THG and I wouldn't have done that if I didn't truly adore the job, however I still did make the decision to leave. My decision to leave was driven by multiple factors during the later parts of my employment with them. The first would be the nature of the company (mainly its senior leadership) tend to be focused on self-preservation over employee support and benefits. I'll mention this again further in the review, but THGs senior leadership never seemed to suffer from a lack of bonuses or pay raises like the majority of staff did, this is especially true for the CEO. Another issue with THG would be the lack of transparency over multiple processes, this includes a constant shift in work-from-home policies, last second contract adjustments, and very poor communications on such things as redundancies and pay reviews/promotions. Pay reviews, bonuses, and promotions were dependent on a deeply flawed performance review system. The process was characterised by inefficiency and ambiguity, causing confusion among both employees and managers. Despite getting the top scores on multiple performance reviews, no bonuses were ever to be seen by most employees and pay reviews often came in as little as a 1% pay raise. I could go into a lot more detail on this process as it's potentially one of the most painful things THG do to their employees. This was a key point I made in my previous review of THG back in 2022.

Nothing apart from the discounts but even then that’s terrible.

- Full time office work, no flexibility if you have an appointment, you’ll be told to take annual leave. - No training, you’ll be thrown in the deep end and won’t be given any support. There’s only so far you can go when you’re new and you’ve not been told processes etc. - If you’re in a creative team it’s hard to get creative when you’re around people all the time, there’s barely any meeting rooms for the size of the business/ no where you can go to get some quiet time. - Management is poor, no one knows what they’re doing, the lack of organisation is insane. - You get no support from your manager and they will throw you in the deep end and you’ll end up being there scapegoat for things they haven’t done/ things that go wrong. - Staff turnover is next level. Was only here a short time and the amount of people who left in that short timeframe / “left quietly” is insane. - Far from city centre. There’s two buses in the morning and two in the afternoon. The first gets you there at 7:50am but doesn’t pick you up until 4:30pm - so you end up doing an extra 40mins at work everyday. You have to queue up in the afternoon outside the office and if you’re not there between 4-4:10, you most definitely won’t be getting a space on that bus. - Micromanagement - the level of approvals you have to go through to get something signed off when it shouldn’t be apart of some people’s job role. - Had a few experiences where someone would criticise my work in front of my manager and say my work is not very good while I was sat right in front of him. - You’ll never get any praise here - you’ll work at events doing 14 hour days back to back with no thank you or great work after. Instead, they’ll just go straight in with anything negative. - When you leave they’ll gaslight you into making you think you were the problem , HR have no sympathy and are rude with no people skills. - They’ll lie to you during the hiring process and tell you you’re hired for specific things just to get you in because they struggle for staff as it is. - The THG reputation really lives up to its standards… avoid at all costs. - This place will stress you out and ruin your mental health but you will always be the one that’s the problem because they think you “can’t handle it” - Don’t think you can grow and progress in your career here. You’d be waiting a life time. You don’t want to be a senior level at this place. - Place is full of senior people who are genuinely just awful people.

easy interview process, nice fellows

No progress if you dont know people, micromanagement with no perspective, no empathy to employees and discrimination

Some granular and technical processes in the business which can at least help upskill during your time here.

Incredibly toxic overall - micromanagement at all levels with SLT sat all day making decisions that should be handled by people 3 levels below them. Far too many people all trying to wade in on decision making meaning a lot of things go around in circles and never actually come to fruition. Extreme blame culture and passive aggressiveness - I have never been spoken to in any company the way I was at THG, everyone below director level is spoken to like a child and treated as if they are just starting their career; you can have a decade of experience and will not be trusted to make the simplest decisions or listened to at all. People are humiliated by SLT on a daily basis, and it is all standard practice. Output expectation is about 3x what is realistic for the actual workforce - everyone burnt out, unable to actually deliver everything, no time to prioritise or even review workload because you will constantly be spinning a million plates. I spent two years working evenings, weekends (unpaid) and probably an average of 60 hours a week and still didn’t have enough time to do so many things. New hires will most likely leave within 6 months - over my two years at THG I never had a full team and had to hire for an entire new team twice. I hired 5 team managers in 2 years, 4 of whom didn’t last longer than 2 months each due to micromanagement and rudeness from other internal teams who gave them no chance to find their feet and also due to the SLT they were exposed to. I had several members of the team pushed out of the business whilst in their probation for quick cost cutting, and the business attempted to frame me as the decision maker in this process which I had to refuse to prevent any legal repercussions. Extreme favouritism. Specific employees who have been at THG a long time will be favoured without even trying to hide it - and they all succeed at THG because they adopt the passive aggressive, micromanagement, “loudest person in the room” persona. The irony is all of these people have zero leadership or collaboration skills, despite having a lot of knowledge on the products and trade mechanics. Entire teams can complain about them repeatedly and the business will always turn around and blame the team instead. Zero focus on processes or workflow because they are so focused on daily numbers. The company is huge and yet doesn’t even have a basic project management tool. Team structures are messy, sign off processes are absolutely insane if they even exist, and no one ever has any idea how to actually make things happen because there is no clarity on any of this. They don’t even have a performance review tool - it is just scores submitted on an excel sheet sent to HR, with no one able to see this or access it. And all this because the business likely sees it as an “empty cost” with no ROI. Because of the culture and the issues over the last couple of years, this has been magnified with everyone ready to throw each other under the bus at every turn. Directors will happily throw entire teams under the bus just to avoid being pushed out, and it happens every single day. Blame, blame, blame. It is a school playground rather than a professional workspace. Eventually, I mentally clocked out completely because my mental health declined to the point at this company where I couldn’t even enjoy my personal life or find energy to do anything except try and physically and mentally recover whenever I could. I have worked in fast paced international businesses - I can handle pressure. The only way to succeed at this company is to make it your entire identity and sacrifice a huge amount of your personal life for it - no thanks. Executive leadership all have millions in shares and expect people on £30k salaries that don’t even get annual bonuses to show commitment by staying late and working overtime constantly - and seem confused that they won’t. The CEO often speaks about the company comparing it to tech giants like Google and how employees should be honoured to work at THG. The company makes money yes, but that is it. Everything else is a complete mess at every level with absolutely zero company benefits, and this is really starting to show in its numbers. Revenue declining, waves of redundancies, more and more quitting all the time - they are frantically trying to sell off divisions and reverse the flow but it is far too late at this point. It is really startling how disconnected leadership are from the actual core issues of the business. Overall, I only stayed as long as I did because of tough job market conditions - I cannot express how relieved I am to finally be out of there and to reclaim my life.

They'd give a chance to grads but probably cause they want to spend the least possible amount of money on staff - you'd have a LOT of responsibilities from day 1 but no guidance no support no lead no mentorship.

Got into THG as they were hiring through COVID - interview process was quite weird and didn't seem to require any skillset to get through. The whole company runs on processes that don't make sense and they wouldn't invest in anything to help with efficiency - but wouldn't get additional staff either, so you just ended up overworked and not having a clue of what you were doing. Bonuses are discretionary and given to single individuals within each team, which only creates competition among peers and literally what's the point?? I guess ultimately the culture they created is beneficial just for senior management and for the very few who manage to climb the ladder (solely on connections not on merit).

Joining THG has been a great experience. The onboarding process was smooth, with comprehensive training tailored to my role. The work environment is dynamic and modern, with supportive colleagues. THG values innovation and offers numerous opportunities for growth and development. While the fast-paced nature can be demanding with a steep learning curve, the supportive culture and focus on employee well-being make it worthwhile. Overall, a fantastic place to continue my career.

The company sets high standards, which pushes you to continuously improve and excel. There's a lot to learn, but it ensures you're always developing new skills which may be sometimes challenging for new starters.

They paid me my salary.

The worst experience of my professional career. Be prepared for short memories, a lack of resources, evasive feedback, inexperienced staff, a lack of professional and personal boundaries, unrealistic expectations, complicated and unnecessary processes, being overworked, having to justify each and every expense, small-mindedness, non-existent KPIs and finally….being expected to change your whole life for them.

Good discounts that's about it.

It would really depend on the management you're put under. I'm sure there are some good teams/good managers within the business but for the majority... Terrible. Culture is very toxic. Feels like a school hierarchy vibe, the louder you are the more praise you receive, regardless of the context. From the 3rd day I was there my "introduction" had finished and I was expected to be fully accomplished within the role. I made contact to higher management, explaining I would need some more time to understand how the business operate, ways of working, culture etc etc... The response I received was a face to face explaining how I should not be questioning the onboarding process and instead concentrating my efforts in mastering the role ASAP. I took it on the chin, gave it my all for 3 months (with no help from the team or management I was under) and reached out to the same higher management, explaining I've made it up to speed despite the set backs, but I requested if I could have some further leadership/closer management on how to master the role as I was not getting much guidance. Again I was made to have a face to face and was told how ridiculous my request was, and that I questioned the ways management currently work and that had been in position for 5 plus years. I came out of the meeting and handed in my notice and left. Luckily I had accumulated 5 days annual leave from the first 3 months (not using any) so I had the next week off and that was the last of it.

- Work Flexibility - Diverse Experience - The manager I worked with was very personable and understanding about the workload

- Unhealthy work environment among leadership it's very cliquey (First day of onboarding we had dinner at the president's apartment and he could only talk negatively about past employees it was a very stressful work environment) - The job prides itself in data-informed decisions but from my experience, you will show the data to leaders and nothing will be done. - Understaffed so you will be doing the work of a couple of people.