Pros
A major positive, that actually kept me there longer than I wanted to be was the associate level (lower than Division Head/Managing Director) people. They are all amazing, hardworking and intelligent people who deserve more that they will ever get from this work place.
Cons
Where to start? Well, the OFFICE BUILDING, the worst location with multiple drug dealers and homeless people standing outside the building at all hours and when you enter the space is tiny (since the company is "growing" you'd think that the upper management, most of which leave before noon, would give up their spacious offices to provide larger conference rooms and more desk space. The WORK, ExL thrives on smoke and mirrors, they advertise and promote their events as larger and better researched than they are, when in reality they allow overworked producers to spend a total of 5-10 hours to research a topic and build an extremely misguided version of what the producer found. They expect amazing events to be put on while offering no guidance. The MANAGEMENT, wow, holy cow...one in particular is an incompetent, compulsive liar who can't concentrate on his job for more than five minutes straight, especially while he was planning his wedding. The CEO and COO (or whatever he is now) were rarely in the office to see the baboonery put on by some management. The COO was arrogant and unwilling to see anything from an employees perspective. The LIES, multiple times within my time there I was asked to misrepresent my events to my speakers, my sponsors and my attendees. One event in particular was accoladed for "closing the books" before a hotel could notice ExL owed them over $2,000 due to not meeting the contracted goals for the event, this was posted and promoted on our internal social site. The ATMOSPHERE, I felt as if I was constantly dodging miscommunication, blame and negativity, in my last months there I was physically ill due to the amount of shady activity, insane workload and horrible culture I had to endure.
