Hanover Research Employee Reviews about "upper management"

Pros

The company culture at HR is very unique in that there is a work hard-play hard mentality and employees are encouraged to enjoy their time outside the office together. Many company- and team-wide incentives like happy hours, boat cruises around the city, and sports outings are offered. Competitive compensation balances out the not-so-competitive salary. Good opportunities for growth if sales is something you are interested in pursuing long-term. Because of the Associate-Director-Managing Director relationship on each team, upper management is easily accessible and very willing to listen to any recommendations/hesitations you may have. Run-ins with upper management is very common and not something you find at every company.

Cons

While HR is valued as a meritocracy, majority of the C-Suite Execs are quite young and haven't experienced many other companies outside of HR. Because of this, there is room for managerial improvement. As for the role itself, sales is sales so make sure you know what you're getting yourself into before you dive in. The job can become tedious and frustrating, and it's easy to feel like you are putting in more time and work than what is being produced and recognized (which is typical of many jobs).

Pros

Great camaraderie among research/lower level staff Work isn't too difficult if you know how to be efficient

Cons

Low pay Upper management is not at all invested in lower level staff despite pretending to be

Pros

Hanover is a good place for two types of people: those who need a job fast and young people straight out of college. If you’re an okay writer in need of a paycheck, you can tolerate work at Hanover until you find a real job. If you’re a recent grad, you can actually do pretty well for yourself, as the high turnover rate forces the company to promote people quickly. In general, you can learn a lot at Hanover – but NOT because they will actively teach you anything valuable. Beyond basic introductory training, the professional development is pretty shoddy. However, the tight deadlines and unrealistic expectations will force you to find a way to develop your project management skills.

Cons

Hanover is a mid-size firm with the sophistication of a startup and the bureaucracy of a large corporation. The firm is run by inexperienced people who know far more about sales than about research. As a result, product quality is all over the place (basically as good or bad as the researcher assigned to it). Upper management seemingly has little interest in hiring or retaining people with expertise in research. There is no downward communication at Hanover. Every few months or so, the executive team will announce some new effort to communicate – a “monthly” email that comes out once and never again, a “quarterly” newsletter that comes out once and never again, a promise that sometime soon there will be an email about something (though that email never comes either). The lack of transparency contributes to a fair amount of paranoia and rumor-spreading. Also, the fact that they deny that there is a communication problem (or a turnover problem, or a product quality problem…) will make you feel like a crazy person. I could write for pages about all the ways that Hanover is poorly run from a business standpoint. Suffice it to say that if you have an MBA, if you’ve ever worked for another company, or if you’ve seen more than three episodes of Shark Tank, you will be taken aback by the level of mismanagement and lack of professionalism.

Pros

Overall, the people who work at Hanover are talented, enthusiastic, and generally pleasant to be around.

Cons

Decision-making sometimes seems a bit haphazard in upper management, with priorities shifting or lack of follow-through on identified areas of need.

Pros

My peers were lovely and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them.

Cons

Research at Hanover consists of googling random key words to produce 20+ pages reports in 3 to 4 days. The expectation is that in 3-4 days you not only conduct extensive research on fairly complex topics but also that you create tables, visuals, and magic. You must work at least 10-12 hours a day with no breaks to achieve that level of perfection. You are incentivized to work long hours because project evaluations will address any insignificant mistake you make because of those tight timelines. Further, the expectation is that after 3-4 intense days of researching and heavy writing, you also find the intellectual energy in you to come up with appropriate and clever recommendations to the client when you actually have no clue what the client actually needs (you don't possess this knowledge because you rarely get to engage with clients) Mid management is unaware of what it means to actually manage people. Content Directors are either 20 something that got promoted simply because of their tenure at the company or external hires that are completely ignorant of any serious research methodology. They all excel at drafting emails where they completely change the scope of work, an art that confirms how terrible they are at providing guidance to the researchers. But it is not even the directors’ fault for being that awful because they are overworked too. While Directors get to evaluate researchers on every single project, researchers never get the chance to evaluate Directors on their work. Some Directors have no clue how to conduct research and don't realize how impossible it is to turn flawless reports in 3 days. Don’t bother complaining to HR. They are busy fixing the coffee machine. Upper management is a bunch of white frat boys that have no clue what leadership means. The CEO's not-so-secret dream is to pay researchers less to work more and more hours so that he can afford a new leather chair.

Pros

They have many telework or flexible work options, even pre-COVID. I work on one of the smaller Content teams on which there is a great deal of collegiality and a good team environment.

Cons

The work is intense at times, especially in a client-facing role like Content Director, and upper management is increasingly disconnected from the day-to-day lives of their employees and can be a bit tone deaf. Once you get to CD level there are virtually no opportunities for advancement. There is a lot of talk about diversity and inclusion but leadership is overwhelmingly male and white.

Pros

I’m not sure where some reviews come off with positive and gushy things to say. I must live on a different planet. If you read anything positive it’s because these individuals have low standards. Hanover 101: products lack quality and consistency. Target clients are middle market companies who join because of Hanover's cost effective value prop. For the little guys, it's all about the Benjamins and Hanover sells itself on price. If you're a type A perfectionist stay away. You won't have the time or resources to do a quality job and it will drive you insane. You may be intrigued by Hanover receiving #16 on the 50 fastest companies in the Washington DC area ranking. This growth is deceiving because when you look behind the curtain you'll find that the ship is sailing without a captain. Every Hanover strategy is short term and fails to consider long term implications. It's always 'how do we save this quarter?!?' rather than 'let's build a road map with ROI three years from now.' Failure of upper management to challenge the CEO's short term theories is largely responsible. I get that you were successful in creating a custom market research firm, but that doesn't mean every subsequent idea is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Cons

For the TLDR version and all you Tinder users: I advise you to swipe left on Hanover. First off, I anticipate a CHRO response to this review. Don’t believe it. Words are words and actual changes to back these comments are about as rare as finding Santa and Rudolph on Christmas Eve. People Most Hanoverians are fresh from school and riding the post college bro-ski high (sales/development/whatever you call them). I can't tell you how many times I heard unprofessional discussions on the floor or heard stories from other people. HR is "trying" to bring in people with outside experience for managerial roles, but it proves challenging to retain them because they aren't brought in at the proper level. You start at the bottom and they give you the spiel of short review cycles to allow you to move up the ladder quickly. Enter: the age and experience complex. Years at Hanover are more important than years before Hanover. Read that again. You’ll have to suffer working with people in higher positions that lack outside experience and are younger than you. Let me clarify, I’m all for smart, qualified people advancing, but these individuals are not Steve Jobs caliber. It’s hard to want to emulate or take direction from someone that only has 2 years of Hanover under his/her belt (for some context a 1 year work anniversary is akin to celebrating a 50th wedding anniversary – it’s rare these days because "society is so disposable" paraphrased per an HR email). As a result, if you need a mentor you’re not going to find it here. Additionally, they’ll gloat about personal managers, but that’s a joke. Instead, they should just be called “managers” because it’s all in the luck of the draw who you get and unfortunately, most managers are poor. Interpersonal skills are prime managerial traits that most Hanover employees lack, or better yet some believe they have which makes them delusional. This sentiment is expressed in other reviews. It’s still true. Exhibit #1092209: Mine took no interest in me and was not concerned for my career development at all. And don't get me started on the whole "managing up" shindig. Any relationship (professional, personal, etc.) is a two way street. When the other party fails to deliver, you can manage up all you want, but it's not going to move the needle. At the end of the day, if you want to feel valued this isn’t the place for you. Maybe it’s my years of experience, but I’ve worked at other places where it’s not so blatantly obvious that we are just a gateway to more dollars. No matter how much you like work, if the people are awful it will impact your work satisfaction levels. As that dude says in the Men’s Wearhouse commercials: “I guarantee it.” Pay If you’re not in sales or account management, pay is static without real performance based bonus potential. In Content, you may receive an increase at review time, but they are also known to just promote you to a new title without a pay bump (I've heard this on multiple accounts). While this looks great on your resume, your bank account will be like the Sahara desert – barren. My advice is to go elsewhere if you have high rent and student loans to pay. I had several years of experience including a graduate degree and my starting salary was difficult to make ends meet even with a roommate. I have a spreadsheet in excel tracking all expenses. If you think that’s a fun exercise every Saturday morning, then this is the place for you! Talking with your manager about a raise is most likely fruitless. If you don’t reward people for good performance reviews, the incentive to do a good job flies out the window. Work If you’re in Content, expect to stare at a computer all day with minimal collaboration. Yeah, you have Content Directors, but they are busy trying to retain clients and you’re pretty much on your own to get the job done. I’m not sure what they tell you in HR (it’s been a while for me), but ask to meet with individuals who have the role you are applying for. I did not do this and regret it.

Pros

A lot of room to grow. If you're hitting your numbers, you can see multiple promotions in the first 1-2 years. Great job for recent graduates, as it's a great place to begin to understand the corporate world. The training program is next to none, and truly sets you up for success. Excellent exposure to Senior Management and C-suite level employees. Genuine camaraderie exists between all teams.

Cons

Hours can be long, especially if you are not hitting your numbers. Being a self-starter is very important - hitting goal is expected and therefore you won't often be celebrated personally for doing so. Often takes bringing something to upper management multiple times before seeing action.

Pros

Hanover is a place where you can get your footing in the research world--they hire directly out of school and serve as a reasonable introduction to market research in terms of the methodologies and tools that you use. My team was full of wonderful people who really banded together to support each other's work, and I know there were other research teams that felt similarly.

Cons

The cons vastly outweighed the pros for me, for the following reasons. 1) The people aren't supported, and internal politics rules all. All the researchers I knew, including myself, felt extremely disempowered when it came to impacting research methodology. On a monthly basis, if not more regularly, I would strongly recommend certain ways of doing a project to make it the most successful, and I was always dismissed by my manager. Internal politics among middle management also routinely caught research associates and analysts in the crossfire--using erroneous claims about our work quality to undercut other managers, but injuring the analysts' reputations in the process. 2) Tight timelines. The apparent goal is to please clients, but some clients know better AND it's not a good business model. The company grew too fast and invested in sales rather than sound research and strategic client targeting. As a result, researchers felt that we were constantly pressed with tighter and tighter timelines, with no room to experiment, learn, or even to do our best with each project we were given. 3) No reseach expertise among upper management. Fellow analysts and I routinely recommended against doing a project that sounded unfeasible--with the tools available, it was clear to us from the beginning that we would be unable to execute. 95% of the time those warnings fell on deaf ears as the manager had already proposed and promised the work to the client, and we were told to 'just try our best.' Then of course, when, as expected, the project was unsuccessful after many months of failed attempts, we bore part of the blame. That was unacceptable.