Pros
- Progression in pay if you stay in the good books - Company vehicle & fuel card - Semi flexible working - Good quality products - Good starter job, great for CV - Regular new products - Internal lead system helpful at times (however it mostly is just lies as it is a commission metric)
Cons
Products broken down into divisions. Higher ticket divisions have metrics but are more relaxed than the lower ticket item divisions. APAU and SENS (two lowest ticker divisions) are hammered on metrics it's the only thing they care about. Phone calls, meetings and sales with 0 REAL strategy. These metrics are semi achievable at first but completely unsustainable. 5/6 divisions overall which means you share customers and all you do is contact people who have been called numerous times in the same week. This makes it very challenging to create and sustain customer relationships. All engineers make the same groan when you tell them you used to work for keyence and laugh at how pushy and annoying the sales team are. Quarterly bonuses are mostly based on metrics so everyone lies through their teeth about meetings etc. Diesel company car is awful for UK tax purposes will reduce your net pay a huge amount. They do not inform new starters about this at all. Travelling to London office once a month frequently is on a Friday and the office hours are rigidly 830am till 5pm so if you have travelled far say goodbye to your Friday night with no exceptions. Graduate hires only so management are entirely Keyence mindset, not open to much change and can't see any other way to sell (much better ways available) than the standard keyence method. You will hear from recruiters they do not leave because they aren't seen as real management to other companies so their salaries will never be matched. One of the main reasons it is graduates hire only is because they want people who dont understand what level of work they are asking for, they ask a lot from you and other companies would pay more asking for less. They know this and rely on your lack of industry knowledge to get away with it. (Main reason it is a good starter job but definitely move on after 2-3 years). Lots of driving with expectation that every road day starts at 830am and your last meeting starts at 4pm. If your area is hours away from your home this leads to long days and overnight stays. Never personally had a problem with HR but heard rumours that conversations can be used negatively. Website forces engineers to use contact details and leads must be followed up. Again frustrates the customer with far too frequent contact. The turnover level of sales employees here is very high which explains all of the above. Many people don't last a year and the average tenure must be about 2 years.
