According to the PRSA, the national average for salaried pay in 2016 for an Account Executive is 56K. SSPR starts you off at 36K and tries to keep you there for as long as possible.
The company is known as a joke in the PR and tech space. Many reporters have asked not to be contacted by the company because of their spam pitching styles. The Chicago office is a joke. Meant to remedy reporter relations and provide unique strategies for pitch campaigns, when in reality they ask you how you would do something and then say, yeah you're right. But then criticize you for not getting enough placements.
The expectations are ridiculous, to be on sometimes 13+ accounts with expectations to bring in at least 2 leads, per client, per week. There is nothing to learn here except how to spam reporters and damage your name in the industry.
The CEO is known to surround herself with friends and family as her executive team. HR is a joke and actually took away some of the things that made working here fun. The environment is toxic, and very stagnant to your career. HR says they care and asks to hear from us and when we voice our concerns, we're met with nothing in return. Many don't even see the point in talking to HR or their managers because they know nothing is going to change.
They've tried to work on hierarchy and managing employees but when managers themselves can't even seem to stay organized or keep things together, how can someone rely on them for help? They can't. Communication is hard here, there's constant whispers behind closed doors and it just doesn't feel safe. They're quick to lay people off for disagreeing with upper management, knowing they can sucker in some other kid looking for a job which is a big problem with people not feeling valued when people put in more than 60 hours a week here.
I had a lot of high hopes to see this place change but it was pretty clear after two months of the new CEO in place it wasn't going to change at all. We might have pretty stationary, a new website and all that jazz but the company is still the same underneath.
