14 Mar 2017 Helpful (16)

UKFast.Net Logo

"'Sold the Dream....'"

Former Employee - Lead Gen

Negative Outlook

Disapproves of CEO

Pros

The people - might sound cliched but the people on your team make this place bearable. I can hand on heart say that they are the most talented group of people I've ever worked with, incredibly passionate about what they do. The 'dreams team' (recruitment team) have got this right is the kind of people they hire.

Benefits - the free bar is also a nice touch at 4:30 on a Friday, sports teams such as netball and 5 a side football.

Cons

I worked as a 'superstar salesperson' which is a glorified term for a cold calling lead generation role. I did this role the last year or so.

I used the term 'sold the dream' to describe my time here, this is because this the phrase banded about by the lead generation team to describe how we were promised the world and ultimately the company has not delivered. It is NOT sales role - you lead generate for a separate sales team. In my interview with the MD Jonathan, he told me that the cold calling would be for 3-6 months maximum, however there would people in our team smashing all time sales records and after 8 months to a year they were still in the lead team, stagnating. He told me the sales director was 22, earning 150k a year and had a Porsche... this excited me until I realised when I started the role that the sales director was the CEO's dearest nephew!

Limited progression - you start on a 19k basic and the average commission in the team per month is about £200-250 per month on top of this - not the 35K you are told is achievable in the first year. You have two paths - sales or account management. If you go into sales, your salary actually goes down in the first year!!! They say because 'your not getting as much commission', you worked your balls off for a year and get a salary decrease because you're not getting that lead gen commission. In the other option account management, you don't even get a salary increase from the basic wage upon promotion, again another way not to reward a year of hard work and your life. The salary here is poor, with that being a regular complaint from the sales guys and the account managers. If you want a sales job, this is not a good place to be - you achieve twice as much in half the time for double the money else where.

High turnover of staff - yep, there's a massive turnover of staff. I lost count of the people who left the business in the short time I was there. The common reasons was 'for not fitting in' and being let go or people realising the terrible mistake they had made joining the company in the first place. In the lead generation team, people came and went constantly, 90% of these left of their own accord. The lead generation team are very unhappy in general and this stems from undelivered promises and incredibly tedious work. You are expected to get 2 hours call time every day (and this is monitored, even if the CEO says it isn't in his blog), and it is relentless cold calling. This is all you do in the lead generation team, it's mind numbingly boring and you feel like you're making no professional progress at all. I'd say 60% of the team are actively looking to leave at any one time and fantasise about that day when they actually do leave UKFast. Advice to management - In the job interviews and recruitment, just been honest about what the job actually is! Say it's a cold calling job and you'll doing it for a year or so to learn the ropes, then you might actually get people who want to do it!

Marketing company - UKFast is a hosting provider on the surface but you soon realise that it is primarily a marketing company. I have no problem with this per se as it does an excellent job of it. My issues stem from the fact that you are actively lied to through the social media accounts and the things it says about itself. I just advise anyone to take what they read with a huge pinch of salt.

The CEO - Lawrence Jones - all of the problems come from him. The man has the biggest ego I have ever witnessed. His behaviour is terrible and the way he treats some of his staff disgusting. I've seen him publicly humiliate my former colleagues in board meetings, insulting them and embarrassing them in front of their own team. One of my colleagues was told he was terrible at his job and he need to improve or he will be sacked in front of our entire team. One day, he came down from his office and took our chairs away and said that we could not sit down that day until we passed over a lead to the sales team. He actually left us to stand all day and half the team were still standing at 5pm when he came back down and finally said the rest could have their chair back. He actually thinks this is motivational. He shouts and swears at will, and his tantrums are legendary around the office. As are his womanising ways - a girl left the team and one of the main reasons was because he said inappropriate comments towards her about what she was wearing (he is married and a father). I don't make this comments passingly, he makes women feel extremely uncomfortable and he will no doubt comment on this saying that it's one of best places for women to work in tech etc, but it's the truth. He has a penchant for young women in their twenties (he is middle aged) and this is discussed daily in the office. He also lies frequently, saying no one has ever had a sick day (complete rubbish, lots of people in the team had sick days frequently, which contractually you're not even paid for), youre not monitored, everybody loves working at UKFast. He promises you the world but as many people realise, it's not got any substance.

Benefits - this is what I see a lot on here about the benefits - let's be honest, most medium to large enterprises offer the same things - the trips away (I can confirm to verbier) are hugely uncomfortable affairs where you constantly feel like you're being tested by the management. Lawrence had a tantrum about us not wanting to tackle a slope when most of us couldn't ski. I've had much better employment packages in the past and this certainly shouldn't be viewed as a massive incentive.

Fake reviews - the Disney-overly positive reviews look very suspicious and I would treat them with caution as they look like they have been wrote by management.

Advice to Management

This place has so much potential which is why I felt compelled to write this.

Be honest with new employees - reward your talented staff with a shorter working day and higher salaries. Hours are typically 9-6. Make them feel valued. You have talented people who could easily do account management and sales without the horrific year of cold calling - give it 3 months and actually give people responsibility.