Pros
The people. The majority of people at Airfoil are friendly and overall pleasant to work with. Accountability. Every employee is held accountable for their actions. If a deadline is missed, there is no mystery as to who is at fault. The size. Because it is a small agency, each employee can feel that they are key to the success of business. Learning. Oh my god, you will learn. You will be forced out of your comfort zone. You will do thing you've never done before. It might not be the most enjoyable way to learn new professional skills, but it is the most effective way. Results. Airfoil maps to specific goals for each account. These goals will be met, no question. These goals also require hard work from each team member. If you work hard you will generate meaningful results. Relationships. This is the best place to be if you want to build relationships with national and local media outlets. No politics. I've always avoided office politics, but I didn't find myself needing to here. Because there weren't any. The majority of Airfoil employees are empathetic and understanding when it comes to personal matters. Flex time. The flex time is a nice perk if you previously worked at a place that does not offer flex time.However, it is frowned upon to frequently take advantage of flex time. It's typically used for appointments and emergencies. The work day "officially" starts at 9:00 a.m. You'll sometimes need to come in earlier, though. Development. Leadership makes a conscious effort to continue the education and professional development of its employees. The quality of this education can vary, but employees are encouraged to give feedback about training programs. Experience. I am convinced that while work at Airfoil you WILL improve professionally in every possible way. The industry knows Airfoil turns people into supreme professionals. In the three weeks after leaving Airfoil, I've been contacted by six recruiters.
Cons
These are personal opinions based on my unique experience at Airfoil and should absolutely be taken with a grain of salt. Some of these cons may be your pros: The on boarding process for new employees is anemic. I was introduced to your new teams on day one. On day two I was expected to seamlessly integrate into these teams. It is a baptism-by-fire approach and it the least efficient way to introduce someone to a new role. Employees can be assigned up to six accounts (this number does not include new business accounts). This makes time management incredibly difficult, which creates a high stress environment. If your previous job was not fast-paced and guns-blazing 24/7, you will struggle to keep your head above water. Roles are not specialized. All employees are expected to conduct media outreach, develop pitches, write bylines, create and execute social media plans, develop weekly/monthly reports and address a variety of one-off requests, among a plethora of other tasks. Culturally, email and instant messaging are used more than face-to-face and verbal communication. This inevitably leads to a higher degree of depersonalization and miscommunication, especially when working with other Airfoil locations, which creates conflict among employees. Management seems to take a passive approach to scope creep, instead of fighting against it. In other words, if a client has an oddball request that is out of scope Airfoil may follow through on it. New ideas can be met with criticism or rejected immediately. A *very* small number of people have an inadequate understanding of professionalism. For example: arriving late to meetings. Leaving meetings early before anything was accomplished. Working on other deadlines during meetings. Demanding someone's time for an impromptu meeting. Using profanity in a non-humorous fashion at inappropriate times. Time entry. Each employee is expected to report their actions for every quarter-hour of the workday. This is understandable from a billing standpoint, but people tend to over or under exaggerate how much time they spend on a specific task. Example: Can you recall what worked on last week on Tuesday between 11:00 and 11:45? This goes on for every hour of every work day. Upward mobility. I never knew if there is opportunity to move up in the company. I would ask my supervisor and they wouldn't know. It just seems to happen based on time and/or performance. Promotion criteria was a mystery. Overall, Airfoil gets 3 stars. Like I said, I loved the people, the challenge and unparalleled experience, but certain negative cultural motifs unfortunately made my time at Airfoil a roller-coaster of extreme highs and extreme lows. If you want exceptional PR experience, apply here and interview them well.
