Take your talents elsewhere
Pros
Benefits - Decent pay for an entry level job - Good soft skills training but few transferable skills
Cons
Biggest takeaway from this review: If I were a parent and my college aged child said they received an offer from ISN I would tell them to run. There is no need to waste a fresh college education on this job. The pay/perks are attractive right out of school but the more time you spend at this company, the less pivoting you can do when you finally leave as few skills are transferable so you will find yourself quickly pigeonholed into narrow job opportunities. If you want to be in finance, find a job in finance. If you want to be in marketing, seek out that opportunity somewhere else. If you want to be micromanaged in a call center - this is the place for you. The first few years in Customer Service: You spend the first 2 years in a call center with extreme oversight. Anytime you need to get up from your desk for any reason (i.e. to use the restroom or get a glass of water), you start a timer that all managers can see. If the timer goes too long, you get an email from your manager asking why you took such a long break. The only saving grace in customer service are your co-workers, who are also recent graduates. You can make fantastic friends here but at the expense of a long term career. The later years on "Client Development": A little bit more exciting than customer service but promotions have slowed down drastically so plan on staying in each pay grade for much longer than your predecessors. Supervisors and above will never leave the company as they are compensated very well and could not receive comparable pay outside of ISN due to their minimal skill sets. You are shuffled from team to team every 18-24 months to keep you distracted from the fact you are doing the same job and not getting promoted. Additionally, the "job scope" for each role is so broad - you are an account executive + business developer + project manager + instructor = longer hours and inefficient process that don't impact the bottom line. By the way, you are never trained on any of the above. ISN's "prospecting" efforts are a complete joke, zero investment is made to train employees on how to be effective business developers and few software investments are made to support your efforts (i.e. need an executives phone number? Call every published number until someone transfers you becuase ISN won't invest in simple prospecting tools/resources). They rely heavily on being the first mover in this industry (in 2001), but competitors are starting to surpass ISN's size and functionality capabilities. Be ready to travel - a lot. Again, exciting at first but the expectations are extremely high to visit all of your client sites multiple times a year and some of these facilities are in remote and/or unsafe areas. If you are single without a family it does allow you to get away from the micromanagement for a few days. As for your managers - The 2 best managers I've ever had were here; however, the horrible managers far out shadow and out number the good ones (I had 11 by the time I finished my career here). The majority of managers previous experience (I refuse to call them leaders) was captain of their high school cheerleading team in a small town. In my final years at ISN I was placed on a team where the VP would tell an associate not to wear a certain perfume because she didn't like the smell, or tape your heeled zipper to your shoe and don't ever wear those again because the noise bothered her. If you were in her good graces, stop by her desk and talk about the most recent office gossip (who is hooking up with who) or pull up Instagram to look at the new Real Housewives post. If you weren't in her good graces, better avoid eye contact all together. Management has all the power so don't be surprised to experience highly toxic and emotionally inappropriate behavior from managers and executives with little done to stop their conduct (they actually receive a promotion and additional stock options). The expectations are extremely one-sided. You better be in your chair at 7:55am and don't leave before 5:05pm even if you've finished all of your work but don't be surprised if your manager waltzes in at 9:30 with her latte and leaves at 2:45 because her daughter is sick at daycare for the 6th time in 8 weeks. Hope this helps those who come behind me and inspires you to take your talents elsewhere to enjoy a long and successful career.
