Pros
Fast-paced office atmosphere, clearly set targets, decent benefits, good starting salary, great coworkers. This is gives you a real lesson of how bustling corporate America is. Employees are assigned markets and depending on which market you have will determine your success. However, for those who think that because you are in a stagnant market, that you will be forgotten about I simply untrue. Your achievements are recognised and you will be placed on a better market or move up in the company. The salary and benefits are good considering how tough the economy is right now. Employees should appreciate this a little more and just get on with the work. You are not going to get your dream job 5 minutes after you graduate. You need to learn to pay your dues. Every career has its tough beginnings and you need to grind it out and stop complaining. Think of it as a step to something better.
Cons
Sudden deadly micromanagement. Grey area of quantity and quality, big brother atmosphere, destructively competitive. The company just acquired its biggest competitor, Loopnet, and with it came back-breaking overtime, and tasks that drain the energy out of you. For those who are hired in the next few months, this is not Research, it's fishing round the country for new listings and getting yelled at by people who have no use for Costar marketing. I feel in a lot of ways that I was duped into my position as I did not feel that a lot of the work I did could be described as research. It really is glorified telemarketing that requires good communication skills with brokers and owners of CRE. However, that was an area that I improved on as I was not initially comfortable with communication via telephone. Finally a company that prides itself on the quality of its idea should take a real look at its employees. People at costar love to cut corners in ways to improve their metrics, just like bankers cut corners to increase their bonuses, and so with it, I have seen plenty examples of incorrect or miscellaneous data. And with the looney acquisition, the company's sudden strive for new listings will also take an effect on data as the workers are being treated like slaves and so do not care about the data they enter.