Pros
I met a few talented people and I learnt a few new sourcing techniques
Cons
* Cliquey culture - a lot of favouritism, people being over-promoted and overpaid due to who they know, people getting put on projects due to who they know. I felt really uncomfortable when I went into the office - people who had obviously been friends a long time just stuck together and I felt like a complete outsider. * The CEO is an arrogant fool - he thinks Elements is the best business ever and that he hires the best people ever, but he is deluded. They have lost almost all their clients and cannot win any new business, because their reputation has turned to mud. He doesn't even have the guts to lead the meetings announcing further hibernations of his staff and has started delegating this to his senior leadership team. * The sheer arrogance of the leadership team has been the main cause of the company's demise. They said companies were falling over themselves to work with them and that they had to turn away business. Well, the business they turned away all went to their competitors, and their competitors aren't letting people go - they are actually growing and hiring. * The culture is far too relaxed - people just do whatever they want, work whatever hours they want with no regard to client needs. They take holidays without actually booking the time off and nobody even notices as the managers are completely inexperienced and let their people take the mick. * I heard many people say they get away with just doing a few hours a day and then the rest of the time they just take it easy, as they are based from home and there is no monitoring. And they wonder why they have lost loads of clients when the TA Partners have this sort of attitude. The clients are paying top dollar for a service and they are not receiving that service due to the attitude of the staff at Elements, * They way overpay their staff and then they need to charge their clients premium rates to cover their costs. In a climate where a lot of companies are cost cutting, companies just cannot afford Element's fees and a lot of their competitors are more reasonably priced. * They have no business strategy - they are very reactive and are now just trying to keep their heads above water. * Last year they made everyone take a 15-20% pay cut, but at the same time they hired a couple of senior Execs on 6 figure salaries * They tried to execute an unfair and illegal redundancy process that had no logical or fair selection criteria. They likely got advice that this could land them in hot water so they quickly backtracked and instead hibernated a huge chunk of their workers, meaning they were still employed but weren't getting paid. This lead to mass resignations. * Every month they lose more and more business, and have to hibernate more and more people. Despite there being 6 people focussed on BD efforts, they have won no new business in months. This is likely due to the fact that the BD team are inexperienced. * They pride themselves on hiring the best people in the industry - what a load of rubbish! Most of the TA Partners know something about recruitment, but the majority come from agency backgrounds and aren't prepared for the challenges of working as an internal Recruiter. They also put people onto projects who have no relevant experience and then the Talent Partners spend half their time asking for help and advice from other more experienced Talent Partners as they are out of their depth. * They think everything they do is great (their onboarding, their training, their development, etc), when it's really not * The leadership team do not listen to or take on board feedback - even though their business is failing, they still don't listen to their people In summary, this is the worst company I have worked for in my entire career and I am embarrassed to list Elements on my CV. The leadership team are arrogant and inexperienced, the culture is shocking, the way they treat their people is disgraceful, and the way the business is run is a complete joke. If I could give zero stars I would! Not only would I not recommend anyone work here, I would not recommend any companies consider them as an embedded partner as they have no clue what they are doing.