Pros
The company moves staff up quickly if they are competent to do complicated jobs. They tend to learn commercial real estate in the first 2 years and if they have aptitude, then they learn how to do business and equipment valuations. The staff works about 45-55 hours per week, not like the accounting firms that work people 70-90 hours per week. The head of the company encourages people to travel. Overall, a live work balance is encouraged. Work conditions are typically 9-6 or 8-5 per day. Sometimes with deadlines there is some weekend work, but this really depends upon the appraiser and his or her time management skills. Some of the assignments that the company works on are unusual as compared to other valuation companies. Most companies either do only commercial real estate valuations or only business valuations. This company does a wide range of valuations with probably 60-65% being commercial real estate and 30-35% being business valuations, and +/- 3-5% being equipment valuations. The retirement package of 10% is superior to any valuation business in the appraisal industry.
Cons
While there is training and oversight from the staff, if you are expecting to be spoon fed and not read and study after hours, then this is not the place and probably not the best industry for you. Culturally, employees don't get together for happy hour very often since they often want to finish their work and get home. Deadlines are sometime stressful. The company no longer hires interns from USC, after hiring over 50 people over the last 25 years. Many interns were trained to do business and commercial real estate valuations and went on to great investment banking jobs after graduating. However, in recent years the USC interns left after 3 months since they got bored doing entry level work. The company would only train interns if they were there over 3 months for a 1 year internship. I have noticed that the negative reviews were from interns who expected to be trained to do high level valuations and cash flows, but in many cases made math and spelling mistakes.