Run for your life - Anonymous employee The CEO Magazine Employee Review

1.0
15 Jun 2021
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Let’s start with the positive: -You will develop a strong sense of smelling crappy sales techniques. -You will learn how far you are willing to go and how much you are likely to put up with to earn money. -You will learn that there is no such thing as lying when it comes to sales, and that there is no such thing as sales when it comes to lying. Yes, that one is a thinker. -You will become okay with being brainwashed into thinking that you work for a great company. -You will be made to feel important when you make a sale and you will believe that feeling will last a long time. -You will have a great topic of discussion at cocktail parties when comparing notes on job environments with your friends. -You will learn no to bother learning someone’s name because the turnover of employees at the CEO Magazine is so high it might earn them a Guinness world record someday. -You will develop patience when dealing with toxic masculinity, cliques and fake friendships. -You will come out of this experience a stronger, wiser human being.

Cons

There isn’t enough time or space to list all the cons. Let’s mention a few, shall we? For starters, please be mindful that some of the “positive reviews” are likely written by the staff to help balancing out all the negative comments they’ve received over the years. This company will lure you in with a sketchy business model and you won’t really know what you have signed up for until weeks later. You will then come to understand just how much lying is involved, which will come at the cost of your integrity and good morals. The pay isn’t good enough and you will be expected to put in crazy hours to keep up with the ridiculous sales targets. Blame culture is omnipresent and it is understood that you won’t have the opportunity to stay and/or evolve within the company unless you make them money very fast. You will hear over and over how great of a publication it is, which is a big fat lie. When it comes to numbers, readership etc… more is more at the ceo magazine. Bottom line is they will chew you in and spit you out until you leave or they fire you. I can’t go through all the details and talk extensively about why this is a toxic company but I hope I gave any future victims an idea of what to expect.

Explore other reviews about The CEO Magazine

5.0
5 Jan 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great company, great culture, fun environment.

Cons

No cons, I enjoyed my time at this company

5
avatar
The CEO Magazine Response
4y
Thank you for your review, it's fantastic that you are enjoying your time with the company. We do put a lot of effort into our client relationships and our focus is to ensure that every client remains a top priority, this is always an area of positive feedback and it's people like you who make this happen so thank you for everything that you do.
1.0
11 Feb 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The pay is decent if you're hard working.

Cons

There are a lot of serious problems with this company. The most serious I think is a deeply rooted toxic leadership culture which severely limits the company's ability to innovate and improve. There's a knowledge gap in the leadership team on how to effectively lead (quite ironically) which yield abusive workplace environments; bullying, inappropriate and misogynistic behavior, and intimidation were all common in the office. The magazine itself is NOT authentic journalism, nor is the content of the articles the focus; it's all about the advertisement. The interviews are typically scripted (the same script for every interview, regardless of the interviewee), and are a ploy to get a list of suppliers who might be willing to pay for advertising (and if they don't, the interviews won't be published, unless the interviewee pays for it). It's a clever business model, but completely disingenuous and intentionally not transparent. The articles are therefore vapid, homogenous and have fewer average readers than this review will likely receive. That's probably why the company turnover rate is as high as it is. There are some great people who work there, but most end up leaving after they realize how the company operates.

27
avatar
The CEO Magazine Response
4y
Thank you for reviewing The CEO Magazine, it's important for us to see how we are doing and also where we can make improvements. We are a fast moving, ever evolving company so we admit that we don't always get everything right and always take the time to reflect on the feedback we receive. As much as we appreciate your feedback and will always investigate all comments received, I do not agree with your statement about our Leadership Team. We appreciate that there may be skills gaps in our company and teams and as with any company we do make mistakes, we do however have a very diverse Leadership Team which is an equal 50/50 gender split and each and every member of this team works hard to promote inclusivity and equality, it is extremely important to us, our Global workforce is a 54/46 female to male ratio split and we encourage and support everybody equally within the company. We always obtain feedback from employees who leave our company and have never received any such feedback so it was certainly disappointing to read this. Your feedback about our articles has been taken onboard. We are always looking to create content in which our readers enjoy, our Editorial team consists of a group of qualified and very talented journalists who regularly receive positive feedback from our clients about the editorials they create. The publishing industry is exciting as no two publications are the same, each creates their own tailor made content and we are no different. It’s natural therefore that not everyone will enjoy our content and we accept that and understand that it's important to respect those who do not but continue to write compelling content for our readers that do. As you worked for the company you will know that we are now fully digital which provides full transparency on readership figures. We are the first to admit that, as with any publication one of our goals is to increase our readership, we are however very proud of our current 250,000+ monthly readership figure and 3,7 million brand reach and will continue to work on increasing this over time. Employee engagement and inclusion are our top priority and this includes our employee benefits. We are a growing business and appreciate that there is much more we can do to support our employees and our aim is to continue to do this. We are proud of our company benefits which go above the minimum requirements with extra initiatives such as shortened working weeks and flexibility with working conditions and we do obtain feedback from employees on benefits and initiatives to ensure we remain an Employer of Choice. I would like to thank you once again for your feedback and sorry to hear that you did not have a good experience with us, as you did not provide this feedback when leaving the company we have been unable to investigate your comments fully. I would therefore encourage you to contact me directly to discuss it further so I can ensure we can make the necessary improvements where needed.
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All