Pros
If you have a modicum of intelligence and some base cunning, you can work at IQPC until you find something else. If you enjoy terrestrial television, have never done anything more interesting than holidaying in Spain, and can partake in corporate life without any sense of irony or show any interest in current events, you'll probably do fine here. If you do intend to try and ride it out until something else crops up, most of your meetings will be about having other meetings, or other inane topics that could be decided in an email but we have to justify the salaries, so you'll need my Corporate Survival Tips: 1. During any meeting, make sure that you nod - on average, three times per minute. This shows you're interested, and paying attention. 2. Frown sometimes - it shows that you're taking it seriously. 3. Whenever someone makes a point, say the exact same thing in a slightly different way when they're done. You'll need a good vocabulary for this need to think quickly on your feet, which puts most IQPC employees out of joint, but if you're smart and just there to play the game, you'll probably manage it. 4. Use language and phrases that you think are utterly ridiculous but everyone else takes seriously. For example, if someone says they'll send an email to someone else, ask 'Can you cc me in on that? Just so that I'm in the loop', and make sure to regularly say things like 'I'll circle back to you'. Nobody else will be saying them with irony, but you can enjoy it for yourself.
Kontras
Cons Before I go on to explain the reviews, I shall outline my own disastrous IQPC experience. I was hired due to my experience as a journalist; I'd served as Assistant Editor for a Brussels-based newspaper, as well as a foreign correspondent for the British press. I was told that Defence iQ was a website dedicated to defence news, which suited me just fine; I was interested in the sector. In the two interviews I had before my hiring, I outlined what I would do in the role. They nodded, smiled, and ultimately offered me the job. The only thing they'd said was 'sometimes we run events'. I had no idea that the whole point of IQPC was an 'events company'. So there I was, hired because of my journalism experience, but suddenly part of a bland, boring, and soulless marketing team. My title veered between 'Editor' to 'Content Manager', although I was never required to edit so much as an email, and although I had the title of 'manager', all of my ideas had to go through two other people: one of them had all the entitlement and arrogance of the born buffoon, and the other seemed disinterested and distant. There were some nice people on the marketing team, and I have a lasting friend in one of them; to be fair, it wasn't their fault I didn't fit in well. I'd had an interesting career in journalism, so I was never going to have much in common with people who knew little and cared less about the outside world. But two characters win the gold and silver medal at the Corporate Parody Olympics. First up was my manager, a woman I shall dub 'Little Miss Micromanager', whose fake friendliness was the 'I can't believe it's not butter' of corporate smiles. Now, I'm not someone who holds the idea of 'management' as a discipline that you can study in overly high regard: you're a leader, or you're not. But she - like many of the others - was a cardboard cut-out of a corporate parody. Oh, it wasn't just the fake smile, and the affected informality which hid the sort of thinly-veiled toxicity that you only find in those whose intelligence is (to be charitable) on the mediocre scale. It was just the lack of curiosity of the outside world, the fact that 'the company' was the be-all and end-all. If it was one of the financial titan firms I'd understand, but not this. Because I felt that she was constantly breathing down my neck, I Googled 'micromanagement'. The definition of intrusiveness under the guise of being 'involved' was this woman to the core. Eventually I complained about her not giving me the space to work to HR - her solution? Make me physically go into the office every day, when nobody else was. To cap it all, when I was fired, she (partially) lied about why. The long and short of it was that I'd made a complaint about her to HR, and because I was on probation, I could be kicked out any time. However, during my firing meeting (held online, they wouldn't have the guts to do it face to face), she came on with the HR manager, who did all the talking. She didn't even have the moral courage to do it herself - perhaps because she lied about the reasons why I was being let go. When I addressed her directly, he answered. I think the fact that this was December 2nd or 3rd and they paid me for the whole month is probably so that I wouldn't make a fuss. I should briefly one of the HR managers, because they were just as bad. Another corporate caricature, when we began working for the company, were treated to a warm, friendly speech, in a comforting and friendly drawl, saying that the door was open whenever we needed anything. But when I needed something and asked them to call me, they told me to go through the proper channels. I laughed so hard my wife had to come downstairs and ask if I was alright. Also be prepared for some epic hypocrisy. In one memorable instance, we were told that the team's email writing was so bad, their emails were actually ending up in spam folders. Thankfully I was on mute, because I spat out the tea I'd been drinking (I did laugh a lot at IQPC, to be fair, but for all the wrong reasons). Given that they were being told that their writing was so embarrassingly bad even a machine thought it was spam, I also raised the suggestion that we could perhaps also raise the standard of our speech. I felt that this was important; after all, we were an events company dealing with industry leaders, and nobody on the marketing team could get through a sentence without saying 'like' more than 30 times. This did not make me popular. Oh, I can understand why; I speak with the received pronunciation of my private school background, and doubtless came across as patronising. But if you're aware that you're sounding unintelligent, then...I don't know, perhaps don't speak in a way considered to be the vernacular of the uneducated? Besides, they'd already been told their writing was appalling, and speech and writing are two sides of the same coin. I made the same point to my manager when she said that I'd 'put people's backs up'. I didn't apologise. I told her that free speech entitled me to my views, and anyway, I've been despised by presidents before (no exaggeration, truly). Then there was another senior manager, a wannabe corporate type who was not nearly as impressive as she plainly thought she was, but the crunch came during my private training (during which she spoke to me as though I was nine years old), when she tried to make a joke about how people from Eastern Europeans speak English. Who knew you could get away with that in this day and age? Right, sorry about all that, but I thought you ought to know. Onto the otherr Glassdoor reviews... You might have read all this and thought 'Well, I can ignore him - it's just a chap who was clearly in the wrong job'. Although you would be absolutely right, I implore you to read the other comments and see if you notice something stranger. The negative reviews are - like this one - damning. The positive ones are, for the most part, so overly positive by comparison that it might make you suspicious. After I read one comment that claimed 'All the positive comments are made by employees being told to write them by their managers!' I carried out a little investigation, and invite you to do the same. What you'll notice about the overly-positive comments is that they are always posted immediately after the ultra-negative; what you will also notice is how the wording is also suspiciously similar, if not exactly the same. Anyone listing a con as 'I wish I'd join sooner!' is either a manager or someone who has been put up to writing it, as perhaps shown by the fact that those people are listed as being current employees. Honestly, it's hardly subtle. Take a look - the timing of the reviews is suspicious, since a flurry of positive comments come after some damning negative opinions of past employees. But it's not just this; the wording of all the positive reviews is similar. The same words crop up in the positive reviews. The whole place is a parody of corporate culture. Watch the film 'Office Space', and you'll have a good idea of how boring, tedious, and pointless this company really is.
