Pros
Family run business with some values
Kontras
In terms of the interview process, everything was very chaotic. A person from their HR department contacted me to schedule and introductory call which we had to re-schedule 3 times - the first time she forgot about it and the other two she was busy. During the interview a different picture of the company was presented, including many opportunities of career advancement and personal development, which never came. The work itself is very basic in terms of project management and translation. The company’s clients are a lot of small companies that request small translations every now and then. This means that project managers and freelancers cannot engage with a client or account and work on quality and consistency. That is the main reason that clients usually complain about quality and request discounts, which are given to them without even asking for more details. The company works mostly with freelancers and has only few internal translators. Their freelancers agree on low rates and are usually pushed to lower them even more in order for the company to 1) increase their profit and 2) to have competitive rates against bigger translation agencies. Thus translation quality and consistency is usually affected, resulting in inability to deliver a good product to the client. Often freelancers complain that they are not getting paid and that they have to follow up Finance for months to send them their money. This creates a negative situation and untrusted environment where freelancers are not willing to work for the company unless they receive due payments. Management is divided in two categories, professional and unprofessional people. There are people who do not have people management skills at all and do not know how to handle situations or employees. I often had to deal with my manager’s mood swings, rudeness and impoliteness. The feedback I received was almost exclusively shared orally (never in an email) and I had the impression that a different version was shared with higher management. On top of the above, overtime was a given and no form of compensation was ever offered for your time and effort.