Pros
This list is in no particular order: - Amazing health benefits: Blue Cross/Blue Shield medical, Delta dental, and vision coverage - Financial extras: Cash bonus; 401(k) match - 3% fixed yearly match with up to 3% variable yearly match depending on company performance; Company car (make depends on position) with gas card - Moving benefits: Sales organizations move their people a lot. General Mills provides a lump sum moving allowance that changes in value depending on where you are moving and whether or not you are selling/buying a house. The number of people in your family also figures into the calculation. The company also has a "loss on sale" provision for your house. If the market has gone down since you bought your house, the difference in cost will be repayed to you. This has been especially good to me given today's real estate market. When you buy a house, General Mills will pay closing costs. In order to take advantage of these moving benefits you must sign a waiver saying you will remain with the company for a minimum of one year. If you leave before the one year mark you may be required to pay back the moving expenses. - People: The people at General Mills are very social, not prone to creating cliques, and office conversations are always fun. - Activities: Each office has sports teams that play in local leagues. Each office or team will do fun activities such as attending baseball games on a semi-regular basis. - Travel: With my position I travel about once a month. As you progress within General Mills Sales you will travel more and more. This could also be a downside if you do not like travel. - Work at home: If you are located in a field position (not in an office) calling on a customer you will be permitted to work at home. This option is not available to those located in an office. - Casual fridays - Summer half day Fridays: From Memorial Day to Labor Day, all in the sales organization receive half day Fridays. Whether or not you can take advantage depends on your personal workload. - Free samples: You receive free samples of all General Mills products.
Cons
This list is in no particular order: - Non-flexible hours: Basic 9-5 house apply as a large portion of your hours. You will not be permitted to work flexible hours. - Tenure based promotion: It seems that most of the time promotions are done based on tenure and not based on actual merit. The culture really champions being fair to everyone. - Career Path: The sales career path is very fixed and falls more in line with a beaucracy. It may become a meritocracy at higher levels but entry level positions are given a very beaucratic fashion. - Politic-ing: You've got to have your own back. Meeting with management and telling them how well you are doing is a must do. Without personal interaction with the higher-ups that make people decisions you will not be able to continue progressing from job-to-job. - Inexperienced management: Due to the beaucratic nature of the first 3-5 years within the organization there are many managers who don't know how to manage people. This wouldn't be a problem if the company would provide them with a comprehensive training or mentoring program. However, new managers do not receive a well rounded educatio on how to manage. Management usually consists of having your reports do exactly what you want done and avoiding any delineation from the stated process. - No creativity: Entry levels are not encouraged to be creative and innovative on a regular basis. Ocassionally Senior management will solicit ideas but it does not happen often. Senior Management has the ideas and usually pushes them through. I think this is owing to a vicious cycle of them being force fed senior management's ideas when they were in lower positions. - Analytical work: Very rarely is the analytical analysis difficult. It's usually very straightforward. - Administrative work: Admin workload is very heavy. There isn't sufficient centralization of admin tasks. Not enough time is spent selling. Forms and requests are the norm.