Soul Crushing - I say this because working at Hawke Media is a GRIND. The business model is set up to be successful strictly surrounding numbers. It's a warehouse/sweatshop environment where you're expected to spit out as much work as possible. You can typically expect to manage a minimum of 6, sometimes up to 11 clients at a time. This is whats going to build that "book of work" I discussed earlier. A typical work day is from 9:30 - 7 and you may need to work from home quite frequently to keep up during busy times. The good news is, if you are working late you will most likely have company!
After working there long enough, I literally negatively changed as a person. From the high levels of stress I developed depression and anxiety, and pushed away a lot of my friends. Granted, everyone's different and if you thrive in this kind of environment you may have a more positive outcome. This is where the "Soul Crushing" comes from.
To the above note, when I say "manage clients" I mean everything surrounding manage clients that I can - project management, relationship management, strategic management, execution of project, scheduling, you name it. One of the things about Hawke Media is that everyone is responsible for their own clients. This SHOULD be changing though as they are finally going to be bringing in Account Managers.
The office space is incredibly lacking, and very dirty. If you are at all a germaphobe, don't work here. They are going to be getting a new office space soon which should be much nicer, but without some sort of work-force to keep the place clean, it will still be dirty / messy.
Very cheap. You are going to be paid way under market for your position - which is why they mostly hire young talent out of school. If it's your first job, or you are making a career change Hawke's a great place to work. When your 6 month review comes around, it takes a lot of effort to get a small raise. Also, raises aren't really based on your individual merit - it's based on the success of your team & channel. So, the amount of money you can make is completely dependent on everyone else you work with and not yourself. This makes things very disheartening come raise time. Also, they give everyone tiny desks from IKEA that are under $100 each and pass around old desk chairs for everyone to use. Hopefully that all changes with the new office.
You will work with some VERY uninspiring clients. New to market, no idea what's going on or how to succeed. Needing you to wear multiple hats for them.. And sometimes just incredibly boring products / ideas. I frequently would think "look what the cat dragged in" when new clients would be assigned. A lot of them are destined to fail without our help, so when they don't see improvements you have to have very stressful / upsetting conversations and act as a punching bag.