twentyAI Reviews

Thanks for your interesting contribution to Glassdoor. I'm sure it won't come as much of a surprise that i disagree with a number of your comments. Controversially the first comment i disagree with is pretty much the only positive thing you've mentioned i.e. about hiring great people. Its well documented that I relocated to the US to attack the huge opportunity for us as a recruitment business in the states. The first and major challenge I had to address is that we had lovely people in the business but some were lacking the drive and ambition to execute a bigger vision. There were a number of people happy with being average but as per our company values "life's short" and its too short to be average, so we had to address this and shift a few gears. Some people were able to adapt to the higher standard and some struggled. Our hiring process has subsequently changed for both experienced and rookie hires. I'm pleased to say that a number of performance records have been and are being smashed by new hires, internal transfers and some of the remaining team that adapted well and stepped up to the high performance culture necessary to achieve our company ambitions. If your review is viewed through this accurate version of our company evolution it probably makes a bit more sense. Your frustration has led to a bit of exaggeration / poetic license which is understandable as you are probably personally frustrated that you fell into the category of someone who was a lovely person but just didn't quite have the "right stuff" to excel in a more ambitious environment. The "upper management" at Twenty is not interested in everyone doing the job the exact same way. What we are focused on is everyone being trained and having the tools to provide a great service to our clients and candidates and in turn being successful. When you start out we give you very clear guidelines to ensure you learn your market and gain the skills to do well very quickly, which we clearly articulate in the interview process. Its a competitive and crowded market and we have to be better than our competition to thrive. We are really interested in everyone being on the same page and coming to work everyday motivated to overcome the challenges they face in a proactive way. Its New York and if you can make it here you can make it anywhere!! I do agree that you can move up very quickly in your career and nothing gives me greater pleasure than seeing people that have joined our business fresh out of college, realised the opportunity they have, committed to the company, a career in the recruitment industry and go on to achieve incredible things. These folks in Twenty are getting increased responsibility, running teams / divisions, opening new offices for us and have huge autonomy to do their job as we are confident they have proved themselves to be very capable business people who match the ambition of the company with their actions and are prepared to uphold the standards that make Twenty a great place to build a recruitment career. This week we opened our Berlin office and the young lady leading the way for us in Germany has just under 4 years experience with us having joined as a rookie and is a top performer for us globally!! Finally we research 20-30 competitors every half year for our board meetings to ensure our compensation structures and performance is very competitive. We actually share this information with everyone at our half year global company meetings. I'm not sure where you got your market research about competitor compensation structures but please send me the documentation as i'd like to know how and when the market moved so much. What is more accurate to say here is we pay very well for those that succeed, we pay averagely for those that are average and we don't particularly reward poor performance well. Hence no one who is a consistent top performer has exited the business. I can assure you we will also work a lot harder on our bottom down transparency once I've figured out what this is. We aren't perfect but we are always striving to improve as is evidenced by the facts of our year on year increase in all key metrics of Turnover, Gross Profit and Profit. I hope you find what you are looking for in your next move and choose a role that is more suited to a laid back / casual / chilled out approach to life. Nothing wrong with this its just not what we're about!! All the best Adrian Kinnersley CEO