Do they provide a somewhat accurate picture of employee satisfaction with firm culture?
I am doing a vac scheme with Freshfields and I must say I have found their poor performance on ROF and reviews on Glassdoor about toxic culture to be rather off-putting...
Obviously this is not the only thing I am considering, but I am looking at a few firms which are otherwise hard to distinguish
I don’t know if anyone could say it is accurate.
ROF is full of people purposely being obtuse and provocative.
Glassdoor might be more accurate (in my opinion) but will still be open to skewed data. In the same way that sometimes you cannot trust reviews on Tripadvisor or the like, Glassdoor has the same issues. People tend to post reviews at two extremes of the spectrum.
Let’s put it this way, Freshfields will monitor Glassdoor much more than ROF.
FWIW, I was at Freshfields for four years. I loved the first two years of it (literally thought it was the best job and workplace in the world) and hated the final two years of it. I saw the very best of the firm and the very worst.
It is a great firm to work for generally though - I personally think it was the best of the 5 I have worked for in-house. But it has a very corporate culture and exceptionally high expectations - no matter how nice some people are and how great the opportunities are, the pressure is often intense and that can often create a toxic culture as people respond to those pressures in different ways (that won’t be unique to FBD though).
That’s just my opinion though - many people will have different experiences and different views because of them.
As you are doing a vac scheme, you have one of the best opportunities to find out what the culture is really like (although be mindful that you are schmoozed a horrendous amount during a vac scheme, and life as a trainee will be very different).
