RAPP reviews

Oh boy. Where to begin. I joined RAPP as a Senior Strategist after working for a few years in a different, slightly related industry. I was pursued on Linkedin by a recruiter at Omnicom who was hiring for a different role at a different agency. After our initial conversation (which required multiple reschedules because the recruiter no-show-ed twice), the recruiter decided to put me forward for the role at RAPP as they felt it was a better fit. I felt flattered to be head-hunted for a role that appeared to be more senior than I was at the time. Excited to learn more, I pushed on. My recruiting process included four interviews. Looking back, it is clear that the team was trying to “sell” me on the role, the team, and the agency as a whole. I was told that the agency was “chill”, with “minimal overtime work”. One manager even told me that he often promised — and handed in — assignments at a later time than he would realistically need to complete them, so that he could buy himself more personal time. It seemed like a laid-back atmosphere that would still offer room for growth and learnings in a new industry that I wanted to break into. My toughest interview was with a VP who told me explicitly that my role would require quantitative consumer insights skills — I was very open about the fact that I had minimal experience here but was willing to learn. The team was pitched to me as friendly and comparatively easy to work for, versus other agencies that were notorious for their stressful work environments with long hours. Keep in mind, this was a role scoped for individuals with 4-7 years of marketing strategy experience. I’ll reiterate — I came in with fewer years in a different, though related, industry. I thought it was implied that there would be an understandable learning curve, several opportunities for trainings, and more leeway given my background. I was completely wrong. While there were many onboarding meetings (particularly for more complex accounts), there was absolutely zero training on the work itself — particularly for someone brand-new to these topics. Onboarding was an overwhelming, floundering process of endless hours of meetings that left very little time to complete the work I was hired to do. I started off already behind. Management had a sort of “outward” acknowledgement of my experience with this, but deep down I knew it was strike one against me. Micromanagement with minimal training was the name of the game. To give you an idea of the sort of nit-picking, “feedback for the sake of feedback” that I received during my first few weeks at the company — a VP once told me to improve my posture in client meetings to promote professionalism. Never mind the fact that this individual would often refer to myself and other younger members of the team as “honey”, “sweetheart” — somehow this was seen as “professional”. I would sit in client meetings doing my best to stay on top of work and excel constantly at everything that was expected of me, while being pinged on the side with bad-faith pop-quizzes on what was happening in the meetings, “just to check if you’re tracking”. I imagine, upon reflection, that I probably wasn’t inspiring confidence in my management if they felt the need to do this. That being said, I’m not sure that causing daily mini-heart attacks is the way to kindly motivate a team member to improve their performance in good faith. Any time I would try to proactively meet the needs of the client team — like when a new person was hired on the client side and I proactively offered to share past documentation to get them up to speed — I was quickly shut down and lambasted for my efforts, reduced to my incompetence, and shamed publicly in group chats with management. But when I took a more passive approach to client relationship management, I was reprimanded as well. It felt like everything I did was wrong, and there was no way out. I’d get called into check ins with my managers, where I’d passive-aggressively be asked if “this role was what I expected”. Im nowhere near as naive as I was then — if this total mismatch with my manager happened in my role now, I’d just start looking for a new job. When I came to my manager asking for help and training, and told him I was struggling, he said “we don’t need to jump to conclusions” about my role. This sort of indirect, vague, and unclear communication style was constant, creating in me a permanent sense of insecurity in my role. I asked for training to improve and I was refused. I was told to simply “figure it out”, and “be independent”. When I asked for support, my managers would quote back to me my job description. I learned to just shut up and remain fearful. I would go on to be put on an informal PIP (of course, management was EXTREMELY careful to not ever use the word “PIP” in writing) a few days later and let go less than a month after this incident — so I’m pretty sure he was, in fact, jumping to conclusions at that point. The team squeezed out one last major deliverable for a client from me, on a frenzied timeline that made absolutely no sense — neither for the client, nor for my experience level. We had a long backlog of things to share with that client, so there was no need to bend over backwards to complete item #5 of a backlog. However, that’s just the culture at RAPP — work overtime, sacrifice your personal life, health, and sanity, and just “have it ready” for “whenever the client asks”, regardless of whether it actually makes sense. I realized after I was let go that this was the last bit of what they needed from me; after I completed this piece of work, the team would have had plenty of time to edit it to their liking, present what’s in the backlog, and find and hire my replacement. Never mind my back to back 3-am late nights, the missed family events, the strained relationships in my personal life, the inability to have a social life, the effects on my physical health. I lost so much of my hair that I needed to chop a foot of it off. I found out later that I had developed a minor stomach ulcer — in my mid 20s, with no family history of this. I was, quite literally, used. Chewed up and spit out with no acknowledgement of the personal impact to me. When I started to log long hours in my time sheet, I was accused of lying about my hours by my manager — just another example of the constant gaslighting at RAPP. When the final conversation came — that 10 AM call with nobody but my manager and HR — I was completely numb. HR and management awkwardly muddled through the conversation, reading off of a script that thoroughly documented every detail of my supposed incompetence. They said I was being let go “due to a combination of factors, including my performance and changing client dynamics”. I somehow scraped together the last bit of backbone that I had in me to ask them two questions: 1. So, am I being laid off due to client and market dynamics, or am I being fired due to my performance? Awkward pause. It was as if I had asked a question I “wasn’t supposed to” — because god forbid people demand the exact details of what affects their livelihood. HR stammered out awkwardly “um… th-the latter….” 2. What was the thinking behind hiring someone with 2 years of [my previous industry] experience when you knew the role was scoped for 4-7 years of marketing experience? Another VERY awkward question that put them on the hot seat. HR immediately jumps in, stammering out a “well, i’m not sure we can get into all of that”, followed by my manager attempting to “empathize” with me by saying “[Name], I’m sure you’re feeling a lot of emotions right now”. When something like this is happening to you, the socially acceptable thing to do is to just take it lying down and not ask the hard questions; I didn’t want to do that. While I understand that my manager was attempting to be kind, it simply came across as gaslighting — my question was completely legitimate, and it called out the fact that I was hired wrongfully, that I was refused training when I asked for it, and that we had wasted everyone’s time. There was zero accountability for RAPP — and in the end, I, the employee, had to pay for RAPP’s mistakes in hiring me. There’s many more little incidents that I could write about, but it’s futile. I’ve moved on to a new role that starts soon. What sticks with me to this day is the ever-present sense of insecurity. I’m constantly questioning my skills, competence, and intelligence. I suppose that’s what RAPP has left me with — low professional self-worth. For a long time, I was so angry. I was recruited away from a stable job that I was good at, to a company and role that I was definitely not a fit for — both in terms of culture fit and skill set. I am a direct communicator, and it seems that a lot of the people on my management team had more indirect communication styles. I felt like my employment, in a general sense, was unfairly stolen from me. I wondered endlessly about why they’d hire someone so unqualified for the role, like me — was it a competitive talent market? Perhaps it was difficult to find someone willing to take the salary they were offering, at a stage so far into their career? In the long-term, though, I think there are some interesting personal learnings that I’ve been able to take from this experience. For as long as I can remember, getting fired has been a deep-seated fear of mine. This fear has, so far, been the driving force of my career — meaning that major career decisions, hesitations, anxieties, and more, were driven by it. That’s a scarcity mindset, and it’s no way to live. I’m extremely fortunate to have family that have supported me through my job search. I’ve learned that even my worst fear can be worked through, and isn’t the end of the world. I’ve learned that I am resourceful and smart. I’ve learned that I have many people willing to help me — including mentors who are decades into their careers that believe in me and can vouch for my skills. I’ve learned that I value direct communication and developing a truly trusting, non-transactional bond between myself and my future managers. Most of all, I’ve learned that this experience does not define me — and that there’s more to life than just work. And for that, I’m the most thankful. If you are a current RAPP employee and you are reading this — know that you’re not alone. What you’re experiencing is real. Yes, you are being gaslit. Yes, the stress is real. No, you are not making up. No, this cannot simply be explained away by your “performance”, completely decontextualized from the conditions that set you up for success. If anything that I wrote has resonated with you, know this: You deserve better. And there’s MUCH better out there. You just have to believe that you deserve it.