recruiter

maintenance technician

packer

registered nurse

registered nurse - emergency room

Korn Ferry

The best part of working at Korn Ferry are the clients, the work, and location flexibility. Clients from most industries come to KF with fascinating strategic challenges. Korn Ferry's IP is best-in-class and undoubtedly the reason most employees feel energized around their work. On a day-to-day basis, a consultant can be expected to work with 2-8 clients. Korn Ferry's project teams are based all around your country, or on the rare occasion, they are international teams. This provides a fun and well-connected environment.

Management lacks transparency and consistency in their decisions. Culture is based upon the team you work closely with, however, the broader corporate culture is ridden with rumors and surface-level judgments. Promotions are a "who you know" battle, so if you do work here, make sure you are strategic about your positioning. Pay is significantly under market value with minimal bonuses that lack any standardization, creating unhealthy competition between employees. Through the pandemic, Korn Ferry laid off almost 1/3 of their employees while the remaining employees held paycuts through Dec. 2020. Job security is not a promise here. Although employees were asked to take significant compromises through pay/job losses, most employees were working significantly more than 40 hrs/week.

My advice for management is to clarify and standardize your decision making practices, ensure employees understand and are enabled to advance their careers within the organization, and reconsider pay structures. These would be a great starting place for making KF a career destination, rather than a toxic workplace with great clients.

Working at Korn Ferry often meant constantly chasing billable hours, which created a fragmented and exhausting day-to-day experience. Instead of focusing deeply on one client or project, I was regularly switching between multiple types of work—facilitation, assessment feedback, coaching, and report writing—all within the same day. This level of task-switching made it difficult to stay grounded and ultimately felt overwhelming.

The workload structure, combined with the pressure to maintain billable hours, took a toll on my well-being. Over time, it became harder to consistently find work, and I experienced situations where client opportunities I had helped build were reassigned to others within internal networks. That shift made the environment feel less merit-based and more dependent on internal relationships.

The consulting model itself feels increasingly misaligned with the pace of modern business. In the past, consultants could dedicate full days to a single client, allowing for more focused, billable work. Today, the expectation is to piece together multiple engagements across different topics in a single day. While this may appear efficient, it creates a scattered workflow that is difficult to sustain and can negatively impact both performance and billable outcomes.

I worked at Korn Ferry within the realm of recruitment and was a great learning experience for me! Although the client we had at the time had an immense workload, I appreciate how Korn Ferry's middle managers did so much to avoid burnout. That said, the only downside I had was the workload--but that wasn't necessarily Korn Ferry's fault. It was more on the client side. 

Looking back, this is the first company I've been in wherein the CEO has emails tailored just for employees! They aren't generic, either. Some were motivational and others had tips I didn't realize I was starting to use until much later. 

Throughout the struggle, my team did whatever they could and more. Because of this, the professional and personal camaderie I had with my workmates was unparalleled. Our manager at the time was one of the most attentive people I've worked with. We were open to answer each other's questions and help each other out! 

The only con was the immense workload, but, again, that was more on the client side. I appreciated how my manager successfully tried to negotiate a bigger team throughout all of that. 

My experience can be vastly different as there is a multitude of work in Korn Ferry. But 10/10 if I didn't suddenly have health issues I would definitely stay in Korn Ferry! Might try working there again! 

When we were in office the culture of the company was fun, engaging and really felt like you had a team behind you. Once most positions became fully remote after the pandemic the culture completely went away. There is no onboarding process for new hires, they are thrown into the work with little to no formal training which leaves the folks with tenure to pick up the slack. Every year we had new and increased number of KPI’s and goals to hit while also making your utilization goal which became unrealistic. The internal communication is very poor. One day my peer became my manager as they added a new level and there was no communication regarding this change or what the purpose of this new manager level was.
There are no yearly wage increases and if you move positions it will likely be a lateral move to no increase there either. The only time I received a raise is when I received a promotion. However there was a job posting for my same role and the salary range was much higher than I was being paid, making it that if a new joiner came they will instantly make more than someone with 10 years at the company and I have to train them it. Only nice thing was the paid time off, in all around 50 paid days off per year. It’s fun but you probably won’t make enough money to actually do anything with those days off.

As a recruiter, I've worked on three major accounts in the RPO division of this company. All three accounts had poor management, process, and threadbare resources. To do your job well, you need all of those mentioned above. The managers expect you to be superman to handle all the workloads they put on you. 
The RPO business model needs improvement. Managers must allocate more personnel and job board subscriptions based on the workloads. Work-life balance is never possible due to high-volume work. A recruiter focuses their day on filling 6-7 interview slots for hiring managers for the next day. Without noticing, three years have passed without a chance to think about what you want to do in your career. 
Performing well at your job is a catch-22. Without "proving yourself," you cannot move forward in any department (especially one of your choice). If you perform well, they don't let you leave. Perhaps the most disappointing thing about KF is knowing they'll always hire externally for higher-tier analytical jobs and not give internals a fair chance. Ironically, career architecture and internal growth are what KF teaches/ sells its clients. As someone else mentioned on this page, they "pigeonhole" you to the same role you started. I would not recommend staying here long for a career. The turnover rate speaks for itself. 

As a result of numerous acquisitions, the consulting culture is diffuse and without the strength of leadership needed to set and push the vision forward. 

While scheduling is flexible and there are opportunities to work independently, the culture is better suited to those who are neither seeking career advancement or development (may favor older consultants focused on execution).  

On occasion, there are some interesting "outside of the box" projects that are representative of what you might see at large scale consulting firms like Deloitte, but the vast majority of it is focused on assessment only. Within assessment services, the pacing seems reminiscent of a factory - where consultants are scheduled for back-to-back delivery without even a moment or two budgeted for a bio break or to grab a glass of water. 

If you're an early career consultant looking for growth, development, and strong leadership - steer clear!  You'll find yourself frustrated and  displeased with the lack of opportunity.  You'd be better served applying to McKinsey or BCG, which both offer "boot camps" that fully train consultants in methodology and expose them to a variety of work with a clearly defined promotions path. 

For a small organization, the consulting practice is inelegant and just plain clunky in its operations.

I was contacted by Korn Ferry for an entry level Recruiter opportunity. Although I've never worked in any talent acquisition or human resources capacity, I decided to give it a try. I've sat on interviewing panels and was responsible for development in prior roles, so I figured it would help me out. It's a decent job to have for starting anew in a skill that someone may not have. You learn a ton on the job, but honestly, it depends on what client/account you're placed on. This is my 2nd account which is a lot less stressful than the first one. I like being a KF employee more than I do the client "employee", but the work life balance is definitely there. KF hosts a lot of local events to make you not feel alienated since we are mostly remote. My coworkers are cool. Management is all over the place, though. There's also a love/hate relationship between KF and the client. Would I recommend? Yeah, to build a skillset and take it elsewhere, but not for the long run. I've been there a year now and considered a Corporate Recruiter which came with a 3% raise. I'm destined for transitioning into a Senior Recruiter role. It's fairly easy to move up for those interested from what I can tell. I really like the family benefits. The pay could be better. I would rather work internally for KF than on an account if I'm being 100. It's way too much disorientation for me.

I was excited to work for an RPO. Through my interview process, the team kept selling how great job security is because of their many accounts. They sold the work life balance and extra week of PTO during the end of the year. They sold the company culture as caring and considerate to employers.

Unfortunately this company has the least amount of job security I’ve ever experienced, the worst work life balance, and the least amount of care to employees. I’ve seen coworkers targeted and terminated, constant economic layoffs in accounts that were supposedly grossing a ton of money for KF..10-11 hour days, team leads that stressed if we needed help or overworked to reach out, but requests would be ignored. Clients on the account treating us poorly. Just not a good experience.

There were a few outstanding leaders but KF consistently shifted them around to another accounts. High turnover. 

Working remotely was nice but no work life balance. Could easily request PTO but would come back to HUNDREDS of messages and emails. I have never been so overworked in my life. And the extra week of PTO during the holiday? Didn’t count because my account stayed open.

KF made lots of promises and failed to uphold them all. I worked in the RPO division and depending on the client you have no idea what you will get in regards to leadership, workload and culture. I was hired as an associate recruiter, paid as an associate recruiter but performed the duties of a regular recruiter without the pay of one. I did ALL the same duties of a recruiter but made 25K less than the recruiters who took credit for my hard work. They tell you that you will be working 8 hours a day but you are expected to work 10-12 hours. KF doesn't get paid by a client unless they have recruited candidates hired on, so they push for long hours to make the numbers. KF does not offer stability and career growth. You are locked into your role and no matter your resume or experience you will stay where you are. There have been massive layoffs with KF in December, January, March and April. You dont know when it is coming for you and have no peace of mind over the uncertainty of it all. 

The only positive is being able to work fully remote. In executive search, particularly here, there is little to no job security or work/life balance and the Project Coordinators are the first to go (en masse) once it’s lay off season. You’re expected to complete an excessive amount of work that should be split across at least 3 people, meet unrealistic turn around times, and be accessible around the clock - weekends and vacations too. Everyone, usually except for the Senior Client Partner, is burnt out and overworked, but there’s no budget to increase the team size and evenly distribute the workload. It is an Acela train to burn out, low morale, and not feeling valued as an employee. When you try to enforce boundaries to maintain work life balance or push back against the constant over time and weekend work, you are shamed and painted as not being a team player. Management should invest some of the millions brought in from fee earners back into the work force so the teams who are actually doing the hard and time consuming work are adequately staffed.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Recruiter 10 salaries reported	$76,500 per year
Maintenance technician 16 salaries reported	$31.96 per hour
Packer 1 salary reported	$21.00 per hour
Registered nurse 6 salaries reported	$49.09 per hour
Registered nurse - emergency room 1 salary reported	$48.57 per hour

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