Very high salary right out of an MBA makes for great internship/1st-job, No-Promotion/Raise policy makes for short stay - Avis employé Infusion Associate Humana

Humana is a tight-knit organization in a tight-knit town. The most common question asked in your first week is "where did you go to school?" They don't mean grad-school or even college; they mean high-school. If you did go to high-school in Kentucky, take the job. If you didn't, I suggest you keep reading. It isn't to say that Humana isn't a nice place to be, it just means that you will have to be there a LONG time to effect any type of change or career progression. The data bares this out: despite having 15-20 Masters students coming in at one or two levels below Director, only one Infusion Associate has ever been promoted up to that level. The program has been running since 2004. That wouldn't be all bad except for the fact that Humana has a performance incentive plan that make little sense and bears no resemblance to how such matters are handled at other large firms. (It is literally too complicated to explain here. Sufficient to say that a complete performance review cycle takes 18 months.) The result is an informal "No-Raise" policy for Infusion Associates. Don't worry though, you get a 4th week of paid-vacation after 7 years of service. Moreover, Humana has a history of brutal workforce reductions. I came in one morning to hear that they fired 20% of the marketing department. If you didn't baby-sit for your VP when you were in high-school, you have no political cover and Infusion Associates make easy targets. 10% of my Infusion class was fired within 5 months of starting. But the introductory compensation is pretty great: on average $5K-$15K more than MBA would receive going into a health-care consulting role. The discussion will likely not start out that way as "Humana doesn't negotiate offers" but...well...if you believe that, you deserve $95K/year. And all that money comes with very little expected in return. The key insight is that Humana is not a Fortune 100 company; it's a small Kentucky health-plan that got extraordinarily lucky by stumbling onto a federal program early. As a result, they don't have a true need for young talent who are prepared to lead small initiatives because the place is still run like a rotary club; You're either an SVP or a project manager. But at the end of the day, it's not very hard work. So you have plenty of opportunity to wander around and learn how a large health-insurance company works. You also get a nice title on your resume and a great salary off which you can benchmark future offers. All this leaves you very well prepared to take a much higher paying job in a much more desirable city working with much more intelligent people after you've been in the job for a year and the pre-pay penalty associated with the signing bonus drops off. Don't worry, you won't be alone. Approximately 50% of my infusion class was gone within 13 months of starting at the company.