North Highland Reviews

Current Employee – been working at North Highland

Pros – Less stress than most consulting firms. Travel is optional-- yet this impacts the quality of assignments. Certainly a "comfortable" place to work.

Cons – Focus has shifted from providing value-based professional services to extending the contract by any means necessary. I look around and all I see are staff aug. projects. Extremely limited opportunities for career enrichment. Staff morale is much lower than any other time in recent memory.

Advice to Senior Management – Pay very close attention to why people are leaving. Not enough is done to examine the attrition rate that seems to be increasing. Be candid with your people. We are constantly told we are owners, treat us like it. There are problems that need to be fixed, address them head on, don't continue to ignore them.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at North Highland

Pros – Great work-life balance. Good benefits.

Cons – Long-term local assignments generally mean project management work for customers who don't want to expand their FTE base. Very little deliverable-based consulting, which is a big change for those of us coming from Accenture and other large consultancies.
Salaries are on the lowest end of the consulting scale and pay raises/promotions don't come along often.
Very clubby management team with clear in-group (association with key VPs in Atlanta or Charlotte)/out-group (everything else) dynamic.

Advice to Senior Management – Decide whether you are Slalom or Accenture.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at North Highland

Pros – You will work locally and not have to travel.

Cons – This company will tell its clients exactly what they want to hear. Is this bad? No, not if your a staff augmentation firm. This is a problem when your supposed to be a consulting company which should feel comfortable in disagreeing with a client's core assumptions or approach (and explaining why, of course). Since this company only focuses on companies in its own cities, they are overly cautious on delivering bad news to clients for fear of no repeat work.

Not traveling is great when you have a family or simply don't have the desire to travel. But this comes at a price. This causes a deep lack of skill sets in any specific industry (unless a new hire to the company brought her/his own deep industry skills).

This company is also highly politically charged and there is an unspoken hierarchy that must be pandered to if one wishes to excel here. Since the pay structure is too heavily weighted on bonus structure it creates internal animosity and unhealthy competition making for a very guarded culture. Notice, also, the deep lack of diversity within this companies leadership.

Lastly, since the P&L structure is based at the city level, there is a lack of any real desire for cross-office projects/resource-sharing/knowledge sharing. This contributes to the aforementioned lack of expertise in any industry. The exception to this problem are at offices which are located in industry-centric locals like financial services focused Charlotte (which poses a whole different problem in today's economy).

Advice to Senior Management – Rethink the whole incentive program. If you can't explain it to your mother, something is wrong. Also, would it kill you to promote a minority to the board or some other leadership role? Lastly, don't pretend to be something your not. You're a staff augmentation company at the end of the day.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at North Highland

Pros – If you like consulting, you can get off the road.

Cons – The promotion process is not based on talent and ability - it's based on perceptions and politics. And, they do not pay market value salaries.

Advice to Senior Management – Raise salaries, listen to employees, and rethink your promotion process.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at North Highland full-time for less than a year

Pros – As with any consulting company you have the opportunity to work with smart, motivated people.

Cons – Compensation is misleading and is not honored. Variable compensation is a big part of the package but changes frequently, with no warning, and never in the employee's favor. Some of the compensation is still calculated and submitted manually on a spreadsheet. Their goal is to make as much money off of you without actually paying you - expect to take a big pay cut with this company.

Advice to Senior Management – If you can't explain the compensation package, it holds tremendous mystery, and your employees have to have spreadsheets to figure it out, something's wrong.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at North Highland

Pros – Overnight travel is nonexistent; some peers are very talented; in Atlanta market name has decent recognition; work is not very challenging (if this appeals to you)

Cons – "No travel policy" still means you will commute up to 75 miles each way to client site, sometimes for months on end; personal/career development is nonexistent; company does no real strategy work (what I was hired to do), it's mostly project management; business development is valued over client needs (that really bothers me).

Advice to Senior Management – Compensation remains a pain point across all consultant levels. The expcetations built during the recruiting process have not been met. If you want to fulfill the image of being a "best place to work" you need to address this issue. Otherwise, you are just buying into the smoke and mirrors of rigging the survey.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at North Highland

Pros – work/life balance generally very good; very little travel, time off if necessary.

Very few "type A" jerks.

No "up or out" policy. Although there are many that need to be counselled out of here.

Cons – Type of work done here is often has little to no strategic value to the client- tactical staff augmentation is the bread and butter work here.

Very little variety of projects and assignments. Depending on office, you are expected to work with a handful of certain clients and that's it.

No real cross-office interaction. There is bascially a franchise model. Very different from where I (and most other consultants) came from.

You are expected to take a pay cut to work here; the no travel model means you will take a haircut on your base Sure you can make it up with incentive comp, but that is way overstated during the hiring process.

Advice to Senior Management – All you have to do is read to what comes through on the employee surveys, year after year, after year. It's all there, compensation, quality of work, personal development. These are the recurring themes and when the survey results come out there is always a flurry of activity around fixing the problems but NOTHING gets done.

There are numerous "raa-raa" types that think this company is nirvana. Most of them are close to vesting (10 years in, nothing sooner) and need to comvince themsleves that a decade of subpar compensation will be worth it. Don't listen to them, listen to those that came from other firms and have some very good ideas about how the company can improve. Then dedicate the resources to effect lasting change.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend