Accenture Reviews in Chicago, IL Area

Pros

People and jobs are both interesting.

Cons

If you are an SME and used as a resource on projects you will be used as a tool on projects by other managers at your same level in a variety of ways. Sometimes as a backfill doing lower level stuff and sometimes as a reference book to the absolute control of the person who owns the project. In short, if you don't control the project, you have little input to the project design, and probably will not have much participation in those metrics which are used for promotion. Thus, your career path is limited.

Advice to Senior Management

Develope a career path for SME and teach project owners to use SME in a colaborative fashion.

Pros

great places to work.
good working environment. Work life balance.

Cons

Pay is not competitive.
Benefits are okay.

Advice to Senior Management

Increase the pay for lower level employees.

Pros

Excellent people, excellent professional reputation

Cons

Focus on excellence has changed to focus on cutting costs.

Advice to Senior Management

Understand your career path before signing up

Pros

Good benefits. Flexible work policies.

Cons

Long hours expected. Opaque review process.

Advice to Senior Management

Make the company more personalized to individual needs.

Pros

- flexible work time
- kind managers and open to your problems

Cons

- there isn't room for growth if you are a contractor
- they would rather keep contractors than employees

Advice to Senior Management

- they should offer more permanent positions than temporary

Pros

I've been here 6 years and I generally like it. I have been burned out at times, but it's not always that way. Working here gets me noticed by other companies all the time. I receive several offers to interview every month.

Cons

This job has at times wreaked havoc on my personal life. I think it goes with the territory. Sometimes it can be tough to get motivated.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to become more interested in what individual memebers of your teams are doing. So many people just 'work' and go unnoticed- that should change.

Pros

- You do end up getting really good experience.
- The travel can be fun if you don't have any commitments (i.e. girlfriend/wife)
- The pay *eventually* gets good, but be prepared to make little in the beginning. Once you make manager, you start getting pretty good pay.

Cons

- Management is pretty bad, horrible at providing feedback.
- Partners and senior managers don't care about you. All they care about is selling. They will under-bid a project ridiculously, and over-promise. In these situations, the analysts and consultants get screwed. You may think this is the exception, but I was on six engagements over four years and each one was like this. Get used to having to deal with and clean up the messes of others. This includes working 100 hr weeks and weekends. In addition, since there is no budget, your manager won't let you charge overtime.
- How you get rated is lame. It pretty boils down to kissing the right person's behind.
- When employees are really bad, they don't fire them, they just promote them. I've seen it happen.
- If you are a senior manager, and are the most evil person in the world, upper management will put up with you because you can sell and bring in dollars. I've worked with a senior manager like this that would thrash the people below him on a daily basis, killing morale.
- The organizational structure is impossible to figure out.
- Aside for mandatory analyst, consultant, manager, etc... training, other outside forms of training are rare since it comes from the project's budget.
- You will work with a lot of arrogant people that don't know their stuff, but can talk a good game.
- Get used to everybody covering their behind, no matter what.
- People spoke about "good" projects, but after six engagements, I was never on one and never met anybody that was on a good one.
- Be prepared to be considered an expert even if you have never done the type of work before in your life. If you don't know what Java is, don't be surprised to get staffed as a Java Jedi (and have to face clients.....)
- I could go on and on, but if you haven't gotten the point yet, then maybe Accenture would be the perfect place for you!

P.s. Don't believe the B.S. they say that after working at Accenture for a while, your next job will be a CIO position, or your salary will be twice as much. Every once in a while a partner becomes a CIO elsewhere, but most places won't pony up for consultants, in my experience.

Advice to Senior Management

Quit under-bidding and over-promising on projects just to win work, and then screwing everybody that actually has to complete the project on time (Managers and below). This kills morale, creates burnout, and makes the firm lose a lot of good people.

Pros

ESOP with a 15% discount on last trading day. Worked in Finance so no recommendation on consulting environment, but the people made it a great place to work and everyone is willing to help you out, even across groups.

Cons

Pay was usually lower compared to other comparable positions. Also review process for non-consulting was the same as it was for consulting, making it hard to get the top tier/review in your peer group. Bascially it came down to how much clout your manager had (if he/she liked you). This was one of the biggest flaws in the review process. Also it was difficult to move upward in a group if you liked it as there were very few positions to go around.

Advice to Senior Management

Fix the review process for non-consulting positions and be willing to "create" new positions in those groups in order not to lose good workers.

Pros

Competitive entry level salary. Good atmosphere and camaraderie. Possible to be in a range of roles and industries. The company is fairly supportive of its employees when it comes to career goals and other big picture things (time off, family etc.).

Cons

Pay increases and bonuses are not great. Hours can be a bit long. There is no true management consulting arm. It's merely a front for the IT consulting (Accenture's core competency).

Advice to Senior Management

In general management is running the company well. The review process is a bit shaky since you depend heavily on a bunch of senior management that may not know you at all.

Pros

Variety. The breadth of work Accenture does is huge so it offers opportunities to work in a lot of different industries and projects.

Cons

Extremely difficult to get promoted. Accenture has become so large and transitioned so much to outsourcing for steady, predictable revenue streams (in part as a result of being a public company) that it takes more and more "people leverage" to create slots at the Senior Executive level.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't forget about the consulting staff who grind it out every day on big, complicated system integration or transformation projects. That is the engine of the firm.