Accenture Reviews in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN Area

Pros

Brand Recognition; Intelligent Co-Workers; Portal
test, test test

Cons

Compensation
Work-Life Balance
Annual Review Process
test, test, test

Advice to Senior Management

What is the affect of offshore on work-life balance and are we burning out our best to sacrifice a low cost to serve?

Pros

Some good people to work with. Professional atmosphere. Not the fastest responder, but they do move all-in when they move.

Cons

Outsourced a ot of internal jobs to India. Limited opoutrunites to chnge jobs but they did have a good 'job bank'.

Advice to Senior Management

They made a dificult transition from private, partner based institution to a public company. They treated the people that were let go decently for the most part.

Pros

Accenture offers a clear path to upper management if that's where you want to go and if you want to make the sacrifices associated with it. Working at different clients doing different things keeps your skills fresh. The company itself is very well run and the senior executives seem to have a clear direction of where they want the company to go. Most of the people I work with are very talented and Accenture teams definitely have A LOT more drive to "get the job done" than any of clients or other places I worked at in my career. This drive, our focus on results, and our processes are why clients keep coming back.

Cons

"Work/life balance" can suck at times. Often you'll see the clients leaving at 5:00 to go home and have a life even though there is a "critical deadline" looming while at the same time the entire Accenture team is there working until the wee hours (and not just the traveling folks), but I guess that's true of consulting in general. On the compensation front it's fairly widely known that you can probably make more money at other places for the same type of work, at least in the short term, but then again I don't think the career path is as clear at other places and from what I hear the money once you've "made it" is pretty darn good. Accenture is a great place for techical people to build skills but may not be a place you'd want to stick around long-term as you're basically forced into management after some time whether you want to go or not.

Advice to Senior Management

Give very talented technical people a reason to stay if they don't want to be managers. Figure out a way to do work offshore without burning out the people who lead them.

Pros

Great place to start a career. Good people that work hard. They may not be the brightest people you will ever meet, but just about everyone will work hard and long hours to make sure a job gets done.

Cons

Poor planning of projects. Undercutting competition on price and then overworking staff to complete a job. A very tough place for experienced hires to distinguish themselves from younger Accenture career trackers. Very political. Performance Management process / project ranking is laughable and short-sighted, which can inapparopriately cost people their jobs. Schmoozing required.

Advice to Senior Management

Put intelligent humanities, marketing, and strong people skills employees in marketing, change management, and support functions, don't try to pigeon hole them into IT delivery. Take employee personalities and interests into account when you hire them so you can get a better understanding of what you are looking for in IT delivery people: emotionless, hardoworking robots that can follow standard procedures and work extremely long hours.

Pros

The diversity of industries in which Accenture has clients offers consulting workforce employees the ability to gain experience across the board and allows you a chance to learn more about where you want to develop.

Cons

If you've started at Accenture right out of school your salary (or lack thereof) is based entirely on your major. While they attempt to promote an image of merit based rewards chances are overwhelmingly strong that you will never catch up to a peer that had a technical or engineering degree even if you are doing the exact same role or do it better. If you feel that pay if offset by recognition of accomplishments you may need to have your spouse give you a pat on the back because it's not frequent to get it out of upper management. Some say because it's high expectations, more realistically it's because most of the managers and senior leadership are where they're at because of time with the company and not because of their leadership abilities.

Advice to Senior Management

If you want to promote merit based pay increases and promotions then do it. Majority of the work force acknowledges that the annual review process is not fair and impartial. Save unit re-organizations until the middle of the fiscal year, pulling someones direct supervisor and their direct supervisor does not provide for a fair review. Be as quick to recognize and congratulate employees as you are to educate them on their mistakes (we appreciate both but it's normal to let things get a little one-sided)

Pros

In a tough economy it helps to work for a global company. Accenture is also very geared towards a work/life balance. If you are good at autonomy and self-starting, this is the place you can grow.

Cons

Reviews are only once a year and there are no real-time promotions. If you have a bad year or even just a part of it, you have an entire year to wait for any recognition of improvement.

Advice to Senior Management

Think about cohesiveness on projects. Bringing in Senior Exec. buddies of yours that know nothing of the client, but tell everyone who is doing the work that they are doing it wrong is counter-productive. You claim to raise great leaders, then develop those that are on the role. If we don't see this happening, what is our incentive to improve?

Pros

Changing job opprotunities like other consulting firms.

Cons

Promotions are very subjective and is a popularity contest and not work based.

Advice to Senior Management

Base performance on Job and not on kissing a**.

Pros

In the consulting workforce, you have the opportunity to get promoted quickly. You also get a pretty nice benefits package. Good training options, health, ESPP, and 401k matching.

Cons

As other people have mentioned, pay at Accenture lags market averages. There also is the politics thing others have mentioned, but I think this is something that you should expect EVERYWHERE. People have impressions about you that are deeper than what you perceive your performance to be. I have accepted the fact that politics is a part of the game and learned to play it. I would suggest the same to anyone else.

Advice to Senior Management

Lead by example. There are many times where management will ask younger people to put in longer hours while they go home or go golfing, etc.

Pros

Growth and job security are high.

Cons

Review process is a popularity contest. Raise is determined by manager’s ability to represent you in a ratings comparison against your peers.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more aggressive with cost reduction efforts.

Pros

Good opportunities to learn skills. The people who work there are one of the best reasons to work there as well. Most are smart, talented individuals. Many opportunities to get experiences in any number of industries.

Cons

The corporate culture can be overbearing, especially if you are not as career-driven as others. It's a very large company, so it can be easy to get lost if you are not careful.

Advice to Senior Management

I think that things are going pretty well overall. No real advice or feedback at this point.