Accenture Reviews in Toronto, ON Area

Pros

People, People, People
Knowledge Sharing
Intranet
Global Network
Meritocracy

Cons

Workload can be unmanagable at times

Advice to Senior Management

Keep it real and continue to connect with your people

Pros

Reputation of the employer. Lots of the opportunities to learn.

Cons

Irregardless of what management say, your project assignment could easily turn into sweat shop.
Carefully monitor the pace of your growth in the company. If you stuck at level for too long it means you should consider the new job somewhere else... Unless you are satisfied with your current status.

Advice to Senior Management

Be objective and fair in recognizing people's accomplishments. Try to avoid favouritism. I guess this statement will be true for most other companies.

Pros

Career Advancement
Work with competent people
Gain a wealth of diverse experience

Cons

Travel Requirements
Travel is not reimbursed enough

Advice to Senior Management

Satisfied

Pros

good on your resume, good experience builder. you get exposure to many companies in many industries with many problems that accenture comes in to help with. however, despite the potential positive aspects of this, the roles are very ambiguous at times. so now i'll go to the con's section.

Cons

very beurocratic, and you get lost in procedures for the simplest things. lots of "meetings" that go nowhere and it seems that sometimes, it's almost as if everyone is pretending to do something but really nothing is being done. okay, left of at the pro's, so sometimes because of all the ambiguity you may lose sight of your primary goals. simply because there are so many pointless procedures that must be followed even to do the simplest thing.

Advice to Senior Management

make sure you hire competent managers.

Pros

Strategy practice was hungry. Needed people to step up and lead projects. Great time/place for new recruits to develop leadership. Given ownership of work early on, opportunity to develop new intellectual property and have the work patented. Invited to help sell projects and other work. Time off when required. Travel constantly monday to thursday, but fridays were usually a down day and i spent most of them either golfing or playing play station. I racked up so many frequent flier miles that I've spent the last 2 years away from accenture flying my extended family all around the world, and I still have enough for two first class round the world tickets ... crazy!

Cons

Paid a lot less than traditional strategy houses. Hard to get noticed as a strategy practitioner surrounded by process and IT consultants. Also graded against process and IT consultants in promotion ranking even though you do very different work. always struggling to justify to other people why strategy people get paid more. always the same excuse why they can not pay you more "we have every consultant or manager in a band and you are at the top end of it". Puh - lease! they also price work below competition, so while your friends at McKinsey are staying at the Four Seasons, you will be staying at the marriott courtyard

Advice to Senior Management

Increase the pay....duh!

Pros

People are young and talented.

Cons

Some projects become very demanding and the work-life balance may be impacted.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay more

Pros

Surrounded by Great People who generally care about you

Cons

Sometimes the Hours can be too much

Advice to Senior Management

N/A

Pros

Great name, Good as a starting job for a recent graduate

Cons

Long hours, highly political environment, the yearly review process can seem biased. Standing out as a great employee can be difficult when you spend all your time at client locations.

Advice to Senior Management

None.

Pros

Training and Development, Meeting a lot of new and talented people. A lot of travelling opportunties, fun people, a huge expense budget for drinking, food, etc. Most of the accenture partners are pretty loose with the budgets. Some ridiculously spend, which is great for a new analyst wanting to live the high life on the road.

Cons

Too many strategic shifts in the company. Promotion is all based on who you know not what you know. The person you least deserves it can get promoted faster than anyone. Basically, if you know how to play the game, you're on the fast track to partner.

Advice to Senior Management

stop changing the damn structure every quarter. Stick to a vision and see it through

Pros

The fact that I have been at Accenture for 4 years, speaks wonders itself. I believe that Accenture truly has the best people and the best networking available, that you can carry with you throughout your career, whether it be at Accenture or elsewhere. I find that senior management is very encouraging to help you achieve what you want in your career, and will endorse you when transferring to another division, or changing career paths altogether. Accenture also encourages further education to everyone, and offers a tuition reimbursement if this education will help further your career, and also gives access to every employee to participate in classroom trainings across the country and computer based trainings on virtually every subject you would need to learn (eg. excel training for beginners)

Cons

Depending on the project you are put on, there could be essentially 100% travel, or 0% travel. When it is 100% travel, there is no work-life balance, and you work quite a bit of overtime. However, there is also alot of downtime in between projects, where you don't know what to do with yourself.

Another downside of working at Accenture is the promotion process. You are up against every other level in your department in the country, so therefore you get rated amongst everyone, so although you may get an exceeds rating from your review, this might not correspond to an exceptional pay increase or bonus, because you are based out of everyone in the country.

Advice to Senior Management

My advice would be to listen to the 360 degree reviews you receive, and the feedback that comes from the many surveys we have to complete. Also, to continuously look at what the market is providing for all employees, and the benefits/work-life balance programs they have, and to incorporate some of these findings.

I would like them to continue to provide their feedback and any changes that do occur in the department you work in, and the company as a whole. I feel we are all very connected to what is happening in the large sense with Accenture.

Also, I would like if senior management would promote or at least increase awareness into the several different areas that one can take their career to. For example, I know that it is relatively easy to switch departments, if we're looking for a different career path, but find that many of my collegues do not know of this information, or believe it is hard to transfer into other departments.