Bain & Company Reviews

Pros

Really good level of professionalism. Competent staff and amazing culture.

Cons

Long Hours, to much seriousness.

Pros

The people who work at Bain are smart, fun, motivated, caring and will become some of the your closest friends. A mission statement and corporate philosophy that you can believe in and see everyone from the most senior partners of the company to the receptionist practicing every day.

Cons

A very lean company where an incredible vacation benefit often goes to waste, because you cannot find the time to take-off. Long days, nights, and weekends are the norm.

Advice to Senior Management

Greater investment in work/life balance for CSS staff.

Pros

Great bosses and co-workers, not overly competitive, results are put first which means that input from lower levels are treated very seriously in order to drive to a "True North" answer.

Cons

Office wide performance reviews are opaque (extremely difficult to compare qualitatively between people who are staffed on different cases; different managers also have different thresholds for the elements of our professional development plan). This though is a problem that is probably impossible to solve.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep doing what you're doing, the company is headed in the right direction.

Pros

Openness
Good visibility to clients and relationship building
Excellent diversity of work subject matter

Cons

Managers who make clients happy can suck and be terrible managers and still survive
Lots of really good managers, but a few bad apples can really kill the whole career path for you with poor planning, communication and work/life balance.

Advice to Senior Management

Keeping clients happy is very important, but getting rid of managers with poor performance in planning, organization and people development is a must to retain the most talented staff.

Pros

Strong people culture (ultimately the reason why I chose Bain vs. other top consulting firms), launching pad to a variety of other careers (e.g. PE, start-ups, tech)

Cons

Consulting in general can get repetitive and you don't get a full sense of ownership when consulting for someone else

Advice to Senior Management

Although firm-wide communication is good, there is room for improvement at the individual office level. Additionally, the firm should do a better job of knowledge management and sharing.

Pros

Cooperative environment, excellent training program

Cons

Long hours, cannot choose exactly what to work on

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good work

Pros

Great place in terms of work/life balance. Managers are very fair about lettign employees use thier vacation time and are understanding when unexpected scenarios present themselves. The company is very unique in the culture and the various activties they offer throughout the year to reward employees. When they want to do something they do go all in. There is no holding back or cutting corners.

Cons

Working in the administrative side of the business, chance for job growth and promotions are limited. A lot of the upper level managers have been here for a long time and are not going anywhere. There is very little chance to move up. There are no mid-level managerial positions and your career path can be very ambiguous at times. Hiring practices for open positions can be a lengthy process as the company looks to hire Senior level people at Junior level pay.

Advice to Senior Management

Although a lot is done to breakdown the barrier between the Administrative and Consulting sides of the company, it is still there and being an Administrative employee can feel like a 2nd class citizen at times. Company has come a long way, but there is still a lot more that can be done. Understanding the revenue generation comes from the Consulting side and that is the company's driving force, more recognition of the Administrative/Support Services would be nice.

Pros

Great compensation
Great way to gain additional post-MBA experience while exploring a variety of industries
Opportunity to work with clients at a very high level

Cons

Lots of inconsistency at smaller offices.

Growth of Atlanta and Dallas offices exceeded the ability to attract candidates at the level of quality of other North American offices, especially at manager level where they've been brought in by lower-caliber firms.

Reality of travel is that once you get away from an office in a city that has a big base of potential clients, you'll be on the road all the time. Staffing has also become national. Can be hard to build mentors within your home office if staffed under managers based elsewhere.

Some consultants work for the same client for case after case.

Advice to Senior Management

Partners need to stop creating "make-work" engagments where they start a case that's ill-defined just to retain a client, and then waste months on scope when the team is already staffed up. wastes time, wastes client money, and kills morale.

Promote managers from within the office- stop the outside hiring or do a better job of indoctrinating new managers.

Increase transfers from more-desirable offices or else smaller offices' cultures will never catch up.

Find a way to recruit and retain women in Dallas office. Prevent it from becoming a boys' club.

Pros

Good learning and training experience

Cons

Not good for career development

Pros

Good brand and will provide many exit opportunities.
Very talented, smart and friendly employees
Competitive compensation

Cons

Culture is not friendly to international employees.
Does not have strong vertical capabilities in technology industries
While mentorship and coaching are talked about a lot; I did not see anything in action. I have not been assigned a mentor during my 2 years

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on building talent through mentorship and coaching