BearingPoint Reviews in Washington, DC Area

Pros

BearingPoint was a great place when I first started. The main reason I selected BE is because in the unstable, competitive world of government contracting BearingPoint retained their valuable employees to reallocate them to other opportunities. The resource management department was committed to finding new homes for unutilized employees (being on the bench). “Benched” employees would have ample time to get reassigned. Unfortunately, being on the bench these days for more than 2 weeks results in a pink slip. This ,of course, is if one doesn't have friends in higher places.

Cons

BearingPoint seems to be a good old boys club. Promotions and raises are not based on merit, but popularity. Training dollars are scarce. BE does not offer a tuition or student loan repayment benefit. Annual review time is coming up very shortly and can bet that lack of promotion/bonuses will be blamed on the ecomony. This might be easier to swallow if they had not reported record bookings for Public Services this year.

Advice to Senior Management

Sr. Management needs to be plugged in to what is going on with their worker-bees.

Pros

BearingPoint offers a unique environment to gain professional challenges and expand network of like-minded people

Cons

Internal management inefficiencies and sometimes long work hours

Advice to Senior Management

Figure out the most effective way for paying off the Corporate debt and let's move on...also communicate to staff about what's going on. Are we losing our jobs?

Pros

To be honest I cant think of any "best reasons" other than that it's a fairly recognizable name so it would generally look good on a resume, depending on what you want to go into. I did generally like the people on my project - a rarity being a somewhat female-dominated project in a developing country. But I'm not sure how much that had to do with BE itself, as a lot of them were contractors who have since upped and left. Oh actually, here's one good reason: it seems at least the people I know are generally pretty satisfied with their work-life balance. I had a pretty regular 9 to 5 schedule and so do some colleagues on entirely different domestic projects.

Cons

Virtually no job stability. If you ever end up on the bench for more than 3 weeks you're pretty much screwed. Many people always felt that they needed to be actively looking or have a backup job somewhere. BE will treat you like a corporate cog no matter how well you perform - though probably about as much as any large corporation will.

Advice to Senior Management

Just give up and sell BE or file for Chapter 11 already! This has been in the talks for YEARS, why beat a dead horse?

Pros

work opportunites if you hold a clearance are interesting and ample. lots of contracts with true consulting work, rather than the staff aug stuff that i've experienced at other consulting compaines. there are a lot of opportunites with intel, Dod and law clients.
the people are also great. lots of seasoned consultants with previous work experience, making it a place to share knowledge and work with people who are you equals.
every project that i've worked on has appreciated that people need a work/life balance. flex schedules are available and management is ver receptive to letting you take time off when you need it.

Cons

the current reputation is a hinderance.

Advice to Senior Management

none

Pros

Opportunity for junior people to develop themselves. BearingPoint give young people opportunity early on. We do work that is less specialized and therefore less profitable than the typical consulting firm. A lot of what we do is staff support work, but this work is the type that you can give to junior members to complete without too much supervision.

Cons

We have a stigma based on a low stock price that pervades the culture. We constantly work hard to grow work, produce more profits and are constantly told we must cut back. US Public Services is highly profitable, but other areas of the business are having trouble.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus more on promoting based on producing results, rather than knowledge.

Pros

reputation and good client base. Good internal technical support

Cons

too many mandatory company training courses related to policies and procedures

Advice to Senior Management

policy enformnets are too rigid.

Pros

If you are fresh out of college or new to the job market BE could be a good place for you to get your first experience in their PS Consulting sector. The company is organized into practices that handle lines of business: DoD, Civil, DHS, HUD, HHS, Dept. of Ag, etc. and as such there is great variability between practices. Get into the right practice and all the ills and problems of the company can be a blessing for you in that since they are poorly organized it affords you the possibility to pick your own area to really work hard in and excel and / or to take on additional duties (read longer hours) and even prove your greater value. The BE model allows individuals within a practice to perform their duty skills and at the same time work in and develop skills in other areas. It essentially is not a culture that is so structured that you can have flexibility to move and blossom, lean, and essentially tool yourself into something else or develop a skill set that you might not be afforded to do elsewhere. Haveing that said, there are some project, or billets with certain billing rates that can keep you down and tied to doing the same tasks and functions for years at a time - avoide them and look for the practices where you have flexibility, can work on proposals and learn proposal development, work with the financials and learn about client billing, work with solutions team members and join a group developing out a new solution etc. Above all remember BearingPoint is a stepping stone that should be used by you. Don't even think about a career there, but think about what you can get in, quickly learn, add as experience to tyour resume, and then move on to a position which you wouldn't have been qualified or considered before coming to BearingPoint........ But do it fast for I don't see this company being around much longer. They have mountains of ills, tremendous debt, poor executive managment, and made too many wrong decisions

Cons

1) The company is on its final skids and is heading for bankruptcy as presently organized. No questions about this.

2) As a consequence turn over is very high (read WAY too high)

3) Most of the top talent realized the companies ills long ago and has left. Those left are lower tiered players or people that just don't know how to manage their career.

4) Executive Managment is awful (hence why the mess the company is in)

5) Poor to little training opportunities

6) Internal placement resources are incompetent. If you go on the bench you MUST immediatly find yourself a project to again get billable or you will be terminated (most within 2 weeks these days) and the companies internal HR placement folks are useless in helping you find this.

7) Managing Directors are not in touch with their reports. They do little to manage their billable people, and even less to help those on the bench find work.

8) Bookings are heading south, profitability within PS is up only due to gutting the company of tallent and laying off anyone that comes on the bench.

9) The company can't compete for work that requires solid skill sets, key employees, or cleared personnel because they no longer have a bench to draw from.

10 The stock is worthless and getting worse. The company has over $1B of debt. of which approx. $200 million is "callable" by the creditors within the next few months due to their poor performance and not meeting covenants such as listing on a major stock exchange. Cash on hand is dwindling every day and nothing is going to be left ro keep the company running once the bonds are called.

If BearingPoint survives at all it will / must do most if not all of the following:

1) File for chapter 11 and reneig on it's debt.
2) Get rid of it unprofitable sectors and overhead (read employees)
3) See the PS book of business and billable work and billing employees to another company who can take over and manage it better or fold it into their practice and further downsize the overhead of the PS Group.

Advice to Senior Management

Leave, get out of the way, you've proven yourselves to be incapabile of running this company and worse you are doing more harm.

Pros

The company does a good job of investing in their people when it comes to training. This is primarily evidenced by their week long Consulting Foundations course where analysts are given the opportunity to work in a team environment with a hypothetical client placing unreasonable demands on the team. Issues like crisis management, team leadership, and communication are discussed openly and worked out.

Cons

Immature management, very conservative culture where employees are almost forced to sacrifice their own well being for the client. Lip service is payed to project transfers.

Advice to Senior Management

I would request that the management spend less time thinking about their image with respect to their superiors and more time listening to the grievances of their employees. I also would request that they stop accusing other people of not working and being concerned about the status of their work.

Pros

BearingPoint is a great place to work if you want to coast. The work is not that challenging and there is great flexibility in work/life balance. It also seems that we have a great amount of vacation time which, we can carry 125% of into the next year. You also get paid unused vacation if you decide to leave the company.

Cons

Leadership is especially lacking in the junior ranks (i.e. manager, senior consultant level). BearingPoint touts their management training program with Yale, but in reality I have yet to see any significant changes from those who have attended. Development for the workforce is also lacking in specific functional areas...there seems to be a lot of useless online courses, but no specific developmental training for functional career tracks.

Advice to Senior Management

BearingPoint is very top heavy. Senior management needs to develop those at the bottom of the ranks in order to foster a more rewarding experience, which will increase retention and build a stronger foundation for future leaders.

Pros

work life balance is key to management; great guidelines for promotion; interesting client challenges. good benefits and salary with lots of personal time off. Solid place for folks 'on the fence' to decide whether or not they want to pursue an MBA

Cons

the culture of expectation that employees perform the role of the next 'level' before officially getting promoted to that next level

Advice to Senior Management

continue to be open and honest - it is very much a benefit to employees; the amount and frequency of communications is also great - a good balance between what we want to know and when we want to hear it!