Booz Allen Hamilton Reviews

Pros

- Good name on a resume, at least for a while longer
- A lot of training available
- Great staff, so long as they are not managers

Cons

- Very stressful work environment
- Micro-management
- Useless review process
- No work life balance
- Non-existent time off
- Overworked employees
- Power of influence--your boss is God and so on upward...people are afraid of getting fired
- Arbitrary layoffs
- Little respect for staff
- Lack of a positive strategic vision for growth...just gut the working environment and layoff people
- Inconvenient working environments
- Booz Allen no longer has a competitive edge..just a body shop
- Dominated by military contracts and military personnel...civilians have a hard time
- Naturalized citizens laid off easily or put in difficult and uncertain contracts.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't terrorize your employees. Don't micro-manage. Remove the staff/leader dichotomy within the firm. Give your staff more time off and allow for work / life balance. Allow more than 1 week for training. One month training would be great and would better prepare employees. Change the employee review process. 360 review process is fine, but don't burden your employees with having to write their own reviews.

Managers get in the way of client work to cover their asses. Help your staff get their work done, don't get in their way. Respect and encourage them, rather than running a slave shop.

Pros

Job experience and growth. You will be challenged if you find the right projects/managers.

Cons

They are reducing benefits to "keep inline with the industry" or competitors.
What they have done is lose their differentiation and become just like CSC or SAIC.

Advice to Senior Management

It is too late... you've dug a hole too deep. That is why your best employees are going to Deloitte or small companies trying to find what Booz used to be.

Pros

- Pay is good in my opinion
- Work schedule is pretty flexible
- My colleagues are all pretty good folks and easy to work with
- Lots of horizontal communication and collaboration

Cons

- Promotion beyond Lead Associate is a crap shoot.
- Incentive to promote from Lead to Senior Associate is disappearing.
- Senior Associates used to be helpful and approachable, but more and more I'm finding them to be too absorbed in whatever it is that gets dumped on them. To be honest, I don't know a single one that seems happy.
- Assessment system is out of control and extraordinarily time consuming and detailed while at the same time being subjective enough so as to allow for the good old boy network to exert its influence over actual job performance
- If you're stuck on client site full time, then you're out of sight, out of mind (but still expected to come to the office for 'face time' even though you work full time at the client site).

Advice to Senior Management

Acknowledge to the firm that it has changed because it went public and stop trying to pretend it hasn't. People are no longer kept afloat between contracts like they used to, so the firm is hemorrhaging a lot of good and rate talents just to make sure the numbers on the quarterly reports look good. This is going to have an impact on the quality of the firm's client delivery in the long run.

All this said, I do not believe the partners really care about the long term. I get the sense that they're probably going to do whatever it takes to make sure they're taken care of and then abandon this sinking ship.

Pros

Smart, professional employees
Good benefits
Challenging opportunities
Adequate training and support for new employees

Cons

Several layers of management
Management does not focus on employee retention just profit
Laying off staff at an alarming rate
Work life balance is touted as important but it is not the reality

Advice to Senior Management

Lose the top heavy management structure

Pros

Great Pay
Excellent Benefits
Excellent Training
Good 401 (K) plan if you can survive being on payroll for 2 plus years

Cons

Firm no longer is a place about teamwork, collaboration and growth
They are firing experienced employees and replacing them with cheaper labor categories
Since going public, morale is reduced as leadership just doesn't care and is hardly honest with employees

Booz used to be a special place to work with lots of opportunties to get on interesting projects. Not so anymore. In fact, if you're a HUMAN CAPITAL professional, STAY AWAY from this place as they are laying people off right and left.

Since going public and closing offices under the guise of "hoteling," the firm has lost its way and it's really not a collaborative environment anymore. I've been around the firm a long time and it's simply dreadful that people no longer talk to one another and that the Senior Associates and above do VERY little to help you find a project.

It's not a safe place to work anymore. Watch the reviews here.....see the pattern. Shrader just sent out a bulletin to let people know they are about to lay off a lot of folks due to "limited opportunities," so the writing is on the wall.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop hiring GEN Y workers who lack experience so you can be more profitable...

Pros

Great Co-workers
Good pay for workers

Cons

Management out of touch with employees.
Politics is vicious to the point of interfering with careers.
If you don't want to advance to a higher level, they will find reasons to get rid of you.
360 Employees reviews are not true to form.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your lower ranking employees. Employees should be treated like gold. They are your main assets.

Pros

Professional Environment to work in if you are interested in hard work. Your ambition is the only thing stopping you.

Cons

Competetive to gain notice. Sometimes you can get stuck on a project and it is hard to move laterally in the company.

Pros

Booz Allen Hamilton is a cool place to work. I have been very satisfied during my 4.5 year tenure. I was hired straight out of college and have been promoted twice.

Cons

At time the work schedule can be grueling. There is a limited work-life balance, although it is highly promoted within the firm.

Advice to Senior Management

My advice would be to be more involved with the pupils aligned under you. specifically those who are primarily working on a client site.

Pros

Generally, benefits are pretty good. Plenty of vacation days, profit sharing integrated with 401k.
Booz Allen is a great place for young people to start because of the strong corporate culture (what to do and what not to do), 360-review process, and highly defined performance criteria. Also has reachback capabilities far beyond any other company I've worked for, with technical focus groups, communities of practice, and a new (internal) social networking web site. Generally, your management usually looks out for you and helps you work on your career progression.

Cons

Responsibilities are organized different than other companies, which means you may not have as much purview as you did with your last company (even though you may be qualified). E.g. you may have led teams of 40 people before, but if Booz brings you in as an Associate or Lead Associate, you likely will not have purview over that many personnel... and you will likely not have as much purview over personnel management activities until you are a Sr. Associate or Principal.

Career progression is highly dependent on being in the right place and right time. It's not the typical model of do well and you'll move up. You have to do well, be highly networked, and "own" a market.... which can be very difficult. People can end up being at the Associate level for 20 years.

There are a lot of demands on your time. After working your 8 hour shift, you may be required to work on markeitng, proposals, white papers, focus group or community presentations, etc. You are required to do A LOT to get by within this company. They talk about work/life balance, but admit that the "balance" is different for everyone... and naturally has to be balanced towards "work" to get ahead in the company.

The company was purchased by Carlyle Group and there are pressures on profitability that are causing mental anguish on the employees. The culture is changing.

Pros

Excellent benefits if you can keep them

Cons

Managerial Incompetence at the highest levels

Advice to Senior Management

You will ruin the company reputation by staring at the bottom line