Boston Consulting Reviews

Pros

Incredible name on your CV which opens up a huge number of opportunities once you leave. Fabulous people at the more junior levels of the company - bright, motivated, and lots of fun. You will learn a huge amount.

Cons

Tough work hours, minimal praise when you are doing a good job. Plenty of constructive criticism on how to improve you performance.

Pros

Prestige
Compensation
Client interaction
There didn't seem to be a lot of animosity between workers and supervisors
Travel was interesting

Cons

Lots of travel (if you don't like it)
Poor work/life balance
very political
Not always the humblest people working alongside you

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure that consultants feel recognized for their work
Try to create more of a work/life balance - leads to higher productivity in the long run

Pros

Amazing people to work with.

Cons

Work life balance is difficult.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep doing what you're doing.

Pros

Exposure to fantastic people as co-workers and clients. Ability to impact organizations at the highest levels while learning valuable skills that will carry you in the rest of your career.

Cons

High cost to your personal life and there is no balance. Ostensibly objective review process is fraught with subjective rigging.

Pros

Good place to work
Great people to work with excellent and diverse backgrounds
make a lot of effort to support case teams and staff

Cons

Lack of work life balance, it is the nature of the industry that you work long hours to earn your reputation and status - no pain no gain

Advice to Senior Management

Don't lose the culture that took 40 plus years to develop

Pros

Fantastic, smart, driven people
Some phenomenal projects that are interesting, intellectually challenging and give you access to senior leaders unlike any other job
Great culture
Good attempt to create work life balance - but not always possible

Cons

Work hard and under pressure
Travel a lot
Variability in case quality - hard to tell how great a case is going to be before you start

Advice to Senior Management

Develop more local work for consultants
Try more work sharing

Pros

Bright co-workers provide a stimulating enviroment
Intellectually interesting assigments across multiple topics
Ability to work on international assignments
Attractive salary when compared to industry

Cons

You are expected to be available 24/7
Theoretically the projects are scoped such that the workload is reasonable, but in practice this often does not hold as the true content of the project is defined as it develops
Large variance in the mentoring skill of more senior members

Advice to Senior Management

Recruiting practices effective at identitfying top-caliber candidates at traditional entry points, but less so for those who would come in with industry experience without and MBA

Pros

Wonderful place to get exposure to a variety of different industries and people. Steep growth curve allows you to take your skill set to the next level. Great group of highly talented, motivated people. Typically work on the most important projects for senior leadership at clients. Among the elite management consulting firms, BCG is very focused on ideas/ innovation and the diversity of its people.

Cons

Up or out model. Pace of work can be intense, particularly at the junior levels before you learn how to control your schedule. Although there are many efforts to share knowledge formally across the organization, informal networks tend to be more powerful, leading at times to silo'd or duplicated efforts.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to invest in the pipeline, especially the organic pipeline (direct from university). Very hard to re-fill the ranks as classes get more senior.

Pros

Vast majority of reviews are from consulting staff not admin.

- Pay is good
- All the perks that the consultants get
- International travel

Cons

Admin staff basically paid well but are 3rd world citizens. Except to be treated as such by consulting

- IT Management are very chaotic
- Flat structure; very little chance to grow
- No real technical training
- Expect to be on call with no recompense
- Low budgets = weak resources = overworked people

After 3-4 years you have essentially learnt to work adhoc and not learnt anything about IT. Don't do it if you except a career in IT.

Advice to Senior Management

Yes the staff are desperately committed to making things work but its not a long term solution.

Pros

It is a good post doc after an mba program. Can give good breadth of industries ans a view of various companies

Cons

Long hours. Difficult work life balance. Many do not have real industry experience, so the advice can be rather academic.

Advice to Senior Management

Think about your recruitment and retention policies and systems. You should strive to keep the best and brightest, not lose them due to churn.