Capgemini Reviews in London, UK Area

Pros

Good work life balance
Excellent respect for individuals (only valid for some units of Capgemini Consulting)
Good training infrastructure

Cons

Pay sucks
Quality of people pretty ordinary. Most of them have no clue about strategy
Lots of mundane public sector projects which will never end

Advice to Senior Management

public sector is over and private sector is calling..refocus your offerings at the right places

Pros

- great people
- very collaborative
- great opportunities to learn
- very supportive line management
- great London location (Soho but soon to change)
- great Paris based company university (if you can get time off client work to go on a course!)

Cons

- WLB - lots of internal work required in order to do well at performance review. Deliver is 1/4 of scorecard and if doing long hours on intense client project, that leaves little time to do activities for the other 3/4s of the scorecard. Excellent delivery ratings and utlisation alone will not get a good score
- On the job learning is very dependent on the project you are assigned to. Project resourcing is of the bus stop variety - whoever's on the bench. No pre-agreed rotations so best person placed in client job or to help for individuals to get career development opportunities they need
- Technology is poor - laptops and mobiles regularly crash and mobiles are of limited choice and quality

Advice to Senior Management

There are creative ways to work on all the cons outlined. Addressing these would make Capgemini an amazing place to work. the softer side which is harder to bring about is already there so we're already ahead. Not addressing the cons means we lose a lot of good people for reasons we could have addressed.

Pros

Great development opportunities, great people. appreciation of work life balance. interesting and varied career opportunities. it's a good place to work

Cons

Consultancy in general is difficult it is hard to manage work life balance and it can be difficult when working away from home.

Advice to Senior Management

Reward and recognition is probbaly the area that needs most work. Are we being payed the same as others in similar roles in the industry?

Pros

- Diversity of projects - technical people work on different sectors/accounts
- Good senior management - know what they want and where we're going
- Work/Life Balance - working from home is possible, business supportive of personal circumstances
- Good opporunities for junior to mid-level grades to work on big systems / new technology

Cons

- You can get sent to anywhere in the country like most consultancies
- Little international focus - unlikely to work across borders
- Senior positions require less technical focus
- Middle management is awful - delegation rules
- Some good Enterprise Architects but the majority are very poor technically.

Advice to Senior Management

- Improve the quality of technical hires, provide a more structured technical career advancement, improve the majority of middle-managers and the enterprise architects.

Pros

- Good People
 - Lots of opportunities to get training
 - Good projects
 - Plenty of experienced and talented consultants that are willing to take the time to mentor the more junior staff

Cons

- Top Heavy
 - Very poor reward recognition.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest more in rewarding excellence.

Pros

There are a number of really smart and talented people here and you can learn a great deal. However the company operates differently from country to country, so you have to understand the culture by region. You can be flexible and they allow you work from home, so that can be a plus.

Cons

You will work very long hours and feel guilty if you don't. Some of my colleagues almost boast that they have no personal life and work until midnight or later.

Advice to Senior Management

It would be nice to see more centralisation in the business. I think that the company is succeeding despite its internal structure.

Pros

One of the largest Management Consultancy firm with many talents
Quite strong brand reputation with the legacy link to Ernst & Young
Training is excellent
A place where you can really learn a lot

Cons

Weak in North America
Not true global firms
Each country or even division (Consulting Services, Technology Services and Outsourcing) are not collaborating on the ground
Not as glamourous as direct competitors such as Accenture & IBM
The job mobility between countries (join Capgemini Australia from Capgemini UK) is limited

Advice to Senior Management

Each division should be global in reality with a P&L which provides credibility and stop countries fighting against each other on margins on top of other margins.
This should be incentivised in the bonus scheme.

Pros

- open, supportive and collaborative culture
- very good learning and development opportunities
- respectful relationship between management and staff

Cons

- most senior and respected VPs have left again
- few exec level client relationships
- too many SI and long term technology projects

Advice to Senior Management

CG does still have a very good working culture and quite a few very capable staff. However, management needs to be clear what to do with Advisory and then go for it or not, the current strategy for Advisory is not coherent and reflected in salaries.

Pros

Good work life balance, interesting range of clients, many sites in UK. Also there are a lot of good people within the company to work with.

Cons

Lack of technical roles within UK. Too much in fighting between teams on same account. Constant reorganisations lead to change fatigue!

Advice to Senior Management

In general you are doing a good job, but there are still too many redundancies being made where training could have been offered to enable staff to be retained.

Pros

Good work-life balance, encourage entrepreneuralism but probably moreso because they do not enforce process as rigourously as the "man=machine" culture experienced at some of its competitors (who will remain nameless!).

Cons

Not really truly global as could still strengthen US presence. But on the whole - very few cons compared to its closest competitors.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't rely on public sector beyond the next elections!