Deloitte Reviews in Chicago, IL Area

Pros

Smart, talented people. Great clients. Awesome pay. Dedicated teams. Clear dedication to client service. Most professionals are team players that really value being a part of the organization, and they treat each other with respect.

Cons

Just like all businesses, difficult decisions had to be made during financial crisis. Good people were let go in the process. Challenged management on communications internally on how to best position with people that stayed at the Firm.

Advice to Senior Management

Management should always be forthright with all their people. Leave the "sugar coating" out. When you are managing auditors and consultants, you need to recognize that it is challenging to avoid the group seeing through the politically correct "speak."

Pros

Great learning experience and exposure to multiple clients in various industries. Great for someone right out of college to get experience.

Cons

Career life balance is terrible. The hours are significant. Management of the firm do not anticipate or even try to forsee future staffing issues. The shortage of staff leave most teams scrambling at the last minute. Several of the partners are very out-of-touch with reality of how much staff work (they did it back in the day - so why shouldn't you type mentality).

Advice to Senior Management

Need to bring back the focus on people. Quality staff are jumping ship quick.

Pros

Great training, Great resources, Extremely talented and smart people to learn from. They will train you and put that training to work right away. The training is actually geared to what you will be doing. And it is great real world training.

Cons

Be prepared to be worked endless hours. They love talk "work life balance", but be prepared that it is just lip service and if you want actual work life balance you will get dinked on your review.
Managers love to make you do work that they didn't do (because they didn't want to) when they were in your position.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn what is going on in the trenches

Pros

Great vacation time, interesting different companies to work for, airline miles, mostly smart people

Cons

Long hours on some boring projects helping inept companies. Don't have great opportunities to dive deep into a company client.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure you keep your best people and don't lose track of them. You should keep track of your most talented people, not just the loudest people.

Pros

Very people-centric. Everyone is friendly there is an open door policy for most sr. managers and partners.
Entrepreneurial spirit and lots of autonomy as long as you do well.

Cons

Travel can drag now and then and staffing is a bit ad-hoc at times. Definitely some late nights but that's to be expected every now and then in client service.

Advice to Senior Management

Have managers stick to a staffing plan.

Pros

Collaborative, collegial, culture focused on career development. Great mentorship. Smart people to learn from.

Cons

Travel however that is to be expeceted in consulting.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good work.

Pros

smart people who are dedicated to the firm

Cons

Very political and hiararchical - better be politically savy to succeed at Deloitte Services

Advice to Senior Management

The firm loses good people because it protects some powerful leaders with big egos who can damage others' careers

Pros

A recognized brand and one of the largest consulting professional firms in the world

Cons

Limited fast track career opportunity

Advice to Senior Management

N/A

Pros

Very diversified and open to various schools of thought. As an audit intern, you work great hours and are able to experience big name clients if you're lucky, but they are very accommodating to your needs and interests.

Cons

Road to advancement seems unlikely seeing that it could take 20 years to move up to partner. Experience as an intern can vary greatly - can either get lots of great exposure to different clients or industries or could get nothing but meetings and grunt work

Advice to Senior Management

The internship program was great in that it allowed everyone to come together and work together as an intern class.

Pros

Great People
You get exposed to a wide breadth of experiences

Cons

Hard to manager work life balance

Advice to Senior Management

Require less hours of non client work