Deloitte Reviews in Melbourne, Australia Area

Pros

Management Consulting arm is very strong. Breadth and depth of opportunities great. Work with some highly talented and intelligent people.

Cons

Across management consulting work life balance is a challenge - and it's no different here. Travel demands within Australia can be excessive.

Advice to Senior Management

Get the work life balance thing right - or you will struggle with the upcoming talent shortage ... Pay and hours do not compare favourably with industry.

Pros

Deloitte was full of talented individuals, with diverse work to engage in, a big pipeline of projects, established methodologies that we readily able to be applied.

Cons

This wasn't exactly what i signed up for. As a consultant, you are assigned to projects based on business needs, not on your skills and abilities. There is a lack of focus on assigning the right talent to the right projects, and the individuals suffer as a a result. Deloitte regularly indoctrinates that they only hire the best and brightest, so that leaves little comfort level for individuals to address their dissatisfaction with the "system." People basically then "take it on the chin" until they are simply ready to walk out the door. Lacking in strategic work and skills, even though they advertise that they are one of the biggest in the market for such expertise.

Advice to Senior Management

Get more involved in what the day-to-day of consulting is for your teams. Pitch and price the engagements properly so they are adequately staffed. Don't let your underbidding of the projects come out of the backs of your hard-working employees, take it off your profitability lines. Attrition will be hitting hard, and sooner than you know, if you don't start taking care of your people. Your best and brightest WILL leave if they continue to burn at the rates they are.

Pros

contains lots of professional talent with people from all skills sets. the opportunity to grow is quite large with room to move to international locations if you so wish. people are generally laid back with a good corporate culture with lots of functions and community events

Cons

to be promoted does take a little time as you need to go through a corporate ladder that looks at tenure more than accomplishments. the partners are generally tight lipped during tough times and we even experienced 3 rounds of lay-offs that were handled very poorly. morale can be greatly positive or negative depending on the economy.

Advice to Senior Management

create more of a small company culture, to develop more employee involvement

Pros

People I work with are very supportive and very team orientated. Most people (partner to analyst) always has time to meet and talk with you just about anything - work, personal, music, sports, etc. Most of the people I've met come from quite diverse professional backgrounds and hence can provide multiple perspectives on the work we do.

Cons

Partners and senior managers do have favourites - which means that if you don't know how to navigate the politics, your career will progress more slowly compared with the "chosen few". Certain partners are not inspiring, and in some cases exhibit some of the worst leadership qualities imaginable.

Advice to Senior Management

Chose people wisely for partnership - there are the main reasons why people stay (and leave) Deloitte

Pros

Deloitte provide's good work/life balance opportunities in Australia. Especially for women who need a year off for the birth of a new child, or for those seeking to travel. I took a years leave of absence in order to travel the world. This was made easier knowing that I had a reasonable paying job to return to.

That aside, the firm allows you to work from home when necessary. Because staff are provided laptops and wireless cards, you can complete certain work from home. Some staff even negotiate to work from home a day a week. However this will depend on your role.

Lastly, I managed to meet some life long friends with, who I have traveled with and spent countless good times with outside of the office. If you're going to work with someone 8 hours a day, it's nice if you can enjoy their company.

Cons

The hours can often be demanding. I isn't unheard of to have to work 60 or 70 hours a week sometimes. Whilst this isn't the norm I would suggest that people looking to work 9-5.30 shouldn't apply for jobs at Deloitte.

Secondly, the corporate ladder isn't very flexible. Once you have a position, you must work your way up each rung. Given the company has so many employees, they are unable to judge individuals completely on their merits.

The pay is not as high as positions at the other big four accounting firms. And this salary is present with superannuation include...unlike other Australian companies. This makes the value seem higher than what it is. So be mindful of that.

Advice to Senior Management

Some service lines I have worked for have leaders who are not very inspirational, and who don't have the respect of the actual workers. Given my role was very technology focussed it was worrying to see that the partners in this area of the business weren't very clued on about new technologies or approaches that could help our clients.

I would also say that we generally choose work based on the value, as opposed to ensuring we keep our skill sets relevant for the future. Again, with technology it is important to make sure your staff are skilled in the latest and most applicable technologies. Without doing so, you create room for new, more skilled competitors to come in and take the work.