Deloitte Reviews in Toronto, ON Area

Pros

- Privilege to work with bright and passionate individuals
- Breadth and variety of work experience
- Occasional travel opportunities outside the GTA
- Great networking events
- Work experience highly variable depending on service line (may end up doing grunt work or stuck with same client for a long duration or could be working long hours with no end in sight...very high amount of uncertainty)

Cons

- Majority of projects are local projects:
(Pros: Work close to home. Cons: Possibly long hours with no per diems, no fancy hotel, no car rental, no travel points)
- Travel projects mainly focus on Canada:
(Pros: Travel to Canadian cities with no customs or currency exchange. Cons: Most Canadian cities are extremely boring places to be. You may have dreamt of traveling to exotic and fun locations but sadly that is not the case usually)
- Negative/toxic work environment at times due to lack of transparent promotion process and consultants venting (unhappy moods from colleagues due to no overtime pay + sub par salary raises are contagious and will make you unhappy)
- Poor coaching of junior consultants
- Observed highly unethical practices that cannot be disclosed on a public forum

Advice to Senior Management

- Pay overtime and compensate well - consulting demands are significantly higher than jobs in industry
- Add 360 degree performance system to avoid an environment with managers disrespecting junior staff
- More frequent individual 1 on 1 partner communication to avoid having consultants feel someone else is managing their career

Pros

Work with professionals -- large place to work, so people are usually forced to develop a management style and learn to deal with staff -- forced to learn and develop every year, part of the process, does not require a special level of effort

Cons

Salary is not especially competitive -- because such a large establishment, individual exceptions are hard to make re salary, group transfers, bonus etc, until you're higher up in the food chain

Advice to Senior Management

pay attention to why people are dissatisfied, work harder to keep your good performers so you're not left with crappy employees

Pros

- great social events
- lots of variety in projects
- good training opportunities
- good performance appraisal process
- in some metropolitan city offices, opportunities for local work and less travel

Cons

- lots of politics, utilization is very important
- cases where you can be assigned menial work
- cases where they staff people on projects that don't fit their skill-sets

Advice to Senior Management

- they should improve career development and promotion policies
- they should extend higher performance based bonus component to entry level positions

Pros

Great opporunity to get experience in accounting and finance.

Cons

Pay is not competitive.
Lots of politics.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay more to keep talent.

Pros

Great work-life balance focus, high caliber of individuals, highly recognized brand name and stong potential to learn and get sales support from professionals across the firm (e.g., in tax, financial advisory, etc.)

Cons

While it's pretty warm and fuzzy, it was sometimes a little too soft (i.e. mediocrity could still succeed). Deloitte brand not as powerful in consulting. Poor pay.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve fringe benefits that are not too expensive but make people feel better about the fact that pay is lousy. Better integrate consulting services across borders.

Pros

- good place to grow
- good breadth of experience
- wealth of experience and people to learn from

all depends on opportunities, which are driven by the market

Cons

- somewhat politically driven culture
- hours worked fluctuate
- bonuses are somewhat on the low side
- salary is somewhat competitive among consulting but low holistically

Advice to Senior Management

- don't let practitioners stay at one client for too long (1+ years) to give them breadth of diversity (unless they request to stay at a client)
- increase pay for a BTA

Pros

Deloitte has a very entreprenurial environment whereby you can do anything you want, so long as you have the motivation and know to execute.

Cons

It's consulting and with any consulting firm there are politics around who does and does not get promoted. It is not the meritocracy that it says it is.

Advice to Senior Management

Make the promotion criteria consistant for all practices.

Pros

- Consistently given feedback from all levels in the firm
- Good opportunities
- Flexible in time-off and personal time
- Great benefits package
- Interesting work and good relationships with clients
- Senior management take notice of junior employees

Cons

- Very political, almost every action of senior management has a motive
- Do not always recognize outstanding work of junior employees
- Review process seems based on personality rather than productivity

Advice to Senior Management

Develop a review process that is more based on the quality and type of work completed rather than how you feel about an individual. Extra-curricular activities within the firm should not be seen as mandatory, but more like icing on the cake.

Pros

- the chance to work with a younger group of intelligent people at a similar career stage
- brand name recognition
- challenging and diverse work (at times)

Cons

- poor compensation
- poor work-life balance
- too much politics
- questionable promotion techniques
- lack of communication from upper management

Advice to Senior Management

- improve compensation
- make performance management and promotions more equitable rather than primarily "politics" based
- make performance management a more objective process

Pros

- The amazing group of individuals you have the privilage of working with
 - Access to senior executives and a range of clients/industries you wouldn't otherwise have an opportunity to work with.
 - Transitioning into the workforce with a comparative peer group (i.e., younger, more relatable than the integrated mix typically found in industry)
 - Ability to 'find what you like to do' - variety of opportunities is key

Cons

- No work life balance; workload only increases as you move forward in your career
 - Inconsistent application of performance metrics, promotion consideration
 - Compensation starts out competitive, but doesnt maintain competitiveness as you progress.

Advice to Senior Management

- Focus more on your resources, ensuring that junior staff are getting the skills necessary to assist the management team and that there is greater harmony between the resource mix and the solutions provided to clients.