A.T. Kearney – “Practical, yet mind-numbingly uninteresting”

Pros

- Down-to-earth people, yet also friendly, pragmatic, and smart
- A genuine interest, at manager level, to improve junior consultants' performance
- Plenty (almost too much) face time with the client
- "Green" initiatives being employed at most offices in North America
- Offices are very open; partners usually have an open-door policy

Cons

- Simply put, the firm's outlook is horrible. Its hiring strategy in 2009 indicates that the firm is way off-base when it comes to establishing workforce targets and effectively projecting workloads over the next year.
- Workload is brutal (~70+ hours), and the client locations aren't much to shake a stick at (want to spend a summer in central Kentucky?)
- "Global firm" model means that you could be travelling across the street for a client or across the country on a red-eye; lots of variability
- Virtually zero strategy work; it's all sourcing, cost reduction, and IT work at this point
- Creativity is simply not valued. A lot of ATK's intellectual capital (which is fantastic) is almost used as a crutch in client engagements
- Establishing a positive rapport with the client is frowned upon
- Review processes are opaque

Advice to Senior Management

Aligning hiring targets with the firms you want to become (BCG, McK, Bain) would be the first step. Otherwise, there's no way you'll be able to win against the big guys. In addition, you should learn to appreciate the talent you hire -- word travels fast at business schools how you really ran some of your people through the ringer, and it's only going to harm you when top talent has a choice between not only M/B/B, but some of the firms that you're beating for work but have a stronger culture.