CGI Group – “It's not for everyone”

Pros

The people you work with are from all over the country and sometimes the world. The company has a diverse group of people with different experiences, which makes the work environment fun. I generally enjoy all the people I work with and I can't think of one person on my current project that I do not like.

Travel. If you love travel, CGI's the company for you. We travel all over the country, project to project, and we get certain bonuses which are really nice. For example, typically you'll fly out monday morning and fly back home thursday evening and work from home on friday. However, you're able to change this up and fly your significant other out to your project location instead of going home. This is nice because it's a free trip for your significant other to come spend the weekend in a new place, and it takes the stress of travel off of your back for one week.

CGI cares about your work-life balance and health/well being, too. If you're sick, you get 10 paid sick days per illness to recover. That's two weeks in the real world. After that, you'll need a doctor's note. So it seems CGI really does care that its members take the time they need to regain their health--and that's a great thing.

Comp time. If you work more than a certain number of hours in a pay period, you get what's called "comp time" which means that for every hour worked over that threshold, you get one hour of vacation accrual. Travelers often report that they have more comp time than they can keep, so they always have vacation available to them. Downside: they worked a lot of hours to earn that time.

Cons

It seems there is a real lack of formal training. Deloitte has a "BTA School" where new hires sit through an entire month of training, learning different skills that they'll use in their day-to-day activities. I have not experienced anything remotely close to this with CGI. Instead, we had a training class on how to use a specific piece of software--and it wasn't exactly easy to secure that training.

Moreover: there is no instantly recognizable training/place to find information about how to do things within the company. Instead, all of that information is either gleaned from other employees, or buried in the company's intranet, which is organizationally challenged and needs a serious overhaul. For example, I was shocked to learn that once my project ends, I will be "on the bench" and I have 2-3 weeks to find a new project within the company, or I lose my job. That would have been nice to know in that month-long formal training process that Deloitte has and CGI does not.

Advice to Senior Management

We definitely need some kind of training for new hires. It felt like I got hired, and was told, "okay, here's your desk, your laptop, printer's over there, if you have any questions, go ahead and ask." I appreciate the "intrapreneureal spirit" that CGI encourages, but sometimes new hires need a little direction.