Grant Thornton International Reviews

Pros

People, Flexible Schedule, Chalenging Projects. The people were great to work with at my office and I was able to travel and meet other employees at other offices.

Cons

Not many opportunities for advancement in the internal services. Since it is a client servicing firm the organization tends to overlook the internal services such as Marketing, HR, and IT. They offer bonuses to external client servicing but not to the internal client serving.

Advice to Senior Management

I would recommend that management offer more incentives and bonuses to their employees when the see them doing a good job.

Pros

Great Experience outside of Big 4, wide array of industries, able to see much of the audit early on. Many great co-workers make the long hours pass quickly. You will learn here.

Cons

Management is very competent and knowledgeable, but can at times be disrespectful and leave you in the dark. Upward mobility seems uncertain at best. Lack of work/life balance, inefficient use of human resources.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat people below you with more respect.

Pros

Grant Thornton provided lots of opportunities to advance my career that I do not think I would have received at big 4 firms.

Cons

The level of talent of senior management and audit staff at Grant Thornton International was not to the level of expertise that I expected.

Advice to Senior Management

Management should work on spending more time training individuals so that they can better perform their jobs and represent the company.

Pros

People who work here are generally nice and open which includes the partners. The office atmosphere is about as good as it can be for an accounting firm.

Cons

Senior leadership appears to be very inexperienced in running a business. They are good accountants but do a poor job transitioning from accountants to business leaders. There's very little forward thinking or even planning. Everything is the bottom line and recognizing actionable steps that a business needs to take to survive in this economic downturn is lacking. Nobody does anything or is not accountable because they would rather do nothing than make a calculated risk to compete.

Advice to Senior Management

Think like a business leader and not an accountant. CEOs and leadership often have to make bold decisions and calculated risks (e.g HP, Yahoo!, Oracle). Show up and be a leader, the staff is looking for our leaders and they aren't showing up. It seems they are waiting for this economic downturn to just pass by doing nothing and think within a few months all will be well.

Pros

Grant has solid leadership and a firm culture that truly fosters professional development and growth. Grant is large enough to provide you with the Big 4 experience without some of the drawbacks.

Cons

Grant can, at times, forget to include the current concept of work - life balance. There can be an environment where one feels guilty for taking time off

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to foster the growth of your professionals and listen to their feedback. The firm is only as good as its people.

Pros

The culture and people are awesome. The hours are more reasonable than Big 4 firms. There is a sense of respect between employees at all levels that you would not find in Big 4 firms.

Cons

The networking and communication lines are not as structured as the Big 4 firms, and this makes it more difficult to find chargeable work during down times. There are minimal chargeable hour requirements, which means that your job is not secure if you experience extensive downtime.

Advice to Senior Management

Make communication avenues more structured so that employees have ways to contact managers when they are in need of productive and chargeable work. Otherwise, you will end up laying off and pushing out very intelligent and qualified people simply because of lack of chargeability.

Pros

Smaller office giving you the benefit to know everyone, from the partners to the interns
Comparable pay and benefits

Cons

Disorganization, there is no standard procedure on how work should be done. Depends mostly on managers preferences
Too much office politics
Too much focus on budget and not on the growth of staff and seniors
Too much slackers and deadweight that management turns a blind eye to and yet chastise the workers who are doing their work

Advice to Senior Management

Work on creating one unified system, so that there isn't much ambiguity when it comes to charge time and budget.
Evaluate employees fairly based on work performance and not on if you like them or not
Hold employees accountable for their actions instead of turning a blind eye to a select few

Pros

Grant Thornton is the fifth largest CPA firm so if you want the name on your resume then good place to tough it out.
The training program is also pretty good. At our office there is not much training on the job but the company sends you to Chicago for a week of training which is decent.
Grant Thornton has a lot of resources for continuing education and keeping you updated on changes in the profession.

Cons

A lot of travel. If you are young and single and want to travel then this may be a pro for you. There is a formal process in place for employees to be reviewed for each job they work on, however they are hardly ever filled out until 6 months later. There is no immediate feedback, no praise if you do something well, and little or no on the job training. You are pretty much on your own to figure everything out. I was told by other associates and managers during busy season you are expected to be in the office on the weekends even if there is no work to do.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure partners and managers are involved in associates career development. As long as I was there it was pretty obvious no one cares about associates or there career and professional development. Meeting budgets takes priority over development of employees which is undertandable but when associates are in the office getting paid without work they may as well be getting opportunities to be developed and learn something.

Pros

GT is probably the most highly regarded outside the Big 4. Several of my friends were interns at the Big 4 firms and they agreed that GT is the best outside the Big 4. Also, the full-time salary offers after the internship was comparable to the Big 4. For the internship, we had weekly intern events every Friday. These events were usually outside the office and a great way to bond with other interns and staff from other service lines.

Cons

You may not be exposed to the challenging assignments or issues as you would if you work for the Big 4. Corporate clients are not as huge Fortune 500 companies but that's normal for a non-Big 4 firm. Also, as an intern, a significant portion can be doing administrative tasks.

Advice to Senior Management

My only advice is to try to promote the firm even more. Even though it is considered the best outside the Big 4, there are still several people who have not heard of them. While GT may not want to be a Big 4, being well-known helps attract the best talent. Better talent would lead to superior performance and more clients as a result.

Pros

Global organization, but they are somewhat lost in trying to find their identity between the big 4 firms and other national and international firms.

Cons

Large organization but run like a small business which promotes a harsh or ruthless environment in which decisions are made by a select few without much input from others.

Advice to Senior Management

Management has reacted quickly to the economic downturn, however, the focus has been to maximize current profits even if some of the decisions will hurt the firm in the long-run.