Protiviti Reviews

Pros

-Pay is in line with industry/competitors
-Variety of clients/industries
-Opportunities to travel

Cons

-Work/Life balance
-Variety of projects is lousy
-Corporate culture can make one weary

Pros

Offer many opportunities for growth and exposure to different lines of work and industries, provide quality training and job preparation

Cons

Travel, constantly adjusting to new client environments and different management styles at Protiviti, raises and bonuses are limited due to economy

Advice to Senior Management

Get to know your employees and what kind of work interests them.

Pros

Very professional. Emphasis on certifications and competency growth. Local market culture.

Cons

Strategically challenged as a part of RHI.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the focus on competency growth.

Pros

The people are the reason to work at Protiviti. There is a strong sense of shared ownership, an entreprenurial spirit and a strong desire to do what is right for each person. The flexibility of being in a small company works well for most people and Protiviti can flex to work with top performers on work life balance needs.

Cons

With its smaller size, Protiviti cannot always compete with large consulting companies in terms of their ability to weather mistakes and/or market shifts.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep communicating and listening to your people

Pros

At Protiviti I have experienced growth and a family away from my home. People take an interest into who I am and who I wish to become. The people I work with challenge me on a daily basis and make me want to improve into a better professional. The CEO is interested in his people and shares this openly through email communication to their direct superiours. I think this was shown by the entire Executive Team being present at the Intern Challenge showing their support of the future of the Protiviti organization.

Cons

There are travel demands at Protiviti, but if you work with your project manager in advance you will be at home when you need to be for important events.

Advice to Senior Management

Please continue to keep your staff clued into the future of the organization; constant comunication is one of the reasons I enjoy working at Protiviti.

Pros

Protiviti is a good place to work with good work-life balance, opportunities for promotion, and variety of clients in many different industries.

Cons

Work can get boring because you can get staffed on the same type of projects and work for the same managers.

Advice to Senior Management

Employees need to have more input in terms of what projects, clients, and locations that the employee is staffed on.

Pros

Big 4 experience outside the Big 4. Disciplined & professional environment.

Cons

Committee employee evaluations can be subjective to popularity among peers, and/or immediate seniors who are not your supervisors. Not enough client feedback in these reviews either.

Advice to Senior Management

Must do a better job identifying and retaining your best talent. break up the social cliques at little, and focus employee energies more on client delivery. (this persists across the Big 4 too. competitive advantage?)

Pros

people are intelligent and nice

Cons

company not as recognized in the marketplace
made up of ex-Andersen employees, so still had the Big 5 mentality

Advice to Senior Management

provide greater visibility to employees

Pros

Protiviti has an upbeat, young culture. Their office in Chicago is very up-to-date and relatively trendy, especially compared to other consulting firms. Management has "open door" policies and are easily accessible.

Cons

Protiviti, being a smaller firm, doesn't have as many opportunities for entrepreneurial growth on projects (eg, networking within the organization and finding other projects you'd like to be staffed on).

Advice to Senior Management

It would be nice if management went further out of their way to explain strategies during economic downturns. Although Protiviti was well off, we didn't get to see proof very often.

Pros

Personal atmosphere; overall good, qualified individuals; good leadership from senior consultants

Cons

Upper management is stale and tends to live on clouds. Horrible morale amongst the Consultant and Consultants II's who are treated more like machines rather than people. Work is very repetitive if you get stuck doing SOX 404 engagements. Extremely cliquey management who will agree with whatever the ranking directors say regardless if true. Review system in place only has formal reviews on projects worked 80 hours or more, which means you may only receive one review a quarter, and are often cliquey and biased to personal feelings rather than professional.

Advice to Senior Management

Management in Los Angeles needs to evaluated by corporate and have the Arthur Anderson feel removed. The firm is not a big 4 and does not need to be run with the same level of division between management and staff. Managing Directors need to get off their clouds and re-evaluate what it is like to be at the Consultant level and learn to appreciate the work being done.