Protiviti Reviews

Pros

The firm is always trying to expand its consulting services and the employees are very well trained. Management has an open door policy and the culture is friendly and professional.

Cons

You may feel like a fish out of the water in the beginning since there's little guidance as to what you are expected to do when you're not on a client assignment. However, this can work for you if you're an independent person who likes to take the initiative.

Advice to Senior Management

Take more time and care to inform your employees of the company's condition, especially if you're expecting a downturn. You invest so much in training your employees; it would be a waste to not make use of that investment so fine-tune your hiring process.

Pros

The work life balance is strong. Time off is rarely an issue.

Cons

The culture seems to have taken a turn in the wrong direction. Also, benefits, especially 401k matching falls short of comparable firms.

Advice to Senior Management

Upper level management (MD's, AD's, D's) need to be more visible to lowest level employees through non-work related functions.

Pros

Worklife balance is extremely valued, most projects consist of 40-45 hours a week and rarely any weekend work. Vacation time is greater than industry and Big 4. Opportunity to work within multiple industries and on multiple types of projects promotes a wide range of experience within SOX and internal audit.

Cons

Salary is lower than other consulting firms and Big 4. Knowing how to play the political game with upper management is the only way to prove that you deserve a promotion. Depending on the project the work can be boring and not as challenging.

Advice to Senior Management

Implement incentives for consultants to stay within the company. Improve the evaluation and promotion process by making it less subjective.

Pros

Able to focus on advisory engagements and pursue consulting opportunities/outcomes without so many external audit derived limitations compared to Big 4.
Talented people with many individuals having backgrounds in Big 4 as well as industry.

Cons

Given size and breadth of possible work, not suitable for someone who doesn't know what they want to learn (Consultant-Senior Consultant), or who hasn't got solid credentials/expertise to bring to the table (Managers and above).
Does not yet have a strong company culture, lots of "Individual" in the three "i"s where people work for themselves under the brand Protiviti rather than an affinity for Protiviti. New company competing with old names in the market, experienced growing pains and continues on the path finding itself (while needing to make money for RHI, etc).

Advice to Senior Management

Continue pushing to externally and internally make Protiviti a proud organization, but stick to the vision. Be careful of internal impacts of nimble/responsive change being perceived as uncertainty/confusion as to where the company is heading.

Pros

- Work life balance is much better than Big 4 and other consultancies
- People are young, energetic, and smart
- Specialized niche services teach deep skills
- Great launching pad for career
- Pay is competitive for industry
- Start with 4 weeks PTO

Cons

- Performance is determined with metrics (chargability, sales, overtime, etc.)
- Consultancies/Big 4 are hurting right now, Protiviti is not an exception
- Being owned by a publicly traded company (shareholder pressures)
- Skills/leadership capabilities are inconsistent across office locations
- Strategy is in flux, causing some confusion and inconsistencies
- Benefits are just OK

Advice to Senior Management

Ramp up efforts to retain talent - when things turn around other companies may lure in consultants and management. Offer more opportunities for external training.

Pros

- Great "small office" culture and open door policy
- Lots of vacation time
- Plenty of opportunities to travel
- Exposure to many industries
- Good training programs and reimbursement for certifications

Cons

- Pay is NOT competitive enough, estimate around 20-30% less
- Too many solution offerings with not enough experienced subject matter experts
- Promotion structure is flawed
- Not enough HR presence in the office

Advice to Senior Management

Pay your lower end staff more and adjust the salaries of loyal employees to match the competition. Also, having lots of solutions, new strategies, methodologies, etc are great, but focus more on core offerings so employees/clients can immediately associate Protiviti with those offerings.

Pros

Time off is good. People are easy to get along with at least in the Houston office. I've met people in other offices and a few of them seemed a little more driven and annoying.

Cons

The pay is terrible. The worst part is that they try to tell you that it is compatible to market salaries. That is not true and they know that.

Advice to Senior Management

Fire the dead weight at the top. While there are great and talented people in upper management, there are still a bunch that have no skills other than being able to talk up to those who make decisions meanwhile leaving the rest of us out to dry when help is needed.

Pros

-Competitive benefits
-Professional experience within multiple areas
-Travel opportunities worldwide
-Educational allowance
-Training provided
-Room for growth within the company

Cons

-Compensation not competitive
-Terrible promotion structure
-Indirect, negative treatment of employees by upper management
-Stressful work environment
-Poor HR operation

Advice to Senior Management

-Treat employees as people, not numbers
-Develop a new promotion policy not based solely on time
-Offer more competitive compensation

Pros

Good if you love travel, and lots of (non-monetary) praise for good work. Hired lots of trainees with no experience, so it would be a good entry-level job if necessary.

Cons

You are on the road 4 days a week ~45 weeks a year, usually in the middle of nowhere. Pay is crummy at entry level and you are expected to put in as much overtime and weekends as necessary. You get reimbursed for travel expenses a few weeks later. You don't really learn much; senior management has a "cookbook" and you just follow directions. Promotion to junior management is fast but based mainly on selling more work to your current client; promotion from junior management to middle manager is glacially slow. They had massive layoffs when the subprime crisis tanked their business.

Advice to Senior Management

You are doing not too badly for the current economy, but look into diversifying into other lines of business, even if you don't yet have the cookbook for it written. Make targets less loftily unrealistic.

Pros

The people were great to work with, but the hours and pay were awful

Cons

The hours and pay were terrible

Advice to Senior Management

Pay your staff the commensurate with the Big 4