Pros

nice salary, benefits, vacation and unlimited sick leave packages. The training is excellent. Basic training covers all aspects of the company from office policies to software. Great resources. Very supportive of obtaing CPA creditation.

Cons

Sticky office politics, chain of command issues can become irritating. Excessive hours from January- April. During this time vacation is NOT allowed. Expect to work 60+ hours a week, although managament will only say 50hrs are requried. On the flip side of this there is usually ver little work during off seasons. The offices are young, most management is in their 30s so cliques will form. Excessive turnover issues can be problematic with client service.

Advice to Senior Management

Many people are great at what they do, but it takes a skill person to teach / supervise others on what they do. Not all people should be promoted to upper levels.

Pros

good benefits, ability to work from home, good family values, nice people; I generally feel happy to work for RSM McGladrey.

Cons

I don't make enough money. I believe there is more money to made out there, and I know for a fact that peers with same job make more than I b/c they negotiated a better starting salary.

Advice to Senior Management

Allow your employees to spend money on training. I feel that put into a project that I know nothing about and have to fend for myself and may no little or nothing about the subject of product that I'm consulting on. Also, hire experienced individuals only. Whoever heard of a college hire that can be a consultant on network or software?!?!?!?

Pros

There are lots of talented people with RSM. The firm offers good room for growth, and most people are friendly.

Cons

There is a bit of a disconnect between management and staff. Management is very resistant to change. Flexibility is quite limited, and not as advertised.

Advice to Senior Management

Management is very talented and are mostly nice people. This could be a really great place to work if they actually lived up to the big firm with the small firm values that is hyped.

Pros

The people are nice and all tend to get along pretty well, this makes for an environment without much tension.

Cons

This was formerly a smaller local firm, the left over people from that firm are still pretty much in charge. The issue with this is that these same people get very nervous around people who they are worried have potential to show them up and make them look bad to the rest of the firm that has a larger firm mentality.

Advice to Senior Management

There is a bit of an identity crisis between being a huge firm and being a small firm, make up your mind and commit yourself to that direction.

Pros

Feels like a small firm but has national opportunities and great national training opportunities. Great people to work with. Hours are long, but only during busy season.

Cons

RSM is comprised of many different mergers. In the phoenix office, there are three different companies that are all technically functioning as one, but there is absolutely no unity between them. There are so many differences between the three different merger companies that they don't work together, and it creates a lot of office politics. Once they get things standardized (it hasn't happened after three years) it will be a completely different company to work for - not sure if its for the best though.

Advice to Senior Management

WORK TOGETHER! Each department in the phoenix office alone is completely different - as far as expectations, size of clients, and experience opportunities.

Pros

It is a great place to work for, every intern gets assigned a mentor. the work gets tough as the internship period continues.

Cons

The place really needs some diversity, I've been there three years, and they need to recruit more people of color.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up with the good work, and continue to help interns learn about the company

Pros

At the Chicago office audit practice you get to have a lot of independence in your work. For many smaller clients you will be in charge of the audit within 2 years of starting. The office environment is fairly casual. All the managers and partners have their doors open. In the financial services group, you get to build relationships with the clients' executive management almost from the time you start. Generally if you put in the work, you will learn a lot very quickly. The starting salary is definitely in line with the big 4 in Chicago. At least it was a few years ago. I recommend researching the different groups in the firm, they all run differently because the partners running them pretty much do whatever they want.

Cons

Seems like the place is very disorganized. Although I hear this is the case at many firms, I still didn't like hearing "look at last years files" when I asked about how to do something. Pretty much I learned how to do everything by looking at last years files. Mentoring was almost non existent. Depending on the type of person you are the following may be a downside. In my case it was. The majority of the people at the 1S Chicago office are from small-town-USA and it shows. So if you are used to city people and interests beyond work, sports, and drinking beer, it's sometimes hard to relate to people beyond the work day.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management should try to actually create a stronger more uniform company culture. Most importantly, some of the groups need to seriously reconsider the way they schedule staff. It is very disorganized. I'm not sure if this was a problem on the legacy McGladrey side of the firm, but it definitely is on the legacy Amex TBS side.

Pros

RSM McGladrey is a company with various opportunities for growth and advancement. While every office is different the company provides excellent benefits.

Cons

With any job in the financial sector work/life balance can be a problem.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue focusing on how to promote work/life balance of your employees.

Pros

RSM McGladrey is a good place to jump start your career, as it provides you with good compensation as well as experience. Since RSM McGladrey is focused on the mid markets, you will get a chance to closely experience a lot of different and diverse type of clients, and will get to work on many audit engagements through out the year, rather than being stuck on one or two clients. Most of the people are very friendly and supportive, everyone is there to help you out. If you have a dynamic personality, you can quickly advance through the ranks here.

Cons

Some of the downsides of working at RSM McGladrey are that they are not as prestigious as the big 4. Although the salary is fairly competitive, the bonuses/benefits are not as great (i.e signing bonus, passing the CPA bonus, per diems, etc). The big four have a smoother way of running things and are overall more sophisticated. Working at McGladrey, you definitely can tell that you are working at a mid-size firm, which is totally fine if that is the type of environment you want to be in. The biggest downside of working at McGladrey is probably the prestige factor.

Advice to Senior Management

n/a

Pros

Great people and good work life balance. As an intern, I was paid really well and sometimes even better than salaried employees when you count overtime pay. Good chance that you will get a full time offer as long as you didn't mess anything up too badly.

Cons

Doesn't give off the allure of one of the big named accounting firms. People still think it is American Express. While interning, I didn't get the feeling that the people at the company were all that intelligent. Don't get me wrong, they didn't seem stupid, but they just didn't blow me away as I thought they would.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep giving solid feedback to interns as to where they can improve so that they leave the company better off then when they joined.