Oliver Wyman Reviews

Pros

Oliver Wyman has proven to be a great company with great people with in the company who support you along the way. There are added benefits of working from home, flexible work hours, opportunities for growth.

Advice to Management

Just like all people cannot be treated the same due to limitations, not all positions should be treated the same due to locations and circumstances of each office or group of people.

Pros

- Firm full of genuinely kind and inquisitive nerds, who also love to have fun. These are my people.
- Fast progression available to those who excel.
- Good pay, although room for improvement around the manager level.
- Amazing office culture. I've made my best friends at this firm.

Advice to Management

Benchmark with competitors if you want to keep high caliber talent. That means salaries, perks, progression, training, etc.

Pros

+ Amazing group of talented Consultants, Senior Consultants
+ Strong culture and commitment to I&D
+ Meritocratic promotion system (not political office environment)
+ Overwhelming Financial Services focus of years past has shifted to a more diverse set of industry particularly in Utilities, Transportation, and Retail in the US offering new consultants a broader set of opportunities. (moved from 75% FS to closer to 45% FS, the regulatory projects OW made a killing on in years passed have dried up in light of deregulation in the Trump Era)
+ In spite of low name ID, Consultants who leave after 2-4 years tend to go on to work at elite firms (in Tech/FS/PE), go to prestigious MBA programs, or work for emerging NFPs/Start-ups.

+ Love my peers in CCG (Core Consultant Group, which is the group you are put in during your first 1-2 years out of undergrad)
Almost everyone is smart, relatively chill/fun to be around, and we're a non-competitive, truly supportive of each other.

+ Culture
While by no means does OW have some utopian inclusive culture or is it as racially diverse as we'd want to be, we're a firm of respectful (often progressive) people who aren't afraid to have very candid conversations about emerging issues and are always looking for pragmatic ways to improve our office culture and the consultant experience.

+ Your success at the firm is exclusively driven by your performance.
Promotions are really not political .. instead its based on a tough, rigorous 360 review process - where those who've met clearly defined objectives will be promoted. If you're meeting the targets for your next eligible role - you will be promoted every year. However, the firm leaders often can be pretty tough in how they review people's performance, so simply performing at a mediocre level will stagnate your career at OW. You must learn to succeed at constantly improving your skill-set/performance to do really well at OW.

Advice to Management

Improve training for managers, so they know how to empower their team - not just get a project across the line at all costs.

Understand the new class of consultant doesn't believe that being constantly burned by a project with long hours or tough conditions is acceptable - if you don't do more to remediate and proactively avoid project burnout - retention will be much lower than in past too many other tempting opportunities in this job market.

Make I&D a real priority, spend money on it - including the ERGs.

Pros

- Amazing group of people; you're almost guarenteed to make friends and you'll love the vast majority of your team members
- You learn skills that are transferable to almost any industry, and learn them quickly
- You can be given a lot of responsibility pretty quickly
- Promotion and reviews are very transparent
- Flexible work environment (can work from home, paternity / maternity time, leave of absence, etc)

Advice to Management

The lack of attention paid to consultant burn out is really short-sighted; we end up hiring a bunch of experienced hires / MBAs to fill the gap made by the people who leave, but then we don't do a good job integrating them because the heart of our company is still people who have grown up through the system. Partners need to realize that burning out consultants hurts us the long run for this reason.

If we are going to churn and burn consultants (like McKinsey) then fine, but we should do a better job of supporting them when they leave and staying in touch. Right now people almost always leave with a bitter taste in their mouth after months secretly feeling undervalued and searching for jobs. This also hurts us because people who leave under good terms can turn into clients, or even come back

Pros

Pretty much next best after MBB
Friendlier policies (Leave of absence, lounge fee)
Opportunity for fast progression
Improved diversity (at least in select offices)

Pros

great culture, flat hierarchy, engaging project work, fast progression

Pros

Learned and expended my tool kit

Pros

Incredibly intelligent and genuine people working there

Pros

Great benefits & compensation. Beautiful office. In my position, I had a great trust relationship with my immediate supervisor, so I was never micromanaged. Nice people (difficult personalities tended to not stay too long). Fun perks.

Pros

Intelligent, collaborative environment and colleagues. Emphasis on learning and growth. Great managers and emphasis on culture, inclusion & diversity, work life quality.