Company: Deloitte
Date: 2014-07-28
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Confirmed

Executive Assistant/Administrative Assistant - Your Mileage May Vary
Pros: My experience as an AA and an EA at Deloitte was overall extremely positive from a work environment, compensation, and benefits perspective. Depending on your region and marketplace, I believe that Deloitte probably offers the higher end of pay for AAs/EAs when compared to similar firms. While the workload is often heavy (each admin supporting 5+ professionals per desk), honestly none of the actual admin work was ever difficult - booking travel, managing calendars, answering phones, etc. None of the normal admin tasks anyone was ever asked to do really required any critical thinking or anything higher than a high school education. 

Benefits are really great and Work-Life Balance for Administrative Assistants is pretty good (would probably not say the same for Client-Service Pros in Tax, Consulting, and Audit practices) considering you are only expected to do administrative tasks during normal business hours. Deloitte has an extremely diverse workplace and is a great place for women to work in terms of maternity leave, diversity, and leadership opportunities. 

Your success can be highly variable and often dependent on the Partners/Principals/Directors that you support. The only way you can get the Deloitte Services Admin Managers at ANY level (from local Admin Manager to Regional Managers) to really consider your performance ratings and level-promotions is to have strong P/P/D advocates on your side. I was lucky in that I had P/P/Ds who invested in my work and advocated on my behalf to Admin managers and were willing to give me additional work, experience, and opportunities that some others (including my Admin manager) would not trust "just an Admin" to do. I will say that finding these supportive P/P/Ds can be difficult and not all are looking out for their admin's career development. 

However, as a overall majority, the people you work for and with are respectful,  talented, and smart. You can build great connections and business relationships that benefit you going forward and Deloitte is a great name to have on your resume.
Cons: Shared Services Managers were pretty inefficient at their jobs - they often had no idea what the day-to-day tasks of AAs/EAs were and just read from and evaluated your performance on the handbook/script provided to them from their upper level Shared Services management. A lot of micromanagement and nit-pickiness was common - what the Shared Services Manager thought was important did not often align with what a Partner wanted/needed/asked an admin to do. 

Career advancement for Administrative Assistants is solely limited to the possibility of becoming an Executive Assistant. Even then, this is often based on the career trajectory of PPDs you support and if they want to "take you along" with them. 

Ultimately, despite how helpful my PPDs were over the years, and all the additional responsibilities and experiences I gained, I was never able to break out of the Admin track. Once you start down the Administrative Assistant road, there are little to no opportunities to venture out of it. This is often true at many large companies, but an absolute at Deloitte. If you have been an Admin for 15+ years you may be able to move in to managing other admins as a Shared Services Manager - but only if someone retires. This often leads to why Shared Service Managers are so inadequate at their job - despite having worked as an admin for a long time, they have often lack actual management skills necessary to position. 

The lack of advancement and poor direct management by Shared Services were my ultimate reasons for leaving - I know this is the reason why many people in admin roles leave Deloitte.

I would only recommend becoming an Administrative Assistant at Deloitte if that is where your passion and your career interests lie - you will have job security and there is some advancement within the Admin Assistant track (Sr. Admin Assistant, Executive Assistant, etc) - but you will never have a title outside of some version of Administrative Assistant. 

This role is not a stepping stone into any other job or opportunity at Deloitte, no matter if you have a college degree, previous experience, or diverse background in Tax, Audit, or Consulting.  "AA"  is definitely a scarlet letter on your brand internally.