Company: EY
Date: 2014-02-02
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Overall a great place to work, but many improvements required!
Pros: Compared to other consultancy firms, EY encourages flexibility in its working practices and tries to put the needs of the employee further ahead than the rest of the Big 4 firms. 

EY recruits the best. You will have the opportunity to work and learn from extremely intelligent and capable individuals. The strong teaming culture at EY will allow you to network/develop faster than most other firms. 

EY offers you a great platform from which you can leap to other senior positions in industry or practice. The strong branding will add colour to your CV. 

There is a wide variety of projects available and clients which many smaller consultancy firms simply cannot compete for. EY provides a breadth of services and can resource a client project at almost any level of seniority as well as expertise.
Cons: EY hires technical staff only to then place them on non-technical projects where PowerPoint slides and Word documents are the key deliverables containing advice, recommendations and a lot of "fluff". This is an abuse of their skills and knowledge, and EY should match projects and resources appropriately. 

Little or no technical training offered to those who wish to develop their core skills further. Training is instead prioritised around soft skills such as communication, structured thinking and problem solving (all of which should be standard employment requirements anyway). Learning on the job is the best, however the learning curve is far more steeper and uncomfortable without formal training. 

Big 4 firms generally offer a good service to clients, but not value for money (when actual fees are taken into consideration). Rates per consultant (of any grade) are over priced and the client is paying more for brand value. Over time, this can erode the value that the employee feels they are adding to the client project. 

EY approach to flexibility is great in principle, but difficult to implement especially when senior managers and directors pressure junior staff to work inflexibly.