Company: KPMG
Date: 2009-01-06
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current

Good for your CV, but not well paid
Pros: Good training.  ACA qualification.  Top clients.  If you can suffer the low pay and long hours, and manage to make a move into front office banking, private equity or something similar as soon as you qualify the payoff can be very good.
Cons: Poor remuneration compared to other Big 4s and other professions e.g. Banking and Law.  Negligible rewards for good performers - annual bonuses for 2nd year TS analysts who got the top annual review rating in 08 were about £350-£500 after tax.  Counterparts at PwC were getting about £2,500 after tax on top of a higher base.  Progression is fixed until year 4, so it's difficult to see the point in working hard or trying to impress in years 1-3.  Advisory salaries are at some stages lower than audit, despite the longer hours, much higher charge-out rate and arguably more complex work.

Significant redundancies have been made at graduate level, with some departments cutting up to 50% of grads - many of whom had first time passes in exams.

Work life balance isn't great - you often get given days off in lieu, but this doesn't really compensate for being cut off from your friends for months working 15 hour days in Norwich.