Company: Deloitte
Date: 2014-07-24
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Confirmed

Five + years in S&O Consulting, Strategy Service Line (Monitor Deloitte)
Pros: Great place to launch a career.  If you are self-motivated to do so you it's possible to exposure to lots of projects across different industries.  To date I've done a variety of projects:  Private Equity Due Diligence, Growth strategy, Pricing Strategy, Market Segmentation, Process Improvement, Organizational Redesign... and have gotten exposure to many different industries:  Aerospace & Defense, Pharmaceutical, Provider (Hospitals), Medical Devices, Retail, Technology.    The recent acquisition of Monitor Group has doubled the size of the strategy practice and greatly increased the amount of "true strategy" work available.  Priority goes to those associated with the strategy service line If you come in straight from MBA school you will be a "GM" General Management Pool  and are not necessarily affiliated with Strategy. Culture is very team based - individuals are friendly and will generally always try to help out other colleagues in need.  Leadership is very approachable.  Partners will make time for you in their busy schedules.   95% of colleagues are amazingly sharp and extremely motivated.  Model is to focus one one case at a time - a huge benefit so you don't have to split your time between two different cases.
Cons: Work life balance is pretty tough.  Very long hours 60-80hrs work weeks,  sometimes working many weekends (depending on the project), travel is intensive.  The firm is trying to be more flexible and is starting to change but >80% of projects still require full time on the road (i.e. gone Monday -> Thursday) at the client site.   Staffing is very much "self-determined" it's basically up to you to get staffed where you want to.  Finding staffing is all about "networking" within the firm.  This can be good and bad - Good because you can try to direct the types of projects you do, but can be hard if you only have a network in one industry  area but want to move to a different area. Staffing coordinators are not very helpful in actually getting you staffed and "utilization" (having client billable work) is very important at year end.  Unfortunately,  I've known many people who have delayed or canceled their vacations because they were worried about getting enough utilization.  Deloitte also places a HUGE emphasis on contributing to firm activities (in addition to client work).  To be ranked above average (a 1 or 2) in your class at year end requires a substantial additional firm commitment. Examples include: leading a recruiting team,   leading a team to write a large whitepaper,  developing additional firm capabilities in certain practice areas,  serving as leader to organize the office All Hands Meetings 4x a year, helping to develop the national or service area learning curriculum, etc.   Not only do you need to "contribute" but you should "lead" these initiatives (and identify the opportunities to get involved all by yourself).  Last year individuals that were ranked "2's" (not even the highest raking of "1's") contributed 500 - 600 hours of EXTRA work per year on top of client work to firm initiatives.   This can be really tough, especially if you are on a few very intense 70hr/week+ client projects.