Company: KPMG
Date: 2013-09-22
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

KPMG Advisory Netherlands - not recommended!
Pros: Reputation: After all KPMG still has a good overall reputation
Fantastic work-life balance due to lack of project assignments (bad sales)
Cons: - Contract: 1-year contract which is supposed to "automatically" turn into permanent employment after 1 year. Contract renewal is supposed to be offered (written!) latest 3 months before expiry. I got numerous verbal confirmations from partners but no written contract until the day I resigned! In addition, the extension was only offered for 1 year and when asking about it, I was told not to complain since other people only got 6 months offered!
- Salary: Unequal payment for same level: I entered the company as experienced hire and was offered a low salary which I was willing to accept for 1 year (see below: salary). Salaries of lower-performing peers who were "KPMG-homegrown" exceeded mine partially by 40%!
- Salary cuts / no increase, a quick decision by board. 
- Staffing: Experienced hires have a hard time getting staffed at projects since selection is based on your internal network and not on your skills&capabilities. Peers consider you to be competition and are not showing a welcoming culture. 
- Partnership model: Partners are not collaborating but competing w each other. This means that a partner is rather willing to staff an unsuited member of his own team than taking one from the "neighboring" dept even though he/she might be much better suited for the role.
- Fresh juniors / interns are being "tricked" into staying w KPMG by false promises 
- Bad sales are blamed on bad economy, and competitors (other Big 3) are permanently talked badly about. However, competitors that do better are never mentioned.
- No streamlining, i.e. no standard high quality delivery to clients but strongly depends on people at project.