Company: Deloitte
Date: 2015-07-02
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Confirmed

True meritocracy and performance punishment are two sides of the same coin in the Consulting arm
Pros: - Human Capital Consulting practice is arguably the largest in the world based on both comprehensive service portfolio and revenues
- Meritocracy for the most part: good performers are recognized through compensation and given more and more responsibilities (trending into performance punishment - see cons)
- Devoted to a diverse workforce - especially for women
- Lots of opportunities to get involved in firm initiatives from recruiting all the way to the development of white papers and research (however more on the formal tie to performance management in cons)
- Competitive compensation with opportunities for high performers to get quick salary raises and performance based bonuses at all levels
- Various career paths available including specialized technical ones with minimal client interaction
- Amazing training - both online and delivered through classrooms. Training is often provided through the state of the art Deloitte University and at all stages of your career to ensure that practitioners are equipped with the necessary knowledge to step into roles as quickly as possible
- Great methodologies for serving clients built through years of experience
- Good culture that is very collaborative and not as cut throat as in other top tier consulting firms - though this culture does vary significantly from office to office
- Great support structure that is able to meet all employee needs by calling a single number
- Opportunities for exotic travel every so often (especially with the influx of large global projects)
Cons: - The concept of "performance punishment" is often used to describe high performers that are given more and more responsibility - oftentimes overloading the employees. A key skill to learn early on is when and how to say no, and setting personal limits since otherwise Deloitte will continue to ask for more. For high performers, there is an expectation that they will be available at all hours - including many many weekends
- Annual Performance Management includes judging how much the employee has contributed to firm initiatives which puts added pressure on employees to take on additional responsibilities beyond client service in order to obtain the highest ratings and compensation increases
- Junior consultants have extremely minimal say in the staffing process. High performers are in high demand and more often than not assigned to the most high profile projects - even if they don't align with their interests and some times despite requests to the otherwise. This also extends at the more senior levels to a more limited extent. However, this is the case with most if not all large consulting firms
- There is pushback to transfers within the various consulting divisions in case the employee would like to experience the various roles and if there is a particular role that appeals to the employee more (though this could have been partially mitigated with the implementation of a proposed rotational program at the Analyst level
- Much like most consulting firms, networking is a necessary evil that needs to be perfected by the employee to ensure that they are getting the right leadership sponsors. And while this may be easier at Deloitte due to the relatively easy access to leadership and the relatively flat hierarchy, practitioners unable to network effectively are often overlooked for the choice projects and may be unable to garner good performance appraisals
- Travel is an almost guaranteed aspect of the job in certain consulting divisions