Significant improvements over the past year (between Summer 2020 and now (March 2021))
Pros
1. Great leadership: You are welcomed to voice your opinions here, and you will be heard. Examples: staff was dissatisfied about compensation back in 2020 and before, and let the management team know, which resulted in a significant raise in base salary across the board at the end of 2020 to be more competitive with other consulting firms. I have been in consulting for quite a while, and jumped from other competitors to here, and have decided to stay despite all the challenges in 2020, because I can trust EMC's senior leadership here. They do have your best interests at heart, and they work hard to deliver on their promises. After the bonus debacle in 2020, EMC leadership had a series of talks with EVERSANA parent company and was able to agree on a new bonus structure. The result is we all got fully-paid bonuses this year that just paid out in March 2021. Leadership here understands that they need their staff to stay if they want to grow and stay competitive, especially more so after what happened in early 2020, so they made good on their promises and really listen, which is not often seen in other consulting firms. 2. Someone said this is a PMO galore, which is incorrect. Yes we do have some PMO projects, but we also have a ton of other strategy and research-driven projects. For the 3 years I've been here, I have only worked on 1 PMO project, and the rest are a mix of market assessment, indication assessment, corporate strategy, forecasting, market access, LOE strategy, and so on. If you get stuck on a PMO project for long and don't like it, speak up! My senior has asked me many times if I want to stay on my current PMO project or if I'd like to switch, and I have decided to continue to stay on because I love my client, and I actually still learn a lot from it. You have a lot more control over your career development here, as long as you speak up and ask for what you want. 3. Collaborative, friendly culture: I have had great relationships with my colleagues throughout my time here, in various offices. People are very nice to work with, and willing to help you. I've made really great friends outside of work here, and continue to keep in touch even after some of them have left. I can't say the same thing about my previous consulting firms, which are both big players in Life Science consulting.
Cons
1. It's still a small firm, with little brand power. If you want to exit to something outside of pharma, may not be the best place due to unknown reputation. But if you want to stay in pharma, there are still a lot of good exits here. Many of the former colleagues are now at Associate Director or Director level at other big pharma or biotech, so not that bad. 2. Lack of some resources that other bigger firms enjoy -- e.g., access to databases such as IQVIA, Symphony Health, Bloomberg etc. 3. Operating under a bigger parent company: this has improved a lot since last year but there is still a bit of that cloud from last year that makes me wonder if anything like that may happen again in the future. 4. We've been really busy and staff has started to complain about overstaffing. We shouldn't keep underselling our work to get a foot in the door. If you keep doing that, it's no longer just a few one-off instances, but more like a pattern that may have negative downstream effect on staff morale and turnover.
