I would strongly recommend reading this review before joining!
This place is not a consulting organisation - Using the title of "consulting" company is very inaccurate - they don't consult, they do internal audit 90% of the time, with some small amounts of risk advisory work. From what I can tell reading reviews and hearing the experiences of others at my workplace, this is in fact an ongoing (has been happening for years), intentional strategy for misleading applicants, which is very disingenuous. This results is unsurprisingly very high turnover rates, and a lot of irritated people.
Chargeability woes - despite your level, even if you are junior, you are supposed to be responsible for your chargeability. If your chargeability is low, you need to solve it, not the people who assign work. It's your problem. To top it off, on numerous projects, this company regularly provides a super cheap bill to the client, where staff will not be allowed to charge all the hours they work, so that the budget can be maintained. Being asked to charge hours less than you've worked is a routine problem here, and worst of all its related to your promotions and bonus, even though it is out of your control!
Very cliquey workplace, people don't get you on work unless you're mates. People exclusively put their mates on projects without regard for anyone's interests/goals. This often leads to staff having 0 work variation, which defeats the point of going to one of these "high performing consulting” organisations for learning opportunities and variety of experience.
No coaching - there are incredibly limited training programs present, and regarding on the job training, managers/seniors are too busy and don't care enough to help you with anything. You're constantly expected to know the answer, when no one gives you any tips or guides you through anything. Directions/instructions usually consist of “do this and that”, but not how.
Brainless organisation – focus on rush rush, no thinking occurs. The lack of foresight and thinking is remarkable for a financial services organisation. Audit approaches and strategies are not deliberated, the directors simply decide the ideas on the spot, and subordinates follow. This is very much a command and control organisation of the 20th century, where unique thought, and anything outside of “yes” is not appreciated. You will fit in well if you are a “yes” man.
Very poor management/leadership. Directors at the firm have years of experience in internal audit yet seem to show little sign of it. Oftentimes they would make statements/suggestions that were incorrect/misguided, despite their extensive experience in the industry. They are also unclear and vague with their directions/guidance. This means that subordinates further down the chain are given poor and conflicting directions, and then are subsequently blamed when the project does not achieve proposed timelines, which mind you are often underestimated to begin with. For example, I had a case where a piece of work required double the amount of audit tests compared to a normal audit. Despite this, we quoted the client a normal total, and staffed the audit as normal. Unsurprisingly, the audit later ran over budget and was repeatedly delayed, with the blame being put on the consultants - who would have thought?
Poor pay and deceptive bonus system - the company uses an additional "ICP" amount as a bonus, which I believe is made intentionally unclear, making you think that it is based on your individual performance, when in reality the company determines the amount provided. Several of my colleagues often received only a small portion of their total potential ICP despite strong all around performance.
Pigeon-holing: This is something noted internationally for this organisation. As mentioned before, you will be put on a certain type of project, irrespective of your past experience and most likely will be stuck there until you leave. The leadership will listen to you and nod, but never act regarding your requests to vary/change work type. Kind of defeats the point of joining a “consulting” organisation?
Here's the real kicker -> No defined roles and responsibilities, and a lack of procedural documentation for how to properly audit. For a company that literally tells other people ALL DAY to define policies, procedures and roles and responsibilities for god's sake take your own advice? - Roles and responsibilities are unclear, not defined at the start of projects, and not defined on a company wide scale. So managers will often just delegate work to you that you shouldn't really be doing. What can you do? Nothing, you can't defend yourself as there's no documentation that says they are responsible for this thing. This lack of responsibilities not only means inadequate distribution of work, but also means that when tasks aren't complete, finger pointing ensues.
