Accenture reviews

1) Experienced Hire Integration: Despite some incremental improvements towards enabling better experienced hire integration within the firm, overall the process is a disaster. This is particularly true in the consulting workforce within the executive level (manager or above). In addition, those people who have only worked within Accenture their entire careers will often have extremely arrogant misinformed attitudes about the skills and expertise experienced hires bring to the firm. I have even seen 2nd year analysts be very demeaning to experienced hire senior executives. It grows quite tiresome and generally leads to high attrition by most experienced hires in the consulting workforce. The arrogance by some non-experienced hires is very irritating in general. Lastly, there appears to be better Exp Hire integration within the U.S., whereas the other countries lag behind. I don't understand the lack of consistency there (though this might have improved in the last few months). 2) People Development - despite a very extensive training program (both online and in-person at St. Charles), the consulting workforce does not reward executives (Manager and above) who perform well as a People Developer. The culture still encourages rapid promotion of inexperienced, younger managers whose rating/success depends primarily on delivery at all costs. As a result, you will see a great deal of micromanagement, bullying, encouragement to their analysts/consultants to ghost hours, etc. This is not true in all cases, but it appears to be the exception rather than the rule. While they now will ding SE's for poor leadership 360 survey results, they do not apply it to Managers (where they really should start to prevent it from being a problem when they become an SE). 3) Size - yes, we are huge. The disavantage is that making your way through certain things can be extremely time consuming because no one really has all the answers. I think this is not unique to Accenture. You can feel lost in the crowd occasionally as a result (particularly as an new employee - allow yourself some time to get up to speed). 4) On bigger projects, you will generally not have an opportunity to get significant challenge or an opportunity to play a broader role because of the rigid hierarchy in place on larger projects. Most of our projects are large in nature compared with more boutique firms. 5) The laddering/force ranking review process - still somewhat arbitrary, and much can depend on your relationship with SE's and Sr. Managers. If you don't have it, it can have a detrimental impact on your rating (in some cases). 6) Strong company culture - can be a blessing or a curse, I find it a negative. Generally you are expected to drink the corporate kool aid and like it.

The work is largely dependant upon which client you are working for. If you end up on a bad project for you then you could be working there for about a year before you get the chance to try something else. The hours can be long, although my experience has been very good with the hours (8.30/ 9 - 6 most days), I know many people that have worked much longer and even on weekends. There is no bonus until you become a manager. I do not agree with the performance review process and believe it is biased towards people eligible for promotion.