BAE Systems Graduate Project Delivery Manager reviews

Salary is pretty poor, there is always talk about keeping up with the market rate but you can see from grad salaries they start below the market rate and this difference only increases with time. Detica was built on having very clever (albeit a tad strange) doing extraordinary things. With such an aggressive growth strategy and salaries which don't compete the quality is decreasing and their seems a large turnover. Pensions (&grad engineers salaries) are worse than BAE systems proper. Unless you are in london or waterside house the office facilities are pretty poor. Expect atleast an hour commute as house prices are to expensive in guildford and surroundings to afford anything descent. The knock on effect is that there are huge problems with congestion and when you get to the office you will have to fight for a parking space. Such a big deal is made about how clever people working here are, which is probably true in the technical side but when looking at business consulting grads its hard to believe anyone listens to them let alone pays their day rates. This pursuit of growth has led to alot of people becoming cheap bodies, not particularly clever, not doing particularly cutting edge work and not being particularly well paid. It just feels like the the strategy is to become a cheaper alternative to every other consultancy.

- Poor / no joining bonus for grads in comparison to other consultancies. - Salary only vaguely aligned to competitors. - Role applied for is in no way the role you receive, it's then down to you to fight it out to get the role/position you want. - Company lacks cohesive direction - one branch is trying to solve problems with pre-packaged software, another as a consultancy. Both are bidding with the same clients. - Company is trading on the former reputation of Detica, the only remaining Deticans are either leaving, or are embedded in middle management with grossly inflated salaries for their rank/role and show no sign of leaving. - Recruitment standard has plummeted, recruitment now happy to take any university, any discipline, and down to a 2:2, even a 3rd in some instances. - Company is modelling after other grad-heavy consultancies, without offering reputation or financial incentive in line with their competition, hence the general standard of grads are low. Having been recruited as a grad just over a year ago, I have seen this standard drop even in my tenure. - Company sells itself during recruitment as being friendly, and all about their people and engagement, in my experience HR are impossible to get hold of when you have a query, and are happy to use the idea of 'take it or leave it, we can find more grads' - I'd expect this from the big four, but not a company selling their friendliness. - Ops managers work purely to their targets of bums on seats, not in collaboration with where you want to go. - Most grads I speak to have an escape plan in place, are unhappy, and are biding their time until a credible 18-24 months have expired so their CV doesn't look poor. - Overall movement to SIAM and service management contracts as they're less risk, and more profit - ultimately boring projects to work on, and not what the company sell during recruitment. - Virtually zero recompense for holding DV, again in comparison to major competitions. - Everybody is a 'consultant', the mind boggling approach to ego stroking on new recruits leaves everyone thinking their job is a 'consultant'.