My experience is as a lateral hire into a specific practice (more junior staff generally have a different experience for a variety of reasons):
As is the norm is consulting, these roles require a significant and unpredictable time commitment. So I wouldn’t join with BRG with any expectations of leaving the office at 6PM or consistent carefree, offline vacations.
While some of the work can be interesting, a lot of it can be very repetitive (e.g. data loading, cleaning, validating) which does little to improve learning or skills in the long term. Additionally, within data focused practices, I have seen consultants spend a lot of time learning the datasets and its capabilities, but never step back to understand the “why” or the real world applicability of the work, which is a missed opportunity and not something BRG values.
A lot of work goes into structuring hiring and promotion, but when it comes to pulling the trigger, the loudest voice in the room usually gets their way which leads to the same mistakes and biases time after time. BRG is seriously lacking in a diverse base of consulting professionals and as you move up the ladder, there is a considerable drop off in women in leadership positions (although there is work to change this).
When you do join BRG, the onboarding program is pretty minimal and haphazard. External hires from other, similar organizations have a leg up on long-term internal BRGers jut because of the investments their prior firms made in training and education. This has led to turnover and missed opportunities to properly leverage new (and existing) talent.
BRG is most concerned with growth at this stage both from a people and economic perspective. Success at BRG means that you bill hours (without an appropriately incentivizing bonus structure) and play aggressive politics to get to move upward. There is an “old boys club” feel but that is slowly changing. However, new ideas, creativity, and suggestions for best practices are seen as inefficient and generally aren’t endorsed by management. This kind of hyper focus on billing hours pays off in the short term but I worry about the long term.
