Pros
The culture is young and the team-styled projects help to make the work more fun, improving innovation and efficiency. (However, not all projects are fortunate enough to have a team of multiple consultants or seniors.) My coworkers have become friends that I see outside of work and celebrate each other's life events with. The firm creates great opportunities to be involved in the local office initiatives and to get to know other consultants that you don't work with directly. It is very focused on diversity & inclusion and places great efforts towards receiving feedback to make improvements in retention & recognition strategies. I genuinely feel like changes have been made off the feedback I have given. Another added plus is the ability to move up fairly quickly and receive a pay raise every 1-2 years. The vacation days are generous and the ability to take a sabbatical is appreciated. The people who work here are down-to-earth and the culture is supportive and encouraging, rather than competitive and draining, and it generally allows for flexible work-life balance.
Cons
This is not a true consulting firm. The Dallas office is primarily audit work and unless you have a strong technical background/qualifications, it is very difficult to move to other solutions or different types of client work. The firm provides very little trainings/opportunities to become skilled in specific subject matters that will equip the consultants to execute more technical projects and provide true value to clients. Although they are working towards building up different areas such as Technology Consulting and Business Process Improvement, you will most likely start at this firm in audit and often times get stuck there. Even the risk advisory work is restricted to an audit scope/perspective and you are limited in your involvement in client initiatives. Resource planning is very political and management can be selfish in staffing consultants for their projects, often not listening to the preferences of the consultant or their career goals. Additionally, managers and directors seem to be spread very thin, causing the seniors and consultants to feel not supported and lacking structure or guidance. It is becoming more common to be loan staffed on clients, which leaves the senior isolated with little support or collaboration. All of these factors ultimately cause the project work to suffer, the consultants to burnout, the career development to lack, and the value provided to be over promised and under delivered.
