Pros
*Accessibility: Senior leadership (Senior Director/VP level consultants, as well as the C-Suite) actively encourage engagement and firm building. Plenty of firms pay lip service to this - most are lying. If you're interested, you can get time on just about anyone's calendar in a timely fashion. *Hours: While there are project-level exceptions to the rule, hours are generally on the lower-end of the consulting spectrum. Most junior consultants don't work weekends. *Ramp: Once you're fully staffed, you will generally be able to interact with client (sooner and to a greater extent) than you would as a junior consultant with a larger firm. By my second year I was regularly leading client meetings and even a few projects of my own. *Scope: GEP is a procurement-specialized firm, and the nature of strategic sourcing work is to examine and address the largest, most important vendors and contracts in your client's system. It's absolutely possible that you'll end up working on projects that will save your clients millions of dollars (or more). *Clients: For a company of its size, GEP's client list is extremely impressive and includes plenty of F500s/multinationals. If working with a brand-name company is important to you, you'll eventually have an opportunity to do so at GEP. *Corporate culture: This is the big one. The vast majority of GEP's US junior consulting bullpen (Associates, Senior Associates, Managers) are extremely intelligent, entertaining people. I made a ton of long-term friendships during my time at GEP. There are a few more senior people that I've heard horror stories about, but everyone that I personally worked with or met at the Senior Manager level and above was likable and friendly. *No Grad School Necessary: GEP will never require you to go to grad school to advance in the company, and will actively encourage you to stay as long as possible. If you want a consulting career without having to do an MBA, GEP can give you that. (An obvious related con: as far as I'm aware GEP doesn't sponsor grad school of any kind). *The Office: While the office is in the middle of nowhere, it was just renovated as of September 2018. It's pretty nice. *Travel: GEP's accounts are primarily M-R travel. If you want to rack up points and miles, you can absolutely do so at GEP. Additionally, as of 2018 all college hires get a trip to India as part of their new hire onboarding process - this is a really fun trip where you can bond with your new colleagues.
Cons
*The work: 90-95% of the "consulting" work that GEP does would be better classified as BPO. You will likely become a pro at running RFP processes, but the majority of the work you'll end up doing will, more likely than not, end up being pretty tactical/process-management related. Importantly, the nature of what a procurement team needs to do is guide and support the client's strategy, not come up with a new one - while there's the occasional M&A synergy analysis to run or pricing negotiation to do, don't expect to have leverage to be too much of an activist for any solution in particular. *Dependence on the offshore office: GEP's largest office is based out of Mumbai, and one of the unique aspects of GEP's operating model is having remote resources lead parts of (or even entire) projects. The reliance on offshore resources varies significantly on a client by client basis, and I personally didn't rely heavily on people out of Mumbai - the ones I did work with were actually pretty helpful. I've definitely heard more than a few stories from colleagues of friction here, though (time zone differences/calls being scheduled for 6am EST, slides needing to be rewritten/moments where working with someone in the same room would save significant time and energy, etc.). *The coverage: GEP sells long (2-3 year, generally) engagements that are often extended (the exception to the rule are shorter-term "trial" engagements used as a proof of concept to sell these long-term engagements). The consultants, especially the onsite consultants, become less "consultants" and more "members of the team". For some this may be a perk (and in fact, one of the upsides of this model is a bit more leeway and flexibility to make a mistake or hit a delay without major consequences), but the average onsite engagement time for a GEP consultant is well over a year, easily. Roll-offs are extremely difficult to pull off and will only happen if the engagement ends or you push HARD for it (after doing at least a year) - client doesn't want churn and account/senior management have no real incentive to rotate consultants. I don't think expectations are set appropriately at the beginning of engagements, that the consultants (esp. junior consultants) will need to leave at some point, and as a result I know of people getting stuck on projects for 18, 24, or even 36 months without a break. Moreover, as the majority of GEP's accounts are travel, you may well end up spending 85-90 weeks over two years going to the same city without a break. This is the primary reason why I left GEP. *Comp: While this is admittedly getting better than it has been, expect a ~5-10% cut as a college hire vs. Big 4 and a 15-20% cut vs. MBB. Bonuses are generally pretty mediocre at the junior level. Additionally, your cut relative to market generally increases as you climb the corporate ladder. There's no true-up to a post-MBA salary level after you hit manager, making an MBA lateral to a larger firm after 2-3 years at GEP a no-brainer from an ROI perspective if you're primarily chasing cash. *Promotion Trajectory: GEP is slowing down the pace at which people are being promoted at the junior levels. It was fairly common for most of the college-hire consultants to hit their first promotion within 16-18 months until recently - this is likely going to be 2+ years for most people on a go-forward basis. *The Office: GEP is headquartered in suburban New Jersey. If you're living in the city, to get to the office you'll be taking the subway to penn station, then a 40 minute commuter train to Rahway, then a 10 minute cab to the office in Clark, NJ. Whenever I went into the office, it was a 90-minute to 2-hour trip, each way. The company's official policy is that you should be in the office every Friday - in practice this isn't something anyone does (there are associates who haven't gone into NJ to date this year), though the office remodel may end up being used in part by senior management to force the issue on this. In any case, waking up at 6:15 to catch a train to New Jersey after landing at 9pm the previous evening - especially if/when most of your team isn't even based out of the tristate, so you're still working "remotely" anyway - gets old quick.
