Hi, I'm Jenny Rae Le Roux from Management Consulted, and I have found myself in a
deep downward spiral of looking at one star reviews on Glassdoor. Some of these
for consulting firms are just the most entertaining thing you can find on the
internet at the moment. And here's what I think is so great. We're talking about BCG
by the way, and some of these have got to be my favorites,
out of all the ones that I've ever read. The titles for these are so
fantastic. The first one is, "Miserable people. Bleak London office. And, outdated."
So, I think there are so many things about that, that are fantastic.
Clearly somebody who's British. "I've been working at Boston Consulting Group full
time. The Pros: Very good pay. Events. Nice colleagues. The US offices are much
better than the London office, and I think have many more pros." So they're
doing everything that they can to be nice. And then the Cons: "Pay isn't
actually good when we looked at the hours you have worked.
Working from 8 a.m. to midnight is a 14-hour shift, which when you split up
your salary becomes roughly minimum wage." That's a calculation, by the way, that all
consultants do at some point and everybody realizes, yeah, you're not getting
pay that much per hour. Also, "Hours are insane. I haven't been here long and I absolutely
have to move soon, I'm getting sick." So I just felt like there is some good
British drama in there. This one, the title even better, playing off of the BCG
Growth-Share Matrix. "The fading star becomes a dog. It's a great place to
learn about business basics. The company hasn't kept up with changing times in
the industry however. Consultants need to be very politically astute to succeed."
Absolutely true, by the way, in pretty much everywhere. And, "Senior leadership
looks at employees as factors of production." This is a consulting services
firm. That's actually how it works. Truth all around. OK, another one. So, "Too
much jargon, not enough focus on people. Pros: Very smart colleagues, good
pay, good brand to have on resume." All of the amazing reasons why you should
absolutely go to BCG. But then, the Cons: "Constant negative and
vague feedback." The feedback is almost always vague in consulting firms.
It's very nit-picky, but it's also very vague because they're trying to avoid
lawsuits. In addition, "No focus on keeping top talent." I'm not sure that that's
entirely true, I'm wondering if this person thinks that they're top talent and
they're not. Not really sure what's going on there. But anyhow I think that that
was kind of fabulous. This one, "Anonymous employee in Dallas" The Pros: "Pay is great",
by the way, mentioned pretty much everywhere. "Benefits are unheard of." I
think they mean good unheard of, not entirely clear. "Resume value is strong",
also huge value prop for going to the firm, and "Admin support is stellar."
All kind of leading to, pretty incredible place. The Cons: "Gender bias." Another
one that came up with gender bias, "Not women friendly." Definitely something
interesting and very serious. So not all of these are totally silly. But "Extreme
hours." I mean extreme is I guess by definition, it's not banking, but they are
gonna be long hours. "Internal politics." True. "Values have drifted significantly
from its roots." Interesting. Usually happens as firms grow. "Competitive to the
extreme." Not sure what that means. "Career development is not
transparent." And, "Money is not worth the sacrifice as the job demands." So you know,
absolutely a lot of these things make sense. But again, a lot of them are just
telling the truth of what's actually happening inside the consulting
firm. This one I like, "Great people. Challenging environment. Super benefits."
But one-star? Um, interesting. We've got Pros:"Smart, amazing employees.
Fun events. Beer at work." Obviously true to our dearest hearts, that's
amazing. "Casual Fridays. Unbeatable benefits." The Cons: this I was dying about.
"No 401k match." They said that they have amazing pay, but no 401k match. "No
appreciation for working long hours." Not really sure what that would look like,
maybe like a plaque on their desk? I don't know. Then "The CDC process is
premeditated in terms of career development." Yes.
It's organized. "No employee voice, recourse, or rebuttal." Your voice is
probably not super welcomed in the process, but again, one star even though
basically they raved about BCG across the board. This one, my personal favorite,
This person's title was "The Chauffeur", in
Los Angeles, I mean anytime you're working as a chauffeur for a firm, you give
it a one star okay. Fine. Maybe everybody was really terrible
but then look what they wrote. Pros: "Good place to work, I miss working there. then
Cons: "No cons. Good people. Good work. I think this person got a little mixed up
about what a one-star review looks like. But also, there's a chauffeur in the LA
office for BCG, can we just talk about how ridiculous that is!
All right, final one. "I worked at Boston Consulting Group full-time. Pros: Smart colleagues. Great perks and compensation structure."
Everyone has mentioned pay. But also Cons: "Career Development is a joke. Written feedback as well as client
feedback is completely disregarded. And people's perceptions play a bigger role
in determining how far you go." Guys, this isn't something you actually have real
data on your performance, like oh, you work more, you get more. No. This is a
political environment. This is a place where people's perceptions of you affect
how quickly and how far you get promoted inside the firm. So every single one of
these one-star review seem to come after a bad review where somebody
was told they should do something differently. It's just really important
that you know, inside consulting firms and especially inside a place like BCG,
your perception matters, and managing that is a key to success there.
I hope you enjoyed these one-star reviews. Go to Glassdoor, check them out. Have fun looking at them.