I’ve been offered a job with PA’s Financial Services practice, but have been warned by a friend in a different part of PA not to join.He told me that staff turnover rates were very high, and that most staff are working on public sector jobs. Is it true also that their leading partner is an ex-Government partner? What do you insiders make of it? Should I join?

Largely insurance focussed - seem to suffer from real peaks and troughs of work. Most staff are indeed working on public sector clients, but this is true of all of PA

As only 1/3 of PA business is public sector, this is not "most staff".

Varies by practice, most of the BTG jobs are public sector, and for salubious clients like some horrid little county council in the West country

The FS practice in the US and the UK split about, to much fanfare about 3 or 4 years ago. PA have never been able to sell much FS work in the UK, and absolutely none in the US, so they rather unceremoniously fired all the FS guys in the New York office, including those that had transferred over from the UK.PA are not a good company to work for matey, why not go and join a top tier consultancy with some decent history in delivering quality work in the Financial Services sector?

One of the contributors lower down appears to be "misinformed" about PA. To help him or her, a few facts. 80% of work carried out by PA's FS practice is in industry; most of the rest involves applying FS skills in other industries. PA did some £17MM of work in financial services in the UK last year and this year the figure is likely to be higher, despite market conditions. If asking two people in US to leave constitutes "firing all the guys in the New York office" then hyperbole has reached new heights. I'd be delighted to speak to anyone considering joining us to call me (Jeremy Stanyard) and cross-examine me!

Well said. It's about time some facts entered this debate.

Rubbish - do you work for PA?If so, get hold of last years Finance IST figures (which are the only true reflection of how much work PA does in the FS space) to confirm the 17MM, and ask someone in the FS practice to send you the slides from the last practice meeting for details on where FS people are working at the moment. You will find Jeremy statements are correct.Alternatively, don't bother, and continue to let your perception overrule reality.

Don't beleive the corporate line.Our so called Financial Services clients include the Treasury, the FSA, and National Savings, amongst the biggest names.Anyone else notice the common theme ??That's right children - they're all public sector !!If you want to work for the Deutsche Banks, or HSBCs of this world, try elsewhere.

I do wish all this carping about FS would stop. It’s a lovely place to work, and we even have a few small clients in the LUC. So what if we opened a separate FS practice in the Chrysler Building four years ago, only to shut it two years later, when we realised we couldn’t sell any work in the US financial services sector? Stuff happens! Yes, we have very high staff turnover rates in the UK, but it must be a good thing that we give so many people the chance to experience working for PA for 6 months, before they get ticked off and leave. At least they can spread the word on what a powerful force PA is in the Financial Services sector

Sorry we've had to remove a couple of comments from this thread folks. Try and keep it a clean debate would you please? ThanksTony RestellTop-Consultant.com

Come, come, now Jeremy. The only partner who was any good at selling proper FS work (ie not project manager roles in quasi-public sector clients) has just resigned. Hardly a good omen now, is it??

What's wrong with project management work!!!?You get to see loads of people from across an organisation and have the satisfaction of having completed a major chunk of work at the end of it!And what's wrong with the public sector either??! Public sector jobs are big and stable. Sounds great to me!

Frankly, this carping about FS (and BOP) on this site is just irrelevant. Two small and peripheral practices are irrelevant and unrepresentative of PA. No doubt PA falls a million miles short from it self-image (like all the consulting firms on this site, MBBB my ar*e!) but other than the public sector focus this threads tell you nothing about the truth of PA (both good and bad)

jeremy - what a name. Envokes images of cardigans, airfix, stamp collecting, mediocrity and countdown.

I love working in FS, the atmosphere is very relaxed, and no one gets too stressed. I’m really hoping for a nice long stint in LCH, one of our very top clients in the practice. I never really liked the partner that left anyway, he was always doing things like selling lots of work into mid-sized insurance companies where you had to work really really hard.

I see there have been more resignations todayHo Hum

Who else has gone, other than CN ?No one tells me anything ...

Crikey!At least three resignations in the UK, and one MC pushed in the US in the past two weeks.What is going wrong in FS? Why have you gone so quiet Jeremy?

People move jobs all the time. 3 resignations is to be expected in the normal course of events, surely? Also I see from the TC website that PA's FS practice is recruiting heavily and running many recruitment evenings, so business must be pretty strong otherwise they wouldn't bother!!

Or is it just to control the haemorrhage of staff out? Some of the new joiners have been less than stellar performers, you will have to admit.

Who cares?

I left PA to work at an investment bank. Got piad my bonus in a bad yr. Guess what ? I made double the amount I made at PA FS.