There is a great deal of bad publicity surrounding Accenture, their recruitment policy, their business model, reputation in the industry?What do people think out there - would you join as an experienced hire leaving a smaller niche unknown consultancy?

Depends what you want to do - if you want to work on huge-scale IT implementations, it could be your dream job.If, however, you really want to make a difference, without feeling like a very small cog in an enormous wheel, look elsewhere.Oh and staff morale is plummeting, and has been for 2 years.

I was an experienced hire at ACN and found that very few are promoted and are viewed internally purely for their specific IT skills. I also agree the morale is bad and the pay incentives are pretty poor for the hours expected. It is a job of an Accenture manager to get as many hours out from a consultant as possible).If you have a couple of years to kill, its not a bad move. Consider it as an airport lounge we're all passing through.

Well, i'm a senior manager with Accenture, and have been with them for 9 years in London (joined into Andersen Consulting). The deals that we are signing are getting bigger, more complex to the point where the cracks are beginning to get exposed in how we deliver. That scares me. Its alot easier for exp. hires now than it ever was, but thats because there used to be a very strong culture and community which made it hard for Exp hires to integrate in. That has been chipped away over the years, partly as the partners who made the firm have retired (after cashing in on the IPO) and partly as we are now a public company where every action is driven by quarterly earnings. In some cases, you can be relatively anonymous...you will work very long hours...but you will learn alot (good and bad -but we all learn more from the mistakes we make, right?). Deep down, it is still a good firm, just going through a tough time. I think it will come through. But for me, well, i'll probably be leaving in the next 6 months

Having worked with several IT consultancies including ACN, my view is that the culture has been diluted due to the changing marketplace. ACN is a good management consultancy and not a complex IT project delivery company. The problem is ACN is trying to break into the latter unsuccessfully. For experienced hires, it all depends on the skills you're bringing to the table. You would have been hired in for a specific set of skills you have (telco's, CRM etc) and the fact you are reasonably presentable. Pay reviews are annual and if you are not in the top 15% of your peer group you won’t get promoted (no promotion...no pay rise most people got 0-4% this year barely keeping up with inflation….in effect a pay cut). Promotion is a political game and will depend on who you can get to support your case not the fact that you delivered successfully what you agreed. For new hires it takes time to understand the promotion process (it has been revamped recently as the old process was rather convoluted....not sure if the new one is any better). With over 10,000 consultants the chances are you will be an anonymous cog.Also there is also a high attrition rate, so many of my friends have left. I am thinking of doing the same. For most if the long hours, poor work life balance don’t get you being passed over one to many times for promotion probably will. The long stayers are the ones who have managed to hold on and due the high compensation packages (manager level upwards); it is not uncommon to find senior managers of 10 years+ at ACN. Most partners and senior managers I have met tend to be single/divorced without much time for anything outside of work. As one senior manager put it ‘I would leave in a shot to if someone offered me a pay rise’. However at the lower grades this is a completely different picture. I found Managers were often technically out of touch with delivery and for this reason I think ACN will find it hard to successfully deliver complex IT projects. Where ACN excels is in PMO, technology strategy, high level, high value work.