Hi All, Apllied to ACN as an exp hire back in August, direct to them via website as opposed to through an RC.I applied in mid August and had a telephone interview in the third week of Septemeber. Interviewer said I would have contact from HR within 10 days. After nearly a month of no contact I rang HR twice and never had a call back. On the third attempt I got hold of someone who found my application and told me that I had been selected to go through to second round but a date had yet to be scheduled. I was told someone would be in touch within the week. Week has come and gone with no contact.Anyone else in a similar position or have previous experience of their recruitment practices? Are they usually this slow? I had been led to believe there was a 'hiring boom' going on at ACN - is this still the case or have I missed the boat? Any advice or internal info would be very much appreciated!

High Performance. Delivered.

HaHa,How right you are. I can't say it's filling me with confidence.

If you were a potential client and received that sort of experience, would you buy from them?

No, I wouldn't, and I don't suppose many of us would. However, I have had in the past some positive experience of ACN from a client perspective (think this is more down to the talent you get on a particular team rather than a wider reflection of ACN in general). My problem is, I am entering from industry, where I am used to hiring on a role for role basis, i.e. I need a post filling and hire to it ASAP. From what I understand, hiring in consulting works more on a potential volume basis, so I don't know if this is the 'norm'? Do firms just keep applicantions in the pipeline until it suits them? Surely this means (as I am now considering) that they will lose applicants who subsequently find somehting better.Can anyone help fill in the blanks for me?Any comments greatly appreciated...

Why do you think the experience you had as a 'potential employee' was different to the experience you received as a 'client'?

I suppose that is the essence of the question I am asking of the forum. As I haven't had particularly bad experience of them in the past, why am I finding the recruitment process less than inspiring? As a client, there was no HR involvement and I was, of course, buying a service, but as a perspective employee I would have expected better than I have found so far. That is why I am interested to find out how usual/unusual my experience is and if there are any other factors that I may not be aware of...Cheers,

Anon OP - I can't comment on Accenture specifically, but amongst the major consulting brands I would say this is quite a common problem at the moment. Recruitment teams being asked to recruit for anticipated headcount requirements but these in turn then being affected by a host of factors which then result in the hiring process being sped up or slowed down.In hiring booms brought about by favourable market conditions (accompanied by healthy profit margins), hires would be brought on board swiftly as soon as those "of the right calibre" had been identified - without too much regard for when projects were starting that would result in the hires becoming billable resources. In the current market conditions (where firms are suffering from meagre profit margins), speed of hiring is far more a function of making hiring decisions dovetail with anticipated project start dates and so a yo-yo experience as you progress along the interview process is quite common. In some practice areas at some firms hiring activity is also specifically there to counter the anticipated loss of staff from that practice - which again can mean that hiring needs are impacted by the actual speed at which existing staff then secure roles and choose to leave.At some firms - and in some practice areas (I'm thinking particularly FS) - there is also the factor that consulting teams may be so stretched on client engagements that finding time to conduct interviews is problematic. I know we had some firms who couldn't exhibit at this year's careers fair solely because they couldn't free up resources to man their stand with consulting staff!All of this is frustrating and unsatisfactory from a candidate perspective, but unfortunately I would say is quite the norm amongst the big consulting firms at present.Sorry I can't provide more guidance than this on how to handle the situation, but I thought the explanation would at least be reassuring.Tony RestellTop-Consultant.com

Hi,Your experience is not very different to mine.I had my telephonic more than a month ago, possibly 2 months and then finally have been scheduled for an interview later this month. So hopefully they will get there. Hope this helps you

Must admit ACN were excellent with my recruitment. Verbal offer within two weeks of submitting CV and maintained contact throughout.Why don't you create a deadline, say by having another offer from another consultancy. Should get things moving.Now Ernst & Young were simply awful. Senior people unable to make a decision.

I was pretty satisfied with the overall process as well. 4 weeks from 1st interview to the initial final offer which is fine and what most expect it to be.Aces

interesting comments above about ACN being swift with their decisions and communications, whilst EY were bad. I had a very different experience - I put my application in May and received an offer from Accenture beg of August and yes they were very slow in between meetings but that is just the nature of the beast.EY were very good, the partner I met made a decision on the spot.So I guess, the morale is it all depends on who you meet and when you meet them. Firms quality cannot be painted with a few posts as everyone seem to have had different experiences. What is however true is (especially for those coming from industry) that recruitment process in consulting is very slow

turnarounds will vary by practice. Where demand is very stretched the challenge is not in finding managers to do the first telephone interview, but willing SEs to do the face-to-face, which is an investment of a very expensive billable exec. This is why the gap between 1st and 2nd sometimes seems so long; for borderline candidates the decision to meet face to face has to work its way up the food chain.

Tony, Thanks for the insight! This is pretty much as I expected, just very different to what I'm used to doing in industry.Someguy, I hadn't thought about the billable time of an SE that gets tied up in doing a face-to-face and I suppose the busier the practice is, the more difficult it will be to secure this time. Thanks for your input!Anon, Aces, Sur and others, how have you found the process after offer? Were you recruited from industry or other firms and how have you found the 'joining experience' (assuming you did join of course!).Thanks again to all for taking time to respond!