Shoe Polisher,I assume you’re talking about assumptions you might make BEFORE you interview these people with a view to deciding on areas on which to focus questions? Once you’ve met them I don’t think the brand of their employers will mean much in comparison to individual assessment.If so I’d say…Long term ACN – would expect that they are well trained in behaviour on-site (unless they’ve been in solutions only), have a strong work ethic, are capable of detail, can produce good documentation to support business decisions. Would therefore quickly verify this. Would spend most of my time trying to establish how they would deal with the dreaded “second job” syndrome (constant panicking and whining that “it wasn’t like this at XXX”). Would also be looking out for overly status/grade based leadership styles (also known as bullying). Would be careful that polish sat on top of content.Industry then IBM. Would expect this mix to bring high level of content knowledge in their chosen field and good on-site behaviour/polish. More relaxed work ethic (hard working but not the almost perverse pleasure ACN analysts seem to take in self-destruction). Would be looking for warnings that IBM had been attracted to the content knowledge but that the candidate had failed to become a consultant and was in effect still in “client” mentality. Often manifests itself in the candidate being loved by their clients as “one of them” but the candidate having little experience of growing a team or leveraging extra consultants on (and thus growing the value of the engagement). As a non-grad entry many IBM candidates have had surprisingly little formal consultancy training – would check that out.Detica/TCS/Others – My experience is that these guys are often a good compromise of structured consultancy training (often the do their first 24 months at big4 or ACN), are reliable team players and because of the niche focus of these firms usually have niche content knowledge. Depends on whether you value this? Danger areas tend to be 1) couldn’t cut it in the cut and thrust of the bigger players so will never excel or grow into rainmakers, 2) less reliable brand quality – those sorts of firms struggle to attract the best candidates when the market is buoyant and so are the first to drop their standards in order to achieve hiring scale. This becomes more obvious when times are hard and the froth comes pouring out first.Of course the number one question is which of these background best mirrors your own form and it culture?
