What do you all think of KPMG Consulting, or is it "advisory" these days?Specificially:- Culture / work-life balance- Pay- Travel- Stability of the team (is it hire and fire or prone to redundancies)

Low pay - and mainly small fry UK based jobs, primarily in the public sector. The weakest of the Big 4.

anon - in the new spirit of making this forum as useful as possible it would be helpful if you could say how you know this. For example, are you a current or former KPMGer. I know that people can fib to put down competitors but we can weigh up the value of particular posts each time.Thanks.

Great - thank you. How about the work life balance there? This is more important to me than even pay. :-)

Depends on your grade - lower grades is fine, but it gets a lot worse as you move towards Director / Partner level

I'd comment specifically on the latter point:- Stability of the team (is it hire and fire or prone to redundancies)KPMG were far and away the most proactive in looking for solutions that allowed them to scale down their costs during the downturn without having to engage in mass redundancies. It is well-documented that they offered consultants sabbatical periods and shortened working weeks as a means of scaling back without actually losing staff. So from this vantage I would say they stand out as not being a hire and fire organisation - though that comment's made without the benefit of working within the organisation.Tony RestellTop-Consultant.com

Fair points Tony - but staff were put under huge pressure to accept pay cuts and reduced working hours, in order for the firm to avoid redundancy and rehiring costs.

its all Me Me Me here isnt it ?~~~~> goes back to throwing snowballs

Any other comments on how well they are curently doing and what the culture is like?

anon - in the new spirit of making this forum as useful as possible it would be helpful if you could say how you know this. For example, are you a current or former KPMGer. I know that people can fib to put down competitors but we can weigh up the value of particular posts each time.Thanks.

I agree with the stability of the team, it is not up-or-out. Bear in mind that this also meansslower career progress. The pyramid is full of older guys. For an outperformed this would be a big minus.Work-life balance is very good while in early career, later still ok, partner level not so good. Pay might not develop in tandem with this progress:)

BigWords - in the new spirit of making this forum as useful as possible it would be helpful if you could say how you know this. For example, are you a current or former KPMGer. I know that people can fib to put down competitors but we can weigh up the value of particular posts each time. Thanks.

So basically the consensus seems to be that it's a fairly happy kind of working environment and not too stressful, except when you get to the senior levels at which point it heats up a bit. Do you know what the pay is like at the senior levels? Also, anything else an applicant for a senior grade should be aware of or cautious about? Thanks again!

As an outsider, I would be very wary of joining KPMG. They really did force their senior staff to take a hefty cut in working hours and pay during the recession. It would have been far fairer to make people redundant and give them time to find a full time job.

KP peanut:you will not find the "definitive" answer to your question as is does not exist. I have worked for 2 of the Big4 and another global consulting company in the last 10 years. In regards to KPMG and that goes for the other 3 (of the big4) as well:-although there are probably a few cultural specifics that differenciate KPMG, each service line (and even each team) are slightly different in terms of working culture. career options, workload - you need to get along with the partner in charge, feel that you work well in the team and that your skills are valuable - then your career will take off.- project / client-wise: no big difference again in the grander scheme of things. some of the big4 are stronger in certain markets than other, but by and large projects are very similar- pay is fairly similar between the big 4 (and do not let anyone ever tell you anything different!!), it depends on your personal negotiation skills, your "value"/skills and desperation of the team to hire. (and yes, there are big individual differences between people on the same grade at different big4 organisations explained by the factors above)birdbrain