-More than 80% of opportunities are related to the energy business unit. Outside of that it’s mostly opportunistic body-shopping and you’ll risk being “offered” to take on irrelevant missions (read contract staffing/outplacement), while others with less experience are staffed where you should have been.
-38 hours contract so no ATT/ADV even though you’ll be doing more than 38 hours, you won’t get compensated for it.
-Young and friendly colleagues but not a lot of diversity, can feel like an extension of University at times so be ready to hear untasteful (slightly sex!st or rac!st) jokes slip through during lunch and afterwork.
-Vriendjespolitiek/nepotism/copinage as stated in other reviews: some people will get promoted TWICE in a year, others benefit from internal mobility to Canada, Dubai or New York.
Hint: become friends with country partners, drink wine and invite to your bday party.
-Zero transparency across the board: entry salary negotiation, you will realize you're 10-20% below/above same level colleagues, opaque promotions and rewards, internal mobility is for the chosen few.
-You will be expected to help with business development without any compensation at a consultant level, with no sales experience and also on your time while being fully staffed on a project.
-“Alea jacta est”: happy clients, working on business development and external contributions don’t matter if someone amongst the partners has fixed opinions on you. Do as much as you can, the good will be diminished, the areas of improvement will be listed in the tiniest details and extrapolated.
It’s a corporate rat-race so don’t expect your managers to fight for you.
-No views on available and upcoming trainings: you will randomly see some colleagues in a room following a training or will see the €500-1K certifications/courses of colleagues popping up on Linkedin
-Chaotic: wobbly half-done internal processes, standalone initiatives in squads with people chasing windmills next to their project to show they are busy.
-Recruiting is a shame: your qualified medior referral profiles will being ghosted mid-process due to poor recruiting follow-up, applicants are being asked unrelated questions and judged on topics they didn’t apply for.
But looking at Linkedin and the ads they run, it makes it look like non-stop employment.
-No mentorship: PDP as they call it, will only depend on the person you’re assigned.
Either a corporate ghost that nods and says yes or someone genuine but limited in what they can do.
-Spoiler: management won’t do anything if you end up underwater. If workload gets out of control, join a syndicaat or have a good doctor.
-Big wine consumption problem in the Brussels office led by country partner.
At some point, the afterwork wine ended up impacting consultants having clients in the office for meetings, becoming self-conscious of the image it portrayed.
-The surprising amateurish decisions are part of the company culture and go all the way to the group leadership. Example: an overnight chaotic migration from Google to Microsoft.
