Pros
1. Regular trips to Paris and amazing summer and Christmas party. 2. ok salary and pretty good annual raise 3. Good exposure to top pharma clients in the beginning of the career.
Cons
1. Zero resources given to consultant – -> No remuneration to expert interviewees, which ends up consultants spending an enormous amount of time looking for experts who are willing to give pro bono service -> Nonexistent database subscriptions. Knowledge management is nonexistent as well, meaning you will barely get any help for your project. -> Lack of any proper software or cloud services, even a proper share point, does not exist. This means that consultants at Alcimed spend 80% of their time doing desperate work such as cold calling or emailing potential interviewee and gathering low-quality data found through open resources. 2. Questionable business development structure -> Business Dev are typically salespeople with no consulting experience. -> No account management structure. This means that BDs could not build long-term relationships with their clients by overpromising in their first project, which often fails to deliver or WOW the client. 3. Lack of expertise even in the healthcare domain -> Lack of proper recruitment or retention strategy -> Inability to attract external or experienced consultant/managers/ partners from other firm or pharma. -> Projects are lead by consultants who have minimal experience This means the majority of the firm is composed of inexperienced consultants who are straight out of school. Managers are also talents who have limited experience in pharma or consulting. Consulting is basically a people industry. If you cannot attract and retain talent, it would be impossible to compete with other firms. 4.Lingua franca is English but French is required to be promoted to senior management within the firm.