Pros
With qualifications*: 1. Slightly above market pay for minimal level of effort type of work. Can be idle/unassigned for months, great being paid to do nothing at home at the cost of gaining no experience. Pay for a senior accountant would be roughly 5%~10% higher than a senior accountant in industry depending on size of client however in some cases lower than F500 senior accountants. Qualification: *Initial recruitment is only attractive for candidates having completed their first year as a senior accountant in public accounting with an average rating so it is a big relative increase. *F500 senior accountants have higher base comp and stock options which in the long run is more valuable. *Might be asking yourself why you did not go into industry after back filling as an industry accountant for two years at the same client. 2. Array of incentive pay provides for a sense of accomplishment. Travel bonus, duration of project, referral bonus (premium on big 4 referral), business development bonus, and average hour bonus are a definite plus. This is the biggest pro but is a mix of luck, hardwork and sometimes resorting to misleading your contacts. Qualification: *Duration of project bonus (on a project more than 4 months) is actually an industry wide practice for professional services outside of audit, many people coming from audit do not know this. *Travel jobs not guaranteed *No control over hours chargeable to client/pre-negotiated capped hours 3. Some control over the type of engagements you are placed on as you can decline roles sent your way. Professional resource directors try to look out for you and you are expected to be "flexible" which is fair. Your results may vary (NYC and LA PRD considered to have "fake" personality) 4. Wine and dined often and nice networking allowance. Great effort taken to ensure resource is appreciated and are able to network using the allowance. The closer you are to the powers at be, the more this happens. Qualification: *Gets old very fast as this is an attempt to build a fun culture and can get cliquey if you are not close with those that can expense items 5. Events hosted in Las Vegas which is the big selling point for some people. After 3 trips in 2 years it does lose it's appeal. 6. Firm treats their resources like clients to some extent, and remedies the poor treatment many seniors get in public accounting firms making a big selling point for those coming from a poor environment in audit. 7. Various different types of projects, working for large clients. Results may vary, depends how much the resources complains about what type of work they are interested in. *Can be stuck on a bad engagement with earliest appeal in 12 months of starting the project once accepted.
Cons
Do not let management fool you by comparing Siegfried work/life to audit work/life, this is not an apples to apples comparison. The job is very close to an industry job, but the firm operates similar to a temp placement company contracted for projects. This opportunity should be compared to industry jobs and industry compensation. 1. Poor reputation among people from all levels of the big 4 that have worked with Siegfried resources on common clients. Often tasks resources are asked to perform are reviewed/funnel up to big 4 and has a history of no review leading to poor performance. Having Siegfried on your resume may actually hurt your competitiveness if the next hiring manager you interview with is from the big 4. There are instances where a Siegfried senior manager or director reports to a big 4 seniors in advisory. "Interesting and challenging" Siegfried engagements is more often than not the grunt work that the big 4 do not want to do. 2. Caliber of resources is steadily dropping which is moving away from what is marketed to candidates/clients. There is a decreasing number of big 4 in the resource mix and an increasing number coming from mid-size and regional/small firms. Big 4 seniors are recognizing better opportunities elsewhere despite the internal increase in the recruitment premiums on people from the big 4. In addition, the firm does not attract high performing seniors, almost all average ratings. High turnover as resources from the big 4/mid-size quickly realize the quality of work is not what is marketed, referred within Siegfried as "poor fit". 3. Despite the claim that the firm only hires "entrepreneurial" minded individuals, it appears they favor individuals that only know one truth, that they hate audit. As a result, an overwhelming number of the resources have no real ambitions or entrepreneurial spirit as they have no idea where they want to take their careers. Individuals that join under the guise of obtaining meaningful experience to advance their career in a specific path leave within a year or two if not within the first 6 months. Retains a lot of unmotivated people that hope for the idle time in between assignments. 4. Minimum required billable is 45-48 hours a week all year long. Always pre-negotiated with the client, no flexibility as you are required to be present at the client even with no work. Hours turn out to be about the same as some people from audit on an annual basis, only difference is that it is spread out. 5. Absolutely only for those that want to spend the rest of their career in strict accounting and reporting roles. The "interesting and challenging" projects are categorized in names that appear exciting, however the nature of the work will still be the low end of repetitive accounting grunt work. For example, a "carve out or divestiture" project for a large deal will likely have the resource doing a small accounting standard implementation or back filling a daily accountant role which has nothing to do with the actual carve out while the clients team works on the actual carve out. Ad hoc tasks will be assigned that can be remotely related to the actual cause of the project but will not be the resources main function. 6. The firm hires a lot of former head hunters/recruiters and non-accounting/non-audit managers (think IT risk) as directors as their sole function is very similar, to sell the employee to the client as a temp. Some select few directors have very little accounting knowledge or background and so do not completely understand what they are presenting to the employee often leading to a mismatch of what the resources does for the client and what they described to the resource. 7. Appears to have many useless made up leadership positions staffed with under-qualified arrogant individuals. There is quiet widespread concerns of nepotism and questionable"fluff" positions at the firm that is considered "leadership". For example the CEO's son, with no prior work experience straight out of college is given a "leadership" role, albeit a rather useless position in "employee engagement". No issues with this happening as this is a private firm and the CEO can do as he pleases, however the other individual in "employee engagement" is arrogant, under-qualified and serves no real function at the firm. 8. Year end evaluation and promotion is even more of a popularity contest than in big 4/mid size public accounting as no one in leadership works with you directly since resources report to the client resulting in zero differentiation of quality of work. There are no objective measurable criteria or metric for ratings or promotions other than how leadership feels about the resources.