Vantaggi
I was an intern at this company during college and it truly was an awesome experience. They fly you out to Disney for training and really roll out the red carpet. The interns that they select are typically very social and like minded about work hard but play harder. As an intern you were staffed on what my managers called "sexy projects" that involved IPOs, fun client companies, and weekly intern bonding events with lots of food and alcohol. I was definitely drinking the Protiviti Kool-aid by the end of the internship.
Svantaggi
After my internship experience I signed my full time offer thinking that I would have a great career and be able to learn new things and challenge myself. I was very excited. I quickly realized that the internship experience was not at all indicative of the real experience that I would have in this company. While I can only speak for the Dallas office and for the IAFA business solution, I believe that the Dallas Office as a whole is a sinking ship that bleeds talent due to the way that their upper level managers and HR team treats employees. Within the first month of starting, their whole BPI team (marketed as management consulting) jumped ship and left the company with the BPI Managing Director, not only that, but the Managing Director for the Technology Consulting solution at Protiviti Dallas also left the company. After about 7 months in, more than 20 people quit from all levels in the company including Consultants, Seniors, and Managers. I hope these numbers illustrate the type of negative workplace that Protivit Dallas is. In regards to the work itself, Dallas is mainly focused on Internal Audit, with more than 70% of their employees being hired into that solution. Lateral moves into different solutions is nearly impossible. I was also recruited to be in the FSI (Financial Services Industry) group as a IAFA "consultant" and was promised that I would see work involving modeling and capital markets but that was not the case. It was just a pitch to get an unassuming and naive college graduate to sign a letter of employment. Do not believe any of the recruiters when they tell you that you will be doing "Management consulting," and do not believe them when you are told that you will be exposed to different types of work. You will be sitting in a client office anywhere in the DFW metroplex (Fort Worth, Dallas, Las Colinas, Plano, Lewisville, Frisco) and you will be in a cubicle doing internal audit controls testing. Maybe you may get lucky every once and a while and be able to "travel" to West Texas. You will be doing Internal Audit process and control testing until you either quit the company or become a Manager. As an IAFA consulting I received virtually 0 experience and my accounting/finance knowledge actually regressed from college. I highly encourage anyone who is young, ambitious, and has an interest in higher level accounting and finance to avoid working here unless it is the only option. You will not work with Financial Statements, you will not gain valuable excel experience, you will not learn anything specific except about how processes and controls work for different companies. In regards to recruiting, the college recruiter was very aggressive and tried to get those of us who completed the internship to sign immediately. After speaking with my college advisors who have an agreement with Protiviti, the HR team allowed us much more time and quit hounding us to sign. In regards to work-life balance Protiviti is much better than the Big 4 accounting firms in regards to their respective Audit teams. There is no busy season and typically you work from 8 to ~5:30. That being said, attending company events is mandatory and tied into your bonus incentives. If you do not attend after hour events or get involved in their different company groups you will be penalized financially (in terms of bonus eligibility) and viewed as a disloyal employee. This will ultimately affect your ability to be staffed as HR keeps a note of who is involved and who isn't and will punish you accordingly. I found HR to be very dishonest and nontransparent. They are in charge of staffing you on projects and love to staff people who they dislike on bad projects with long commutes or defunct leadership to push you out of the company. The benefits are also very bad, and many employees will tell you to try to get insurance coverage through a spouse or family member. Other than that, I found that many of the managers, especially in the FSI team, are extremely toxic and expect you to put your own time to do more work on the weekends. I was told to put more hours in without billing the client and was also told to study up on SEC banking regulations on my own time and give weekly progress reports to an MD. Needless to say I left the company and am now employed with a firm that values my needs and provides me the tools/experience I need to be successful and grow.
