Pros
The consulting industry has been maturing for 100+ years; however, as private clients focus on optimizing business processes and rapidly building IT infrastructures, this historical consulting model is struggling at the fundamental level. Specially, the Big4 and other large consulting firms have built models that are subject to inflating rates - especially in the government - where you see entry level people trying to bill out at a 3x multiple, e.g., $150/hr for a recent college grad. These legacy consulting firms must keep pumping their multiples to offset the poor financial decisions being made by their aging executives, lack of billability at the mid-level, and the need for innovation to keep up with newer markets, like data science. This struggling model has paved the way for a new generation of consulting firms - enter Slalom - who are focused on providing lower rates, high output and adequate levels of technical skill. This forces a business model that is focused on identifying talent that is: (1) willing to work/bill extra hours, (2) billing at the lowest possible rate, and (3) up to date on the current technologies and industry tries. So, how does Slalom do this? It's simple: they predominantly hire college grads and manufacture a superficial culture that speaks directly to that demographic to consistently energize them to do work and/or take the necessary trainings to be minimally effective on projects. When you were interviewing with Slalom, did you notice how much time they spent showing off that wine fridge and keg while talking up the culture? And, did you primarily see desks of busy-looking junior staff sitting around?
Cons
The initial problem with this model is that it only really works when everyone is billing out 100% of their time and when the firm is willing to sign up for "any" type of work in exchange for adding staff to projects. This forces a flat organization within Slalom where there is some variance in rates and experience but minimal strategic work or opportunities for true career advancement. This is unlike the Big4 model which creates the opportunity for staff to grow at the expense of their aging business model. The side effect of this model at Slalom is that staff can oftentimes be aligned to projects that don't match their core skill set and, due to the flat nature of the organization, they will rarely have a manager/senior leader go to bat for them if they are unhappy with their project or drifting in their career. The only real way to get promoted and build a career is to find an entirely new client for Slalom and build an account from the ground up, which would provide Slalom with a new, ongoing revenue stream associated to you. This is certainly not impossible - and several junior Slalomers have climbed that chain - but rest assured that it's a huge dice roll. When you're spending 8 hours/day with a different client, doing staff aug work and then being asked to participate in seeming endless culture-building exercises for Slalom (happy hours), it becomes very difficult to gel into a true consulting role and proactively find new clients/work. Because Slalom is comprised of younger staff who have yet to develop the full range of management and consulting experience, most of Slalom's projects involve day-to-day services, like developing Tableau reports, testing, documenting requirements, taking meeting notes, etc. Did I mention testing? Further, projects typically only grow when clients proactively ask for additional staff vs. Slalom pitching new strategic services (like what you'd see with the Big4). Again, this is not a problem for Slalom because they are ok with staff leaving after a few years of their boring work because - in the next year - there will be new graduating college class with fresher technical skills who are ready to do technical work for 50-60 hours/week while only billing 40. The biggest problem that I - and many other people - have with Slalom is that it's not honest to its employees about what the company actually is - at all stages of recruitment and employment. They have armies of recruiters and a large social media presence to show future employees how much "fun" it is to work for the company. They beg employees to submit surveys to get the firm on "Top 100" lists for consulting publications and to provide online feedback on social sites so that they can provide hard statistics to further recruit young talent. But the benefit of using college grads/younger staff in this capacity is that they're new to their careers so they really don't have any baseline to compare their Slalom experience to. So, they stay until they realize that having an in-office keg does not truly provide that career-ROI they are looking for. Welcome to Slalom: the post college Frat.
