Pros
The majority of the people are kind, fun, and willing to lend a helping hand when you need it. I have made some of my best friends while working at Protiviti. Most people are relatively laid back, and it definitely does not feel like a cutthroat environment at the staff level.
Cons
The Work: Where to even begin on this one? If you're interested in work that is monotonous and uninteresting, this is the place for you. None of the work that is offered here is even remotely stimulating. The vast majority of the project work that is currently ongoing is loan staff compliance work. You will not feel like you are a consultant, you will feel like you are a contractor. And that is because that is exactly what you are here at Protiviti. There's a reason that the parent company, Robert Half, is a staffing company. We don't help companies solve problems, we provide bodies to help companies clear file backlogs. As a former colleague put it when he left the firm, “the work feels like eating dry toast.” That’s about as spot on as it gets. People Management: The firm is plagued with incompetence at the manager level and above. This is due to both poor hires from industry and the fact that promotions have been handed out like pass outs for the past several years. There are countless Managers that have zero clue about how to effectively manage people. One overarching example that I saw time and time again on every project was this: when certain people weren't pulling their own weight on a project, management would address the project team as a whole and say something along the lines of "now some of you aren't hitting the required hours, and don't worry it's not all of you, but everyone needs to make sure that they're doing what's expected." Instead of pulling aside the parties who are slacking and providing them with constructive feedback (or just telling them straight up to get their act together), they address the entire team in a passive aggressive manner which makes the employees who are producing at a high level feel angry, annoyed, and slighted (and it gives the low performing employees no reason to change what they're doing). Project Management: Protiviti will bend over backwards and let their client dictate every term of an engagement, regardless of how it will affect the employees that are staffed on the engagements. Not once have I seen Protiviti stand up for its employees’ well-being in the face of a client demand. I have worked on countless engagements that could have been flexible and allowed for working remotely, whether that was from home or from your home office, but were not due to “wanting to show face at the client,” or some other excuse. This is rare in the consulting industry as most firms have the attitude of “just get your work done, and do it well.” Also, if you offer upward feedback to your project management team, no matter how you frame it or go about it, chances are you will be perceived as someone who is ungrateful with an entitled attitude. The Outlook: The firm is also headed in a direction that no one should want to be a part of. A large number of new and recent engagements require Sunday through Friday travel. That kind of travel schedule should be reserved for deadlines and unexpected issues that arise. It should not be the weekly travel expectation from the very beginning of the project. Additionally, project budgets are so tight that finding a hotel in cities like Chicago and New York is borderline impossible. Who wants to work for a firm with budgets that force you to use apps like hotel tonight, or to try a bunch of different corporate codes in hopes that one will get you a rate that falls within budget?