Pros
Title: Lots of places don't care about a title, some places do. For the latter, this is a great way to boost your resume and build your credibility. Experience: Invaluable work experience. You will work, start-to-finish on projects and feel a sense of ownership. Market Research skills abound - you'll learn to build out interview scripts and surveys that drive actionable business decisions. You will feel comfort working with quant-based analysis. You will become comfortable presenting to executive-level management at several Fortune 500 companies. Career Development/Work-Life Balance: I am only speaking on behalf of how I was treated. I felt like management truly cared for my career development. As a consultant, expectations of you are high, maybe a little too high. But that is what is required of consultants; you didn't think about applying to this because you thought it would be easy. If so, then you haven't put any research into consulting. Refer to Gartner, McKinsey, BCG work hours. The Marketech Group actually promotes a manageable work-life balance at 8 or 9-hour days. Get your work done then leave, simple as that. Overall - Great experience and I only left because my dream job opened up which ended up paying about 50% more in the bay area (might have actually been a wash considering the cost of living adjustment)
Cons
Micromanagement - only when you first start out. If you build trust and produce high-quality content then this won't be an issue Culture - In my role I didn't see the brunt of the pain felt by some people. Management butted heads with some of the other functions in the company. I believe those positions have new individuals. There was only one major problem.... Quant Director - I like to give people the benefit of the doubt more often than not. With that said, at his best, the quant director is a bipolor, socially-awkward, and anal personality. At his worst, he is the most miserable human being I have ever met. I will not get into specifics for fear that this review will get flagged as "aggressive" as I certainly don't intend for that to be the case. I'd like potential employees to be aware of what they're getting into. To end up on a positive note... he was at the very least competent in his job and got his work done in a timely manner. I appreciated that about him.