Faux consulting, Genuine career-killer
Pros
- Gives out decent laptops, cell phones - Willing to overlook lack of financial services experience - Has a great marketing department to give the appearance of an actual consultancy - Provides a paycheck in US dollars every two weeks - You can tell your friends you're a "management consultant" who works on "Wall Street" with a nearly straight face
Cons
Where to even begin? - You are expected to bill and work 10 hour days for 8 hours of pay; criminal overbilling of the client is the norm here - No need for a finance degree-this firm doesn't deal with finance - Capco is a body shop of IT testers and "project managers". There are no strategy projects. The "Banking" and "Capital Markets" domains are just fronts for testing assignments or other IT work - Capco is not a consulting firm. It's a back-office staff augmentation group willing to sell you out, despite your background, at the lowest possible rates to turn a buck - Won't put you on a project you request-you have no choices here - Often won't pay for your "local" travel; this is why they seek to hire naïve "local" resources and stick them with the bill for travel, even when it can be dozens and dozens of miles a day - Too cheap to pay for separate hotel rooms, plane tickets. Hope you like sharing a room with someone who likely doesn't have the same hygiene standards in a cut-rate "hotel" after arriving on the 2:00 AM Amtrak - No pipeline to speak of, client list is small - Rampant unprofessionalism - Endless internal disarray and disorganization; a revolving door of half-baked internal initiatives that never come to fruition will constantly clutter your inbox - Your fellow "consultants" often have atrocious people skills-almost a requirement to work here, it seems - No investment in talent. Don't be fooled by all the "talent programs" aimed to give an air of legitimacy to this body shop. You're a piece of meat, pure and simple. - HR is rude and incompetent. Even by HR standards - Many of the former "bankers" and "subject matter experts" worked on the service or HR side at actual consulting firms - Tons of company events that are used to mask politics. Don't attend a HH? Not a team player. Attend a HH? Prepare to get pumped for information about your coworkers. - Company is more focused on internal "fun" than gaining new clients; hope you like an endless barrage of superfluous "internal event" designed to foster team spirit. Don't worry, the minute you aren't a billable resource, you'll all be fired as a team, too. - Partners waiting to cash out the moment the rest of this sinking ship is acquired by FIS in a few years; mentally, they're already gone -I could go on for quite some time, but ultimately Capco's biggest problem is it simply isn't a consulting firm In summation: Are you a degree holder, HR rep, or someone who has a vague idea what consulting actually consists of? Have you watched "House of Lies" and dream of an illustrious career as a management consultant, but have none of the prerequisites? Do you consider people skills something dangerous and foreign? Is your command of the English language one of your "softer" skills? Do you classify yourself as a member of the human race and desperately need a paycheck? Capco could be for you. For anyone else who is remotely serious about being a consultant, avoid like the plague. Two years in this butcher's shop will have you wishing you could permanently erase your CV.