FTI Consulting Reviews

Otherwise, I worked for five years in D.C. and NYC in Strategic Communications and it's a bloodbath. Nobody helps you -- you better have your own connections to get accounts. You have to eat what you kill and it's all about office politics. You have to align yourself with the right clique or you get destroyed. The right clique will then "feed" you clients here and there to survive until you get sure footing (at least one year). Most new hires are spit and chewed out after two years, their demise was always imminent. There's so much turnover, it's unbelievable. People live in constant fear of being fired while the upper management spends thousands of dollars on dinners, limos and such for themselves. There aren't any stock options and the "benefits" are a joke. They're like every other mediocre company. It's very mercenary. The only way you get any job security is if you land a big account -- like $75-100k/month and praying that one of your managing directors doesn't steal your accounts. BTW, your managing directors steal your accounts. You work hard to land it -- do all the pitching -- and they "transfer" it to themselves, thereby getting credit for it. I earned my keep and got the heck out of there as soon as I saw a good opportunity. There's no work/life balance (I used to work on weekends). It's just not worth it. Also, I saw a colleague of mine get fired even though she had the highest amount of billable hours and always receive positive reviews. Turned out her new boss didn't like her and dropped the guillotine. It's ruthless and no place to work unless you like a good battle.

Culture and environment are soul destroying and oppressive, with an entire team often working in total silence for whole day. Horrendous social politics within teams and between them. Treatment of graduates borders on abusive, with open discussion in front of them and the entire team about the cost of them and how they will get that money back out of them. FTI put on a good veneer, but it's a manipulative first world sweatshop. Expect to work 5+ hours more than anyone else in the team until someone else comes along that they can force to instead. I cannot list here all the ways in which the environment is made miserable and employees treated like donkeys. If these cons seem exaggerated, just look at the level of turnover for those in the first 3 years of their career. Also, the pay is below comparable PR consulting firms and bonuses regularly cancelled or reduced, regardless of performance.