2.2
46% would recommend to a friend
Tareck Raafat
48% approve of CEO
54% positive business outlook
Pros
If you want to learn, you learn good skills the tough way. What you learn, it stands you in good stead for rest of your life.
Cons
extremely long and inflexible working hours, with limited resources within access.
Pros
One year working experience in Stratas equals to multiple years of experience in ordinary companies. An extra-ordinary opportunity for fresh graduates to switch from academy to business A super and promising fast/speedy track to develop career in pharma or medtech industry Strong team spirit Super nice colleagues You must have learnt something significant for your life and your career
Cons
Similar to other high-end management consultancy firms, lack of sleep, work-life balance is minimum. You need to put effort to manage your life. You need to learn very fast with minimum training. Do not expect someone will guide you through to do all tasks. You need to be creative all the time. Need to pick up management tasks that supposed for staff with much more experience. Yes, it is stressful. You need to learn how to handle it.
Pros
- Fast learning on pricing and market access, while knowledge management isn’t as systematic as in other places, the company has very deep knowledge that’s well documented compared to other small boutiques. I also built up very solid knowledge of the workings of pricing & market access across markets and gained experience across different therapeutic areas over my first few months at the firm that has stayed with me ever since. - flexible roles - small size of the company allows to quickly take on more responsibility, I started leading projects 6 months in, which would not have been possible in other places - Collegial atmosphere with junior staff, team work is usually quite good - Good client exposure at consultant level with opportunity for good relationship building - Limited travel schedule, generally for key milestone meetings during projects only - Offers good exit opportunities in general, I think the best fit for the firm are young smart hard working grads from tier 2 institutions outside of Switzerland, who can have a great learning experience and after 2 years decide whether to continue with Stratas or exit. E.g. several alumni at Top pharma manufacturer in Basel - likely impossible to be considered for interview for them before their Stratas time. The job is the best fit for this kind of profile, but the value prop of this job is obviously different for everyone depending on where people are coming from and where they want to go - Tareck generates a continuous stream of business, allowing to keep everyone busy - while this can sometimes come at the cost of lifestyle, I think this can be a true challenge for boutique firms impacting job stability
Cons
- Compensation below top consulting players in Switzerland - Working hours can be intense. I’ve read some of the other reviews so wanted to offer a few more specifics. I wouldn’t say hours are significantly worse compared with consulting in German speaking countries - I am now with a big firm in Germany with many pre-7am flights and regularly work until 1 or 2 am, with colleagues even pulling all nighters. I don’t have time to e.g., check personal text messages or read the paper in my current job. At Stratas, hours were 9/9.30am to 11pm many days, with some 3am stretches. More rarely, i also had days where I could just monitor incoming mail after 9pm but not be fully engaged. I generally had some dead 15 min here or there during the day where I’d read the paper etc. I would occasionally have to work up to 5 hours or so on a weekend, which is slightly better in my current role. Of course, corporate positions have much better hours, as does research. I think hours were particularly tough on staff at Stratas due to the large number of hires from scientific backgrounds with less exposure to professional services industries. - Not a lot of senior leadership, I missed having more variety of people to learn from. There is also no clear succession plan or “path to partner” which made it challenging for many of my peers and myself to envision a very long term trajectory with the group
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