Is it true, when you’re hired to Accenture federal you’re hired to a contract/project. So when that is over, you have to interview internally to get staffed on another project. And if you get benched for too long, you might be fired? Or if you can only find a role that is below your staff level, for example a SC rather than a manager role, you’ll be paid at the SC for the duration of you being on the project.
I’ve heard ppl talk about this, but not sure if it’s true....
I’m not at AFS but your third question cannot possibly be true. Your labor category/bill rate to the government should not impact your salary at that granular level.
Labor category/bill rates to the government and salary, while somewhat related, are separate from each other. Your labor category/bill rate is where you fall in based on your experience and what the firm negotiated with the government. Your salary is what you negotiate with the firm when you sign your offer.
So, in a situation that an M is billing at the same labor category as an SC, the M’s salary won’t be impacted. Your PPMD’s will likely want to move you to a different project or labor category bc if you continue to bill at the SC rate it will impact engagement profitability.
Don’t listen to anyone who doesn’t work (or has worked) at AFS...because ^^^ these comments above just muddy the water.
The first part is true, but is completely normal. Grow your network and/or if you are truly skilled- then it is easy to move and be in demand (if it ever happens).
The 2nd part isn’t true. P&L owner would just lose margin on you or not accept you for the role.
AFS has a great reputation and goes to great lengths to prevent talent from being laid off. Just have a personality- meet people- grow your skills. You’ll be in demand.
The hirer you are paid/ranking you become- the fewer opportunities you will have...but they still try to make everyone successful.
As an experienced hire - Not just federal. Also LLP. But yes. This is how all major firms work. New analysts join, and have to find a project within a few months. The pay scale item is part of the contract with the client. Certain contracts have to adjust based on CCIs, and forecasting hours along with possible promotions. And no, you don’t receive a pay cut. You just eat money on a contract that also won’t reflect well on your review. You don’t want to do a analyst gig as an M, and an MD/SM won’t want you eating up their funding anyway.
Not really answering the question.
actual AFS employee here:
sort of—from what I’ve seen we often staff to a project during hiring (I think this is more of an ideal dream state though from a bus Ines’s standpoint than reality). I also do some recruiting work for my practice and I can tell you we also hire just because we anticipate demand in certain types of roles and skill sets due to general attrition or a lot of new work we’ve won, without there being an identified project role. It’s all about appropriate business forecasting. This perception you mentioned may come in part from the requirement for certain roles to be hired already having a specific clearance level (which means most likely a specific project has already been identified).
I didn’t have a project on my first day and spent my first week after orientation interviewing internally for open roles. No one tried to rush me along to find a role and there were many roles my TSF explicitly said no to even though they were at level because they weren’t ‘a good use of my skill set.’ Interviewing for internal roles is expected an normal as projects and contracts come and go and is not federal specific. LLP does this for internal staffing too.
The pay cut element is explicitly untrue. If a project is willing to staff you, that’s their problem to figure out if they onboard you for a role that they can only bill to the government at a rate lower than your salary. Realistically though, we do this all the time for MDs and the money we make off billing the government at hirer than what we pay analysts, etc. covers this and, you know, company profit.
There is a clause in our employment that if we are unstaffed for more than two weeks the company can terminate employment, but from what I understand it’s rarely invoked (unless someone’s not trying to get staffed or the person in question is already a problem and they’re using it as a method to cut them), and I believe LLP also has the same policy. I mean realistically, who wouldn’t? At any company if they don’t have work for you for an extended period of time, they would consider laying you off anyway. But in my experience in AFS this policy is largely a scare tactic to prevent people from moving too far from a local office and still expecting to get work. Though the pandemic (at least for now) has largely changed this and I know a number of people who have been told they can move elsewhere and given an exception to the policy requiring you to live within X distance of an AFS office as a term of employment, but warned about this policy if they find themselves unstaffed for more than two weeks due to inability to find a role that will staff them from their new location.
Haha that’s what I thought, but I had to be sure . Thanks everyone for responding. It was a bit out there when I heard this....
Coach
I’ve never heard of having to take a pay cut to join a project. D1 is right about that. Otherwise everything else you described is just generally how consulting works, not just AFS
None of this is true. We are not a staff aug shop. If you want a real answer dm me.
This isn’t true. I’ve never heard of any of this and I’ve been here 20+ years.