Rant 🚨 after 6 months of interviews with Oliver Wyman and then having a verbal nod (they even changed office location after 5 months) on Thursday I had an invite “Final Round” with Talent Manager. I was confused so I reached out to a partner through LinkedIn as I had my final round a month back. I got a call yesterday from the recruiter saying I will have a comp call today. I come on the call and it’s a straight :”we’ve decided to go in a different direction and business needs changed”….
Yikes. I left OW recently. So happy I don’t work there anymore. You dodged a bullet OP.
F
There is a lot that is left out in this story. I’ll just leave it at that for the fishbowl world. We at OW can certainly improve our recruiting process and we try hard to all the time, but this wasn’t simply a case of us being slow. Also, for the various responses second guessing what power our recruiting teams do and don’t have, suffice to say that we trust our recruiting teams immensely and that they’re an equal partner in our decision making processes.
Pro
You got receipts P1? Our boy over here does.
My conversation 2 hours before I heard from the recruiter. Guess he wasn’t informed - but definitely things changed super fast
Cheers M2 🙏🏼
There feels like there is more to this story. I have never heard of a 6mo process. Especially not at SC level. It’s usually 2 weeks in total. Sorry about this!
I can promise there isn’t
This is why you never stop interviewing until everyone has signed the employment letter.
Those eggs need to stay in separate baskets
There you go. Good luck for MBB final round. I know you must feel terrible right now but based on that experience of yours I feel like you dodged a bullet. Things happen for a reason. I hope you can look back at this in few months or year and able to say “glad that happened” because you will be in so much better place.
Can confirm. Switched to OW as experienced hire a year ago. They kept adding interviews after the „final round“, 9-10 in total. It was 3-4 months for me, which is way too long. Others complete the whole process in 1 day.
Omg that’s an insane number of interviews!
I understand the recruiter did not like me going to partners to ask about the process but she sent me a Final Round interview invite when essentially it was a informational interview and was not evaluative. The partner messaged me this morning stating that it’s all good and it’s an initial onboarding step. An hour later she says they won’t proceed - I mean I understand you were annoyed but to take an offer away for that? RIDICULOUS. I interviewed for 6 months you at least owed me some sort of empathy. Did it with a 30 second call?
Recruiters don’t make hiring decisions. They just communicate them. After investing months into a candidate, I doubt that decisions change because of a LinkedIn message. Possible though that recruiting targets have changed or that you have been discussed at a borderline candidate over a long period of time.
Is it possible that they did genuinely have a change in need… major deal fall through so no staffing need ? Things are very fluid right now…We have candidates we like but can’t get approvals to hire
Deloitte is probably better in general tbh. You should just tell them you had an offer to leave and maybe D can match or offer better to retain you?
Lol C2 nearly everyone did that during the 20-22 great resignation and Dan/Rizzo still told them no way
6 months ! What on earth I thought t2 was supposed to be slick at recruitment
I know people bark at anyone who says companies have frozen hiring. Just because there are job postings or company hasn’t announced publicly , doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
When Google, Meta, Microsofts of the world has frozen hiring, the audacity of consultants thinking we are immune of all this is amazing.
Sorry OP, they should have told you that in 4-6 months, company has seen the growth slump and they are worried about next few months. I think they will come back to you once they are over this hump
No we won’t
OP the partner wasn’t telling you the truth, recruiters work on behalf of the partner, they have no say or power in denying you your offer if the partner and his team were vouching for you, it’s the hard truth, I once had a recruiter try to lowball me so that she could get a bonus, I called the hiring manager directly and set the expectation of my salary, though she was pissed the recruiter had no choice but to oblige
Ah that explains everything, I left Deloiite as a Consultant having acquired a specific skill set over 4 years, after this I believe the best path for you is to look for roles where you know what your getting into before you join, based on your experience OW was just hiring a large pool of consultants with no guarantee of what their first projects would be, kind of what Deloitte does to first year Analysts if you get what I mean
Everything about your story is strange. Very odd to have 5 partners interview an SC candidate, to stretch the process out that much, and then of course the ending. Especially knowing the Digital practice in the US pretty well, I would say this is not at all the way they normally work.
All I can imagine is that your skill profile was “spiky” and somehow there were differences of opinion among partners about how to value that spike or use your talents, where the negative side won out late because of changes in demand for that particular skill. Still shitty of us. If it was borderline enough to not give you an offer within 5-6 interviews we should have just told you it was too much of a reach.
So sorry to hear. It’s really odd that the talent manager interviewed you though - we have never had this happen in my 10 years at OW…
Wishing you good luck with the recruiting process. Things will improve!
I'd be pissed to be yet another victim of the hiring slowdowns/freezes. I've been there too, but with other firms.
Pro
This just happened with me and A&M. Not fun at all but it is what it is.
😪😪😪
I went through 4 months of interviews at OW 8 interviews in total. At the end of it all, they offered me a role 2 levels down my current role in Big 4. Slightly better pay, but the downgrade didn’t really sit with me. The Principal/ EM who interviewed me told me the hours are bad. Again, it may be different in other practices or countries.
Which country is this?
Chief
Womp. Sorry man. That seems really shitty.
Pro
Did u have a written offer?
Pro
Still shitty but it was within their right.
Rising Star
Well, that's really uncool. What a way of them to waste your time.
Jeez. What practice were you interviewing for?
Digital
What position?
Senior consultant