Sent my resume to Accenture with almost 20 years of relevant IT programming experience. Was immediately contacted by an Accenture recruiter who said my resume might be strong enough for a career level 8 or Associate Manager position, but said she was going to put me in for a level 9 Consultant position, which was a lateral move for me. This was acceptable, so the next step was a skills interview with a guy from Atlanta. During the interview, he sounded annoyed and bothered. After only 10 minutes, he said he could tell that I did everything on my resume and ended the interview extremely early. The recruiter called me a few minutes later in a confused state saying the skills interviewer dropped my level to 10 (Analyst) with a $20,000 pay cut. The recruiter didn’t understand why and said she would look into it and get back to me, but she left Accenture soon after. I contacted another recruiter who assured me that I would be on the fast track to a promotion, and once promoted, my salary would be back to the initial offer. The final interviewer also told me that if I joined, I mostly liked would be promoted quickly and that a promotion would resolve my salary demotion issue.
After working on my first project for a few months, it was very apparent to me that I got a very raw deal. I was working with people who were hired around the same time as I was hired, but with fewer skills and less experience than I had, but they were hired at level 8 (two levels above where I was hired). When bringing this up to management, I was told to be patient (wait a year) and I was most likely going to get a promotion. When the time came, I did get the promotion, but it came with only a very small salary increase.
When I spoke to someone else in management about my concerns, she agreed that my salary was very low and assured me that it was going to be fixed. She said she couldn’t do anything at that moment, but that it would be addressed during the next annual review. When the time came a year later. I was told that I just missed getting promoted again and as a result, I was NOT getting ANY salary increase. I could not have been more shocked. Not only have I never gotten a zero percent salary increase in my entire 27-year career, but I was assured a few months prior that my salary issue would be addressed.
After this, I left Accenture and got a job with another consulting firm, which came with a 25% salary increase.
I found that Accenture’s main focus and concern is on their stock price, to the detriment of their employees and clients. It was obvious that the skills interviewer discriminated again me or at the very least made a very big mistake by lowering my career level, but instead of admitting this and giving me an equity adjustment, they made up a story about how I was hired at a lower career level because I didn’t have previous consulting experience. This doesn’t add up because others with whom I worked (and were hired at the same time as I was hired) also did not have consulting experience, yet they were hired two levels above my hire level.
