Mercer Human Capital vs Deloitte Human Capital

Monkeys,

Could those who are currently working and previously had worked at these two firms provide some insight please? I am heavily considering the two for the LA office going into full-time recruitment but can't really decide.

1) What kind of projects were you staffed on? 2) Culture? Environment? How were your superiors? 3) Flexibility on the type of projects you chose? 4) Best and worst experience?

Really appreciate it, thanks!

7 Comments
 
Best Response

I started at Mercer a couple of months ago. I'm enjoying myself so far, Mercer seems to do a really good job of picking competent and personable people. I've heard culture varies from office to office, but there's a pretty good amount of flexibility once you get settled in terms of hours. There's a pretty conservative first-year billable hours target, so you don't have to get buried in work immediately. Mercer also pays analysts overtime rather than a year-end bonus, so you get a direct link to extra hours when you have to do them.

Mercer typically tries to get new people staffed on comp work immediately, as it's the bread and butter of the human capital business. There's a huge range of clients and industries, so if and what you focus on is up to you. If you're a little less quantitative you might want to do some talent management stuff, as that's less numbers and more written/verbal skills.

 
Governor CaesarI started at Mercer a couple of months ago. I'm enjoying myself so far, Mercer seems to do a really good job of picking competent and personable people. I've heard culture varies from office to office, but there's a pretty good amount of flexibility once you get settled in terms of hours. There's a pretty conservative first-year billable hours target, so you don't have to get buried in work immediately. Mercer also pays analysts overtime rather than a year-end bonus, so you get a direct link to extra hours when you have to do them.

Mercer typically tries to get new people staffed on comp work immediately, as it's the bread and butter of the human capital business. There's a huge range of clients and industries, so if and what you focus on is up to you. If you're a little less quantitative you might want to do some talent management stuff, as that's less numbers and more written/verbal skills.

Thanks!

In terms of your projects, do you have the ability to choose what you would like to get staffed on? If I were to be going to Mercer, I would love to work more with talent management type projects.

Also, I heard that a large majority of the work is just working on executive comp payables. Is this true?

 

A large majority of the work is comp, and a large majority of that is exec comp. All Mercer HC consultants have some exec comp work in their history.

Workflow differs from office to office. Project staffing depends a lot on the relationships you build working on past projects as well as your availability. But if you express an interest in a certain kind of work to the right people you'll be able to get the projects you want.

 
Governor CaesarA large majority of the work is comp, and a large majority of that is exec comp. All Mercer HC consultants have some exec comp work in their history.

Workflow differs from office to office. Project staffing depends a lot on the relationships you build working on past projects as well as your availability. But if you express an interest in a certain kind of work to the right people you'll be able to get the projects you want.

So definitely build rapport with project managers that handle projects that really interest you, right?

How is the exec comp work though? I have never done anything like the sort and have always dealt with more strategic projects for my extra-curricular's. I'm just not sure what I might be getting myself into it.

Appreciate the input!

 

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