Vault’s Verdict

Insiders at Archery paint a picture of a firm with a vibrant culture, specialized focus, and genuine commitment to fostering meaningful work-life balance. They express particular praise for their firm’s stimulating environment, where professionals are engaged in meaningful projects alongside a supportive and collaborative team.

Like any firm, Archery also has its challenges: long working hours being perhaps the most significant for insiders (hence the aforementioned focus on work-life balance). But a measure of how it treats employees can be found in Archery's transparent compensation structure and meritocratic approach to career development. Both further enhance its appeal as an employer, making it an attractive choice for those passionate about contributing to key technological sectors.

Employee Reviews

Firm Culture

• "A company with a strong focus on the defense, aerospace, energy, and PE sectors, enabling you to rapidly acquire recognized expertise in these fields.”
• "Firm's culture is unique: a blend of camaraderie, team-spirit, and professional rigor in the delivery."
• "If you are curious, proactive, and passionate about Large Projects industries: apply!"
• " Perfect boutique to work on C-level problematic in industries in a very pleasant environment.”
• "You're not treated like a number in a database, a resource to be used and discarded once the mission is over. The human side is stronger than elsewhere, I think."

Quality of Life

• “Attention of the management to the workload and hours done by the consultants. Travel requirements are variable and mainly depend on the client expectations, with the firm taking into consideration the impact on the personal life (try to avoid successive projects with travel requirements outside home city, etc.).”
• “Family is taken into account. For instance, I’m not staffed away as I just had a baby.”
• “Staffing is really adapted and considers the volume of cumulated travel for each consultant, enabling ‘travel-pause’ / assignments in the office in case of prolonged travel period.”
• “Teams work hard all things considered, but for having seen other companies, I considered the work load and work/life balance to be very good for a strategy consulting firm. Loyalty is rewarded (ex. extra paid vacations and parental leaves past several years of experience in the company).”
• “The work-life balance is very good for a strategy consulting boutique. But a lot of travels can last for long, depending on your missions.”

Career Development

• "Best: no standard time in grade, you can progress as fast as you show abilities. Worst: few international."
• "Career development opportunities are very good. The promotion policy is fair."
• "Entrepreneurial structure that makes it possible to endorse important responsibilities, even for non-partner grades, having a strong upside on leadership development."
• "Opportunities at Archery arise as the company is growing. It is still a 'boutique' type consultancy so we may not offer a similar range of mobility options to larger firms."
• "Promotion processes adapted to individual performance, with fast track possibilities."

Compensation

• “Every consultant is paid the same fix package per grade, and the difference in performance is rewarded through a variable component that can be significant. This creates a great transparency and equity that I haven't seen elsewhere."
• "Good salary in the industry."
• "Good salary progression, more importance given to the variable part of the salary as growing more and more experienced."
• "No worst aspect. We are almost paid like MBBs, without finishing our days at 10 pm. What else?"
• "Very good compensation packages for a boutique consultancy."

Community Engagement

• "All consultants at Archery have equal access to interesting/high-quality work and promotion opportunities."
• "Company makes the best effort to increase diversity, equity and inclusion (e.g. yearly half/full-day seminars with profit-free associations working against homelessness, abuse or climate change, Mentoring programs for entrepreneurs from low-income neighborhoods).”
• "Equal treatment and promotion opportunities."
• "Low diversity among consultants, which is linked to our specialties sectors."
• "Strong efforts to re-equilibrate the man/woman parity in the office. Extended maternity leave."

Business Outlook

• “Archery has the innovation capacity of a boutique consultancy (second to none within firms of similar sizes). Growth prospects are very exciting.”
• "Industry trends in our sector are booming and not likely to change. Management has a very clear and ambitious development plan that we all fully support.”
• "Our sectors are thriving and need support to achieve their growth."
• “Strong reinforcement of the collective effort of partners to develop the firm, resulting in steadily increasing commercial and operational performance. Increase of the functional coverage & expertise by acquisition/ nurturing of specialized subsidiaries (data & analytics, interim program management, training...).”
• "While Archery is not a worldwide top-ranked large company, I consider it to be one of the best 'boutiques' in its specialties sectors."

Hiring Process

• "Archery likes candidates with autonomy and initiative. We like to give responsibility and exposure to the team, so we like it when they make the best out of it.”
• "It is looking for a candidate coming from top French engineer or business school, willing to learn about Archery's sector."
• "Reactivity: Once a CV has been screened, the candidate is called within the week."
• "Usually 3 rounds, with 2 interviews per round - reactive call back process by HR."
• "Warm, fair, human. We care about equality of treatment throughout the recruiting process."

Interview Questions

• "Two cases like elsewhere, but we have a specific 3-hour round of a fictitious situation."
• "Archery uses standard strategy case studies and our proprietary real-life assignment simulation exercise."
• "Market sizing, profitability recovery, supply chain management, and product policy."
• "Our process is not only based on the usual case studies."
• "Typical business case related to our sectors. Role-play for candidates to discover our working modes."