Vault’s Verdict

Charles River Associates offers a blend of academic rigor and real-world consulting across a variety of practices, from its bread-and-butter antitrust practice to its growing footprint in life sciences. The firm is a great place to call home for anyone interested in a collegial, academic environment where you collaborate alongside numerous PhDs.

The firm is also a place where diverse talent can flourish. Insiders point to its highly active employee resource groups and recent addition of a Chief Inclusion Officer as signs that management takes DEI seriously, and they report feeling like everyone who joins the firm is given every chance to succeed through a combination of mentorship and formal training.

However, consultants at CRA do point to some drawbacks. While promotion can be fast, it’s often difficult for employees who do not have a PhD to advance past certain levels of the organization. Insiders also say that its bonus structure lacks transparency and is vulnerable to uncontrollable lulls in billable hours. 

That said, the firm’s outlook for 2024 and beyond is strong after a slow 2023 for the entire consulting industry. If you’re interested in a growing firm with an accepting culture, CRA is a great choice to consider.

Employee Reviews

Firm Culture

• “CRA is a great place to work and feel like you belong no matter your age, race, gender, or LGBTQ+ status.”
• “I enjoy working at CRA because of its friendly and collaborative environment. The company fosters a supportive atmosphere that encourages teamwork, promotes open communication, and enables everyone to collaborate effectively on projects and express their thoughts and concerns freely.”
• “CRA's internal work culture is fantastic. They prioritize hiring smart, curious, and social individuals who are ambitious and interested in the work they do. The company provides stipends for further training opportunities, both inside and outside of the firm.”
• “CRA's hybrid policy is generous and allows for flexible working environments. It is also relatively easy to take time off when needed.”

Quality of Life

• “Everyone from junior peers to senior staff encourages you to create a healthy work-life balance where tougher weeks are balanced out with lighter ones or vacation.”
• “CRA makes it easy to work hard. They provide great perks such as bringing in lunch multiple times a week, providing flu shots in the office, hosting social events every month, offering an on-site gym [in some offices], and providing transportation subsidies.”
• “Upper management sells our firm as a 24/7 help service, despite not having enough people to actually reasonably cover nights and weekends.”
• “The firm is relatively flexible and accommodating on work-life balance, allowing staff to go [temporarily] remote or international during holidays and according to their personal circumstances. While you should expect very tough busy periods around deadlines, that’s consulting.”

Career Development

• “CRA assigns a career coach to each employee and with regular check-ins throughout the year to ensure dynamic feedback sharing and communication.”
• “The mentoring is unbelievable. People care about your development, including your professional development manager and your project managers. Also, we have thousands of recorded trainings and live trainings every week, which is awesome.”
• “Promotion processes are fair and relatively abundant. Training is extensive and prepares you well for the role. Incoming analysts typically get a slower ramp-up with plenty of opportunities to get involved early on in case work.”
• “Promotion seems relatively transparent and fair, although it seems the case that amount of billable hours is considered more important than quality of work, and the managers you end up working with will influence your success more than you'd like.”

Compensation

• “CRA's salary adjustments have been great in recent years. I've benefitted from two market adjustments in around 3.5 years as well as merit-based promotions and increases. My salary has increased almost 50 percent in 3.5 years.”
• “I believe I make more per hour than corresponding junior staff at any other consulting firm. My base salary is slightly lower than some others, but my hours are much lower as well.”
• “Bonus calculations can seem like a mystery, making it a challenge to know what to expect. This year bonuses were very low compared to previous years. The bonuses are based on individual contribution, as well as how well your practice and the company performed.” 
• “Our complete benefit package includes medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance, mental health services, an employee assistance program, wellness education initiatives, and financial planning education.”

Community Engagement

• “The firm puts extensive efforts in promoting workspace diversity and equality. We have a very diverse employee group including different ethnicities, native languages, sexualities, and disabilities. I give full recognition to our company’s DEI efforts.”
• “Our DEI efforts have been unmatched, and it shows with all the work our employees put into our employee resource groups. These groups have undertaken some exciting opportunities and initiatives, which makes for a very well-rounded company portfolio.”
• “People generally come from the same schools, which leads to little diversity of thought and tends to bring in people of the same economic background.”
• “The firm makes a strong effort on DEI, with a Chief Inclusion Officer and a push to incorporate DEI into daily activity.”

Business Outlook

• “Antitrust is CRA’s bread and butter, and it has been rapidly expanding over the last couple of years without any signs of slowing down. CRA’s stock price reflects that.”
• “We’ve had a strong flow of cases big and small this year after a slow 2023. The firm has new growth initiatives underway.”
• “Some practice areas are cyclical, but the diversity of CRA’s practices smooths out overall firm earnings. The firm has been on a steady growth trajectory for many years.”
• “We have high-profile cases that bring in recurring income and a good reputation in the industry, but we are not adapting fast enough to keep up with the most recent technologies.”

Hiring Process

• “The process consists of two to three … virtual interviews, followed by … a multi-hour process with case and behavioral interviews.”
• “Our firm’s interview process is neat and efficient. We communicate expectations before the interview, and we do not do pressure testing. The process is very collegial and fact driven.”
• “We seek individuals who are diligent and efficient in managing large, complex data, but we also want you to be curious and take the initiative to find out what the data mean.”
• “The firm is seeking energetic candidates who are passionate about economic issues and like working with data. Being genuinely interested in the work is an extremely important trait.”

Interview Questions

• "Tell me about an economic concept you enjoyed learning about in class, and explain it to me as if I’m a nontechnical audience who is smart but has no domain knowledge.”
• “You discover that two data sources that you've been relying on are inconsistent or misaligned. What do you do? What steps would you take to determine which is correct?”
• “If you had unlimited time and resources, how would you move your research forward?”
• “Company X and Y want to merge, and they approach us for a risk assessment. Walk me through some concerns and thoughts about the process.”