Vault’s Verdict

With a flat hierarchy, open culture, and strong sense of cooperation among staff, the culture at Oliver Wyman’s APAC offices mirrors its other locations around the world. The firm’s overall interconnectedness supports this; employees attend international trainings with colleagues from other offices upon promotion, and the firm invests in teambuilding activities and offsites that promote personal connection among staff. Many projects involve cross-border teams within the firm, and insiders say that global transfers are available. 

When it comes to career development, the firm leans heavily on its apprenticeship model, which emphasizes learning on the job from more senior team members, including partners. The firm’s promotion process has undergone recent changes, but fast-track promotions remain available for high performers. The firm also offers a solid quality of life for its consultants. Hours vary from project to project, but leaders respect weekends and value work-life balance. Many staff work remotely at least some of the time and consultants enjoy autonomy over their individual schedules. 

Compensation at OW competes with the top consulting firms, matching or beating MBB packages, according to insiders. The bonus program is a positive, and consultants have the chance to purchase employee stock options. Insiders suggest the firm will negotiate compensation, and it also provides non-monetary benefits such as a counselling hotline, premium insurance, and reimbursement for gym or yoga memberships.

Employee Reviews

Firm Culture

• “Oliver Wyman provides a world of opportunities for those willing and able to commit to the firm to do what it takes.”
• “People are supportive, strong mentoring culture.”
• “The firm invests in team building and offsites that results in a great feeling of camaraderie. The number of days off is the best in the industry, and members are actively encouraged to take time off. On the negative side, the office is integrated with the other March McLennan firms and frankly doesn't meet the standard of the other strategy consulting firms, so some investment into facilities is needed.”
• “Amazing colleagues and many opportunities to learn and be challenged.”

Quality of Life

• “Oliver Wyman offers quite a bunch of travel opportunities, which is great. Hours are very dependent on the nature of the project, but so far I have been content with it and don’t have that much issue. Taking time off is naturally quite easy, and everyone is supportive.”
• “Our firm pays strong attention to our people’s work-life balance, which creates a very positive culture.”
• “The hours can be rough. Most of the time you are the only person who can bring the hours down or improve your overall balance, and that’s by taking more risks with quality of work (difficult) or working smarter.”
• “Weekends are respected. Leadership also values your WLB.”

Career Development

• “Career development is largely developed through an apprenticeship model of learning on the job from more senior people in the team, including partners who are engaged in content. The model works well, though is somewhat strained today versus in pre-Covid times due to increase in people working from home.”
• “Overall, Oliver Wyman has impressed me. This is my third firm, and by far it is the fastest promoting and most international of the Japanese top consulting firms. Promotions do not have a specific timeline, and you can be accelerated according to your capability. Global transfers are also very flexible. Cross-border staffing is also very easy, with no structural obstacles such as in Big 4. On the negative side, the firm is revamping its career progression system so there is some uncertainty about how progression is managed.”
• “Several changes to the promotion processes recently, and most people were affected and ended up not getting promoted. There is quite an extensive list of formal training, but sometimes I find it inconsistent (i.e., some of us may get more training than the others due to different batches). But regardless, informal training is pretty good and everyone looks out for everyone else, providing necessary guidance and setting aside time to share knowledge during busy times.”
• “Very strong advocacy and career development support. It’s the best I have experienced in my career.”

Compensation

• “The base salary is higher or equal to the MBB pay packages for the equivalent level. Also, the speed of promotion is very fast for Japan, so that is an excellent point. OW also was flexibly willing to cover my parking cost. They are flexible and open to negotiation.”
• “Salaries progress quickly and the bonus component is good. Increasing transparency on the bonus calculation would help. It would be good to raise the cap on company stock that can be purchased annually through the ESOP.”
• “Salary progression is generally quite big, and compensation is relatively large especially in Indonesia.”
• “Oliver Wyman provides fund benefits for health and wellness that increases along with the job position/title. It allows us to use it for gym/yoga memberships. The firm also provides a hotline for counseling in case employees ever need it. And they enroll employees in a premium insurance policy, which is very beneficial considering the nature of the work.”

Inclusion

• “The Jakarta office already has more women than men employees, which is a good thing. They also have social events catering for Women at Oliver Wyman and LGBTQ as well. Generally, OW already has good inclusion effort.”
• “The firm puts in a lot of effort to ensure that hiring decisions are unbiased and that we bring in mixed cohorts each year. While there are no hard-and-fast quotas, the recruiting team is empowered to challenge discussions during interview wash-out sessions to ensure that interviewees are treated fairly. During the annual performance appraisal sessions, specific partners as well as the regional human capital team are appointed to monitor for bias in the discussions to ensure that no discriminatory bias creeps into decision making.”
• “Low representation of women in consulting at OW Australia and only one female partner (out of 20+ partners).”
• “Oliver Wyman is very supportive of inclusion. But I am glad that this is not receiving too much focus and is balanced against business realities and needs.”

Business Outlook

• “Good uptake on AI, feels like we are ahead of the curve.”
• “Leader in banking.”
• “OW is currently excelling in the digital and implementation area. However, the economy is not at its best at the moment, so OW must try to branch out to other areas.”
• “We are lacking some investment into offshore support capabilities.”

Hiring Process

• “Interview process is quite efficient and fast. The entire process only takes less than two weeks, which is very good practice. However, Jakarta office does not have a dedicated HR division, therefore most of the time the recruitment process will require the users (i.e., actual consultants with ongoing projects) to dedicate their time to do the screening, interviews, callbacks, decision-making, discussion, etc.”
• “Our process is a bit young and disorganized in some of our smaller markets. We are very firm on demanding international flexibility and mindset. We also seek highly dedicated and smart individuals. We are also quantitative and demand a good intuition on numbers. We don’t mind turning down most or all candidates if they do not meet our standard.”
• “Highly numerate and analytically minded and able to translate the outcomes of their analyses into compelling, easy-to-communicate stories. Ideally a STEM candidate with interest in solving real-world business problems.”
• “Got the call back after a week!”

Interview Questions

• “What is the revenue for five years if someone decides to open a coffee shop in Jakarta? How does AI play a role in consulting line of work and how should we leverage it so it doesn’t negatively impact our role?”
• “Financial services case studies are very common, but M&A is becoming more important: Our client is searching for an M&A target. Given context of the client and their desired type of company, how would you go about conducting such a search?”
• “Market sizing questions.”