Inizio Ignite, Putnam Europe

Vault’s Verdict

At Putnam’s offices in the UK, continental Europe, and North Africa, insiders depict a firm that offers a lot of autonomy with interesting colleagues and rewarding work. Most staff work hybrid, splitting their days between the office and working at home, and find it easy to take time off. They also appreciate the firm’s onboarding program and mentorship programs.

However, many insiders feel the firm asks them to work quite long hours, even for consulting, which can eat into work-life balance and senior staff’s time for informal training. Others find the firm’s environment a bit more competitive than collaborative. 

Promotions at Putnam can occur every six months, and it’s easy to move across teams and markets to create new opportunities for your career. Putnam benchmarks base salaries against other firms and determines each consultant’s pay using a salary band based on their level within the firm. Insiders highlight that these bands drive pay equality, but some suggest that certain bands offer very competitive pay while others fall below market.

Employee Reviews

Firm Culture

• “Loads of opportunities, but very competitive.”
• “Great culture, leadership and work-life balance. When it gets busy, need to do long hours, but that’s rare.”
• “The people amazing, lots of autonomy, and work can be super interesting and rewarding.”
• “Most people I work with are very lovely and smart.”

Quality of Life

• “Hybrid format is good, having the option to work from home. It is easy to take time off but should be scheduled way in advance.”
• “Expectation to work late and long hours with little consideration for work-life balance, otherwise your promotion/performance review will be jeopardized.”
• “Hybrid format is positive; hours stay long.”
• “PTO.”

Career Development

• “A lot of online trainings and trainings when you join. Some mentorship opportunities through the CDC process, but as people get busy, they spend less time training others.”
• “Can work easily across teams and markets.”
• “There are online resources for training and many trainings organized depending on the level. In terms of mentorship, mostly at the latitude of people, but when busy, a lot of them don’t provide it to the same extent as before.”
• “Promotion cycles are every six months and discussion process/rationale is not transparent.”

Compensation

• “Pay equality for people on the same role is good. Some salary bands are all right, others not. For this level, the pay is in line with others.”
• “Quite high, but not a lot of transparency unless you ask about it.”
• “It can be better, although they had initiatives to benchmark salaries to other firms. Some salary bands are not that fair.”
• “We have a monthly health and wellness reimbursement and a team member organizing regular health and wellness activities like Pilates.”

Inclusion

• “Think the gender ratio is balanced; there are some people of multiple ethnicities, some LGBT+ people as well. There are events organized for these categories and promotion of DEI values.”
• “Gender split balanced, people of multiple ethnicities (primarily white, though), some LGBT people. There are events to celebrate all these categories.”
• “Very inclusive.”

Business Outlook

• “AI use for work has improved and streamlined multiple workstreams. Employee morale not the greatest; attrition hasn’t been great recently.”
• “Things are going strong. The efforts to push for innovation, especially with AI, seem to be accelerating, but not necessarily in the right direction.”

Hiring Process

• “Typical consulting case studies.”
• “They put a lot of effort into recruiting the best people.”
• “Very quick and efficient.”
• “Driven.”

Interview Questions

• “Questions are role-specific. We use Salesforce a lot, so one question is about experience with Salesforce.”
• “Adult AND children vaccine case that assesses qual and quant capabilities.”
• “Life sciences-based interview questions.”
• “Market sizing, demand.”