Vault’s Verdict
Insiders at Sia’s offices in the Asia-Pacific region love the firm’s French roots. They say the firm prioritizes work-life balance, offering reasonable hours for consulting, flexible hours, and generous time off. They also applaud the firm’s caring, personal culture, which balances challenge and reward with a humanistic approach to management.
The firm also offers strong career advancement opportunities, driven by its fair and transparent promotion processes and strong growth in the Asia-Pacific region. As the firm expands, there’s lots of room for early career consultants to take on broader opportunities and even transfer to offices in different countries.
The drawbacks of Sia mostly have to do with the firm’s growing pains. Insiders say that some of its internal processes have room to mature, and others say that the firm’s brand is still nascent in the Asia Pacific region. However, if you’re looking to participate in building something from the ground up while taking ownership over your career, this firm might be for you.
Employee Reviews
Firm Culture
“Sia offers a highly challenging but highly rewarding environment for proactive consultants to grow, professionally and personally, alongside the firm.”
“Sia offers a caring environment, emphasizing work-life balance and supporting consultants as valuable individuals.”
“We have an extremely human-centered culture and enjoy complete support for our personal needs as well as our work location choices.”
“The firm promotes a culture of care, and leadership truly takes care of individual staff and their aspirations.”
Quality of Life
“A new flexible working policy outlines the opportunities to work from home and determine your hours. It also lets you purchase additional weeks of leave. Booking and taking leave is super flexible. Clients drive travel requirements, but most clients allow work from home or full remote, depending on their needs.”
“The firm promotes a work-life balance and doesn’t require much overtime. We’re mostly supporting clients in the same region, and little travel is required except for in-person meetings, trainings, and workshops.”
“It’s easy to take time off and managers are understanding. The hours can be hectic during the busy parts of a project, but it’s usually well balanced.”
“Work-life balance and travel depend on each project, but overall, the company tries to accommodate each consultant to support both our professional and personal goals.”
Career Development
“The promotion process is primarily based on performance metrics, minimizing the impact of politics, which is a major advantage. There are opportunities for international collaboration, allowing employees to work with teams from different regions. Staff also frequently use the internal mobility program to transition to new roles within the firm.”
“The firm’s size and highly connected nature make it possible to develop broad and deep internal networks, as well as identify career opportunities.”
“The firm offers very personalized career development. As the company keeps growing and opens new business units and locations, it creates new opportunities for all employees.”
“The promotion cycle is flexible and based on your performance rather than your tenure.”
Compensation
“The salary is generally quite a bit higher than at the big four. The bonus components are growing, which is not ideal because everyone would prefer higher base salary growth.”
“The pay is fairly competitive to big consulting firms. However, the salary banding means employees who stay in their roles or get promoted aren’t compensated as well as external hires that join.”
“I am pleased to see the firm maintaining its long-term vision by keeping people on board and paying bonuses despite a difficult market. While salaries are competitive below the director level, the firm could increase its salaries for the most senior people. However, these people usually own shares of the company, which keep going up at a fast pace.”
“We have free counselling sessions through the employee assistance program. There are free fruits, snacks, and drinks in the office. The firm also has exercise classes in the building that you can attend during lunch.”
Community Engagement/DEI
“Sia applies equal and fair recruitment, promotion, and retention policies. We’re making great efforts to promote more diversity in the firm’s top management, which we’ll continue.”
“We need to improve our diversity regarding women, especially on the leadership team. It would also be nice to see more ethnic diversity.”
“The firm puts in a lot of effort on DEI policies and practices. While we don’t have massive diversity, the culture is very accepting and welcoming of all individuals.”
“The firm is making strong efforts on DEI, with a committee and a reconciliation working group. However, we still have more work to achieve stronger hiring and retention of diverse talents.”
Business Outlook
“We have interesting work in the pipeline and good people to deliver it. We’ve had a lot of turnover in recent months, though, which can’t continue to be a trend.”
“We have very solid performance and a platform to grow, despite a slower year amidst very challenging market conditions. We’re performing above average in the market and are well-positioned to grow when the business cycle shifts.”
“Through our M&A work, Sia can extend our expertise to different areas. Also, by adopting a diamond approach to team structures, rather than a traditional consultancy’s pyramid team structure, Sia can provide true experts to help clients solve critical business issues.”
“We have a strong business outlook because we’ve diversified our portfolio to not focus too much on a specific industry or region. We have high employee morale, as the CEO is against the idea of cutting the workforce or slowing the promotion cycle.”
Hiring Process
“There are five to six interview steps and each of them is with different people. There is a case study that involves customer segmentation for e-commerce platforms, plus a technical round with a data scientist that focuses on theoretical aspects of the job.”
“The interview and callback process typically involves several stages aimed at assessing both your technical skills and cultural fit. The perfect candidate should be adaptable, with a client-focused mindset and a strong cultural fit.”
“The firm is extremely quick to call back and communicative throughout the hiring process. The ideal candidate is an ambitious, intelligent, and innovative consultant.”
“Our local talent manager coordinates all interviews and replies to all applicants. The ideal candidate has strong hard skills, such as industry or functional knowledge; soft skills, such as engaging communication and the ability to build trust; and a strong entrepreneurial spirit.”
Interview Questions
“We use business cases to test the consultant’s ability to raise the right questions and process information quickly in a constrained environment. You usually have 20 minutes to prepare for each case.”
“A client wants to enter the Hong Kong market with a new product. What factors should they consider, and how would you approach the market analysis. A manufacturing company is facing declining profits. What steps would you take to identify areas for cost reduction. A retail client is looking to expand its online presence. What strategies would you recommend and how would you measure success?”
“What trends are you aware of around Gen Z’s consumption of luxury goods. How would you define a mobile bank’s roadmap to increase its average satisfaction score ratings from 3.0 to 4.5?”
“For specific case studies, we’ll ask what specific metrics you’d use to monitor the project and what plan you’d propose to implement the project?”
208 Johnston Building 11/F
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Wanchai
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Founder & CEO: Matthieu Courtecuisse
Managing Partner, Asia: Vincent Kasbi
Managing Partner, Australia: David Prendiville
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