Pros
1. Lots of opportunities to interact with client at different level. 2. Very deeply established trainings to get you up and running. Sense of collaboration between organizations to provide client driven solutions. More of an institution where people share findings and business insights for ongoing projects 3. Sound Work life balance, flexibility in work schedule. Get half days off on long weekend fridays in summer.
Cons
1. Clients treat team members like dogs. Lot of services provided to client are not paid (especially follow-ups at the end of the project) they demand a lot of work without giving much time and without showing proper respect...this has a ripple effect into employee salary. 2. Yes, employee salaries are very low....if you compare salaries of client and Nielsen Counterparts, Nielsen employees on an average get almost the same as that of two level below his/her client counterparts. 3. Impossible to gain overall breadth of business experience as people here are more focussed on only one aspect of the business. Not possible to gain insights on how different pieces of puzzle fit with each other in a business. Not a good place for MBAs. 4. There is a good portion of quantitative work involved. Those who excel in quantitative portion and gain better understanding of the models are promoted to managers pretty fast, say within 1-2 years. However, these new young, fledgeling managers, who are good with numbers may not necessarily be good managers. Several inexperienced managers are not capable of handling projects and sometimes rude and immature.