Fantastic Consulting Experience - Associate The Keystone Group Employee Review

Working at The Keystone Group has been an amazing experience primarily due to its unique culture. In an industry known for being hyper-competitive, The Keystone Group sets itself apart with a familial and supportive atmosphere. Within my first year, I developed personal relationships with all ~40 people at the firm and felt comfortable reaching out to all for advice, feedback, or anything else. The firm also regularly sponsors events (golf tournament), happy hours (recent arcade HH), and goes on a biannual service trip to deepen connections and ensure consultants have a positive work/life balance. The firm also provides analysts with meaningful work and significant exposure to top level client leadership early in their career. Within my first year, I lead multiple workstreams and frequently presented to the President of a multi-billion dollar business (all with excellent support from my project team). This level of exposure is unique at Keystone and helps analysts grow extremely quickly. Lastly, it is an exciting time to be at Keystone based on its recent growth and success – the firm has had a few record breaking years in a row and figures to grow even further in the coming years, giving it an entrepreneurial feel. Couldn’t speak more highly of my experience so far.

Keystone's boutique nature requires all participants to wear many hats at the firm (such as recruiting). While this can add time intensive responsibilities on top of client work, these internal roles are typically fulfilling. There are opportunities for Keystone to be more aggressive with its DE&I efforts and compensation plans, but the firm has clearly prioritized these areas in recent years (shown through clear progress) and figures to improve going forward.

- I've learned more here in four years than I have relative to any other portion of my career - The experience relative to age is unmatched - You become a part of the management team at clients as a result of the impactful projects and the importance relative to the company's future - The Directors (Partners) of the firm are smart, experienced, and willing to get in to the details to improve the bottom-line of clients. They are also people you can relate with over dinner or a drink, and who care about your personal development and happiness.

- Travel can be monotonous, but definitely more flexible than other consulting firms - Projects tend to be in "industrial" areas that don't always offer the most diverse food and hotel options - The hours on some projects can be hard, but this tends to ebb and flow throughout the year due to the diversity of project work