Booz Allen Hamilton: An insider guide - Gymkhana

everything remotely, which has created opportunitiesfor people,” says an insider. “Now we havepeople who live in Rhode Island and Pennsylvaniawho are able to network their way into our NewYork, Boston, or McLean offices—the Northeasternhub. So there is a bit more flexibility inlocation.”Travel Requirements“ ”Hotshots burn outquickly here. Youmay be successfulin the short term,but people won’twant to work withyou again.On the commercial side, the firm’s travel policies include attempting to bringeverybody back to the home office on Fridays and not scheduling client presentationson Mondays. The 5-4-3-2-1 program recommends that consultants andassociates be limited to 5 days of work per week, 4 days and 3 nights at theclient site, two projects per year, and one project at a time. The firm tries to hitthese goals 80 percent of the time, recognizing that they’re not always attainableon teams assigned to projects with short time frames. According to an insider,“If you need to limit travel, the firm will try to balance the business’s needs withyour development needs to accommodate that.”“We’re trying to put people within a 3-hour drive of their home office,” aninsider tells us. “We’re still trying to embrace the 5-4-3-2-1. We also have a new[experimental] role in the New York office, an ombudsman who is responsible ina nonthreatening way for monitoring the work/life balance in different jobs. Weembrace a generic social contract which is committed to certain workload levels;preservation of agreed-upon things that are important to the team: certain nightsoff, respect for appointments that are outside of the office, preservation offamily events, etc.”The Workplace“There’s no getting away from the fact that you’re out of town most of theweek,” adds one insider. I’ve lived in Dallas for 3 years and don’t have a great37