Type of work: ZS Associates sells itself to potential recruits as a consulting firm, but it is nothing of the sort, and probably never has been. ZS does outsourcing, staff augmentation, and software as a service. If you join ZS, you will do almost no consulting or advisory work. US employees mainly facilitate the transfer of the client’s business processes to India or join client teams as a temporary “extra pair of hands."
Very little mentorship: Given that the main business model is to rent employees to clients as temporary labor, junior employees will often act as order takers from clients, without learning and interacting with more senior ZS employees.
Uneven talent across firm: ZS has limited success hiring from top schools in the US. Most of the firm’s employees are in India and US employees mainly act as "middle men" between India and the US clients. As a result of the inability to attract top talent (and the deliberate strategy to hire mostly in India, where salaries are low), there is noticeably worse talent than at (traditional) consulting firms.
Lack of exit opportunities outside pharma: ZS Associates works almost exclusively in pharma, so there will definitely be exit options to low-level jobs in the back-offices of pharma companies. Beyond the pharma industry, you are tainted by working for an outsourcing firm. Rightly or wrongly, ZS employees are perceived as being narrow order takers who do not think outside of the box.
Slow career progression: because your value to ZS clients is mainly as an extra pair of hands, there is no incentive to encourage people to stretch themselves and grow their roles and responsibilities quickly.
Low quality work and low standards for performance management: the kind of low-quality work that employees at ZS produce would have them fired quickly from a more well-known firm. Yet because ZS needs bodies in the office to rent to clients, and clients don’t expect much from ZS talent, there is little incentive to address the perfunctory output.
