Starting Salary For Consultants. Consulting has evolved from a mere way of paying the bills or to make one’s way through graduate school, to a career in its own right. There are many benefits to working as a management consultant, which include sensible hours, long-term projects and high salaries for those who are successful.
Careerkeg.com is a consulting job site that offers some of the best resources for finding your first consulting job. The starting salary for consultants varies depending on your area of expertise, but you can expect to make between $60 and $100 thousand per year if you are experienced enough to start working at a leading firm.
Starting Salary For Consultants Overview
What is the entry-level management consultant salary?
According to Glassdoor’s latest report, the average salary for management consultants ranges from $81,845 to $122,000. The median salary is $107,500.
In terms of compensation, the most lucrative companies for management consultants are Deloitte and PwC (Price Waterhouse Coopers), whose employees earn an average of $117,000 per year.
What about consulting firms in general? Consulting firms typically pay their employees more than other industries do—a lot more. That’s because they have to compete with each other for top talent and offer high salaries in order to get it. While this doesn’t mean they will necessarily offer you a higher salary than your friends who work at other companies or even other consulting firms, it does mean that if you do choose to go into consulting after graduation or between jobs, you could potentially make more money than they do!
What salary can a graduate consultant expect?
According to the latest survey by Cibyl (a research organisation owned by targetjobs’ parent company), the average graduate salary expected by students interested in consulting employers was £29,373. You’ll be happy to hear, however, that most of the employers on targetjobs.co.uk offer considerably more than this. Alfa, for example, offers its graduates a salary of £40,000. Newton Europe‘s graduate starting salaries start at £45,000.
You’ll find that most consulting employers are tight-lipped when it comes to talking about money before they offer you a job, preferring instead to leave it to your imagination with descriptions such as ‘competitive’ or ‘highly competitive’. It’s safe to assume their offers will be similar to the above, however.
Benefits
Base salary is not everything, of course. Here’s an idea of some of the typical benefits you could be offered in your first year (some of them will be optional, which employees can choose to suit them personally):
- private health cover and dental insurance
- subsidised gym membership
- pension scheme
- performance bonuses
- a signing bonus (a ‘golden hello’) and relocation expense reimbursement for new starters
- life assurance
- season ticket loan
- opportunity to buy extra holiday
- free staff restaurants for breakfast and lunch
- retail vouchers
- childcare vouchers
- health screening
- cycle lease scheme
- laptop and smartphone on joining
- sponsorship for an MBA programme.
Graduate consultants have previously told targetjobs that their benefits have included free breakfasts (and dinners if working late), private healthcare, subsidised exercise classes (such as yoga sessions), free drinks on Fridays and access to company trips (such as skiing trips).
Work/life balance benefits
Consulting is famous (or infamous) for its long hours (but, refreshingly, its lack of ‘face-time’ culture). So, it’s not surprising to see that many firms are keen to offer ‘time off’ or ‘work/life balance’ benefits to their employees. Remote working has also become significantly more common as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Here is a sample of what you could expect:
- Roland Berger promotes its flexible working models and sabbatical opportunities.
- BCG runs a scheme called ‘Flex@BCG’, which allows its employees to arrange to work part time during the week (known as ‘FlexTime’), the ability to take an additional block of time off during the year (‘FlexLeave’) and the opportunity to access training and working abroad (‘FlexPaths’).
- Oliver Wyman runs a non-profit fellowship scheme, allowing consultants to take leave to work for non-profit organisations.
- L.E.K. Consulting allows staff to take a break from case work and go on secondments, temporarily working within a client’s organisation.
Money, benefits and perks should not, of course, be the reasons you enter the profession – but if you do decide that consulting is the career for you, the salary and benefits are certainly attractive.
Salary of consultants
The management consulting industry overall tends to have a relatively low transparency in the area of remuneration policy. Basic salaries are hardly communicated in job ads, and in addition consulting firms tend to tightly hold back details over their benefits & rewards packages during recruitment events and job application procedures (until the last round).
In addition, there is a large variety in remuneration across the advisory industry, depending on a range of factors such as the type of firm (business model, performance management system), the type of industry/service area a consultant is working in and individual performance.
Although remuneration data such as salary, benefits and bonus does not lie out in the open, there are a number of sources that regularly conduct research in the field (typically recruitment firms specialised in the industry and/or analyst research firms). An overview of estimates on salaries and benefits*:
Highest paying cities for Consultants in United States
- New York, NY$34.40 per hour412 salaries reported
- Atlanta, GA$33.26 per hour379 salaries reported
- Washington, DC$32.57 per hour261 salaries reported
