Here are the companies which we have 2011 management consulting compensation data:
-A.T. Kearney
-Bain (post-MBA)
-BCG (undergraduate and post-MBA)
-Booz & Co (U.S. and Dubai)
-L.E.K. (post-MBA)
-McKinsey (undergraduate and post-MBA)
-Mercer (undergraduate and post-MBA; includes all areas – human capital, actuary)
-Oliver Wyman (Financial consulting)

This is for fulltime jobs that start in the Fall of 2011.

For A.T. Kearney…

Signing Bonus: $5,000
Base: $65,000
Performance Bonus: up to $13,000 (20% of base salary)
Profit Sharing: up to $6,500 (up to 10% of base depending on firm performance)
- – - – -
Total compensation: up to $89,500

Retirement & relocation: Firm matches 25% of your 401(k) contributions up to 6% of your pay. Relocation assistance depends on the distance between your office and your school residence. 0-50 miles = $3,000, 51-800 miles = $5,000, and 801+ miles = $10,000.

*Our source also noted that in their contract, A.T. Kearney explicitly states that the base salary will not be increased until January 2013, which is approximately 1.5 years after starting fulltime. Interesting!

Retirement Contribution: 10% of base + 5.7% of bonus

For Booz & Co in New York… (Dubai numbers in parenthesis; key difference is Dubai has no income taxes and a wonky housing market)

Signing Bonus: $10,000 (Dubai: $5,000)
Base: $60,000 (Dubai: $62,000)
Performance Bonus: up to $12,000/20% of base (Dubai: up to $9,300/15% of base)
Relocation/Housing Allowance: $5-15,000 (Dubai: $20,500 for housing + $5,000 for relocation)
- – - – -
Total compensation: up to $96,800

Retirement: $6,000/10% of base + up to $684/5.7% of bonus

For Boston Consulting Group…

Signing Bonus: $5,000
Base: $72,000
Performance Bonus: up to $16,200 (22.5% of base salary)
Profit Sharing Retirement Fund: up to $4,400 (expected to be 5% of sum of base salary and performance bonus)
- – - – -
Total compensation: up to $97,600

Retirement: BCG also contributes 15% of your base + bonus into your 401(k) retirement account, with $0 required contribution.

For Mercer…

Signing Bonus: DNK
Base: $60,000 based on 40 hour work week
Performance Bonus: no bonus, instead paid time and a half for all hours over $40 = approximately $45/hour
- – - – -
Total compensation: Variable

Retirement & relocation: DNK

For McKinsey…

Signing Bonus: $5,000
Base: $75,000
Housing: $5,000
Performance Bonus: none for BAs
- – - – -
Total compensation: $85,000

Retirement & relocation: 12% of total annual compensation

For Oliver Wyman (Financial Consulting)…

Signing Bonus: $10,000
Base: $75,000
Performance Bonus: up to $15,000 (20% of base salary) for your first year, and 40% of base salary for your second year (guaranteed)
- – - – -
Total compensation: $100,000

Retirement: Do not know about 401(k) contributions or retirement funds.

*Our source also shared that Bain’s numbers are very similar, a total of approximately $97K take-home in your first year, including the signing bonus

Some more niche roles…

• Accenture Systems Integration: $66,500 base + $1,500 relocation expenses
• Deloitte Consulting Human Capital: $70,000 base + $10,000 signing bonus
• Deloitte Consulting BTA (IT Consulting): $70,000 base + $10,000 signing bonus
• Milliman Actuarial Consulting: $60,000 + bonus of up to 25% of base

For Bain…

Signing Bonus: $20,000
Base: $125,000
Performance Bonus: up to $39,000 for your first year
- – - – -
Total compensation: $184,000

Retirement: 401(k) contribution up to $7,400

According to my Bain post-MBA source:

Deloitte’s offers were very similar, except they had MUCH higher signing bonuses ($40k + $10k for signing early + pay for 2nd year of b-school). This was for folks who interned there, so the latter two parts of the bonus might not apply otherwise.

That means Deloitte covered your second year of bschool tuition for signing – wow!

For BCG…

Signing Bonus: $20,000
Base: $135,000
Performance Bonus: up to $40,000 for your first year
Relocation: $2-5,000 depending on distance
- – - – -
Total compensation: at least $197,000

Retirement: up to $9,000/5% of bonus+salary is put into retirement fund, no contributions required

Our source also noted that project leaders at BCG (approximately 2-3 years out of bschool) were paid $185,000 base.

For L.E.K….

Signing Bonus: $25,000
Base: $135,000
Performance Bonus: up to $25,000 for your first year
Relocation: $5,000
- – - – -
Total compensation: at least $190,000

Retirement and profit sharing: up to $30,000 (not sure of split between 2)

For McKinsey…

Signing Bonus: $20,000
Base: $125,000
Performance Bonus: up to $40,000 for your first year
Relocation: $2-5,000 depending on distance
- – - – -
Total compensation: at least $187,000

Retirement: up to $19,000/12% of bonus+salary is put into retirement fund, no contributions required

Please note that BCG and McKinsey post-grad/MBA salaries are almost identical, despite McKinsey having a $10K lower base due to a $10K higher retirement contribution.

For Mercer…

Signing Bonus: DNK
Base: $85,000
Performance Bonus: up to $17,000/20% of base
- – - – -
Total compensation: at least $102,000 (does not include signing bonus)

Retirement & relocation: DNK

Some perspective

Compared to 2008 consulting salary levels, it’s about a 25-30% increase over 3 years…which is actually somewhat muted given the poor economy over the past few years.

I would love to share compensation data if you have it for other firms/seniority levels. I will directly update this post as they come in. Thanks in advance!

What do you guys think – is this fair compared to other careers and industries? It still lags banking pretty significantly…

I’ll admit, Management Consulted has been somewhat stale over the past year – very little new content, no new products, no improvements to the site’s look/feel. Quite a few of you guys shared your disappointment, and it was completely deserved.

One of my favorite comments:

“Have you dropped off the face of the earth?? I sincerely hope that for the last 6 months, you haven’t been just relaxing in Bali or some other obscenely nice Pacific Island sipping coconut juice and mai thais on the beach…although that would be great marketing material for why to get a job at McKinsey!”

That’s all about to change. I mean it.

Mea culpa and an introduction

The reason why this site sort of froze over the past year was because I completely invested in a new project – creating iPhone applications! Along the way, we launched one app (CauseWorld) which has now donated more than $1M to 30+ charities. We recently launched another app (shopkick) which will revolutionize the shopping world and works with Best Buy, Macy’s, American Eagle, among others.

If you have an iPhone, download both and tell me what you think!

About a week ago, I left that team, so I could go back to building my own websites once again. And the one which I’ve neglected the most has been this one.

Along the way, I also added a few members to our team. Some of you have been fortunate enough to work directly with them already through resume editing and interview prep. They are:

Jenny Rae – Jenny joined our team this year. She graduated from the University of Virginia and then joined Bain Consulting after traveling around the world, writing a book, working on financial public policy in South Africa and sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. In short, she’s done everything we all wish we could do, but never get around to :) At Bain, Jenny Rae worked primarily in the U.S. for companies covering health care to entertainment to financial services to death care, and since leaving to co-found a company she has pursued global entrepreneurship and advised over 45 different early- and mid-phase companies around the world.

Jerry Chi – I’ve known Jerry since our Stanford undergraduate days, where he majored in Management Science & Engineering. He joined Management Consulted in 2009. Jerry worked at two bulge-bracket investment banks, as well as consulting, and also started his own firm in Beijing focused on investing in global capital markets.

Our team will be working closely to make this site the best it can be, and most importantly, help you land management consulting jobs!!

Hint of things to come

Given my newfound time, and an awesome new team, here’s a taste of what’s coming:

-New articles! From using LinkedIn to find jobs, to more interviews with consultants from leading firms around the world, to titles like “Why management consulting is the worst career move after college”. I’m excited to get back into writing mode

-Do-It-Yourself (DIY) guide to the perfect, consulting-ready resume and cover letter! For those who can’t afford our personalized services, or simply want expert guidance in dramatically improving your key docs for the recruiting process (resume and cover letter) – it’ll include checklists of do’s and don’ts, easy-to-use templates (just copy and paste away :), examples of the best resumes we’ve ever seen, and even videos showing exactly how we do the editing ourselves. Stay tuned.

-Job board + job postings! We’re constantly contacted by recruiters looking to hire, and we know the ultimate goal for every reader is to land a consulting job. The job board will collect all the opportunities we hear about, and best of all its free!

-Management Consulted e-newsletter – over the next 2-3 weeks, you’ll be able to signup for a free e-newsletter written personally by our team. It’ll cover topics presented here on the site in more depth, as well as offer exclusive articles, tips, and insights that you won’t find anywhere else. We know people like to get their info in many ways, and this is just another avenue for us to provide you compelling education on how to land, and then kick ass, at your consulting job

So here’s my ask of you

Thanks for reading through this. I’m excited for what’s coming, and I hope you are too! I need your help on a few things:

1. What do you guys want to see the most over the next year? Let me know, and we’ll make it happen. It can be anything from a feature to an article topic…whatever you feel you need the most help with

2. What burning questions do you have right now about consulting, the lifestyle, the firms, etc? I plan to do a MASSIVE FAQ post in the next few days.

3. If you’re on Facebook, please like my site and posts!! This is huge for helping me grow the site, which has been driven so much by your word of mouth

Comment away, and thanks again to all of you – none of this would be possible without your readership.

-Kevin

The thought has crossed the minds of almost anyone breaking into consulting:  Should I get an MBA first? Or should I do 2~3 years in consulting and then get an MBA? Is an MBA degree even necessary? If I already have an MBA, how can I leverage that? Is consulting a stepping stone to business school, or is business school a stepping stone to consulting?  We’ll cover these questions, and more, in this and upcoming articles.  (Disclaimer:this article is not meant to criticize the value of  MBA programs; rather, the focus is on evaluating fit for MBA programs given one’s goals)

Breaking into consulting with vs. without an MBA

You’re at a crossroads in your life, and you know you want to take the next step. You know that you’re interested in consulting, but you’re not sure if you can break in with your current credentials, and you think an MBA might help.  What do you do?

For 80% of job-seekers, I would offer the following advice: apply to consulting firms right now. Just as some people mistakenly think consulting/finance is usually necessary for an MBA or alternative program like an MBA online, some people mistakenly assume that a top ten MBA is usually necessary for consulting. Most people with a few years of work experience can find some way to explain how their past accomplishments relate in some way to business or consulting.

Get started by doing the following things:

• Update and perfect your resume and cover letter.
• Create a list of 20-25 consultancies that you’d love to work for, with notes on each one. You can start with a ranking such as the Vault Top 50 Consulting Firms and researching each firm; but keep in mind that rankings aren’t everything.
• Create a 3-column table in Word or Excel for brainstorming.  In the left column of the table, create a list of traits that make good consultants (e.g. leadership, teamwork, analytical skill) Then, in the middle column, write out in specific detail 1-3 accomplishments or experiences that demonstrate each trait, including results and what you learned. Finally, in the right column, write down a potential situation you might encounter as a consultant where you could leverage the experiences described in the middle column.  This brainstorming session may help you convince yourself and recruiters that you are already suitable for consulting, even without an MBA.

Moreover, experience in a certain field (e.g. IT or healthcare) means you can try to join the relevant specialized industry practice of a large consulting firm or even a boutique consulting firm specializing in that industry.  If you have a strong academic or analytical background, consider applying for a research analyst position within a consulting firm to get your foot in the door.

Most large consulting firms like McKinsey and Deloitte have dedicated research groups that support client service teams – while this may not be your ideal job, it can be a good transitional role while gaining exposure to how the industry works. Finally, consulting firms hire people mostly for their demonstrated traits and skills, which are more important than past affiliation with any organization. Have you lead teams and demonstrated success in doing so? Have you pursued challenging problems and shown measurable results? You need to be good at telling your story to reflect those traits and skills.

Another key point: many people don’t realize that they can pursue a high-paying and fulfilling job with great training and advancement opportunities outside of McBain Group.  There are great consulting firms out there looking for people with skills and personality traits like yours, especially if you write a great resume and cover letter and ace the interview process.

If you are still obsessed about prestige, consider that 2 years working at a top 50 consulting firm is an excellent springboard for applying to a top 10 consulting firm. This springboard may be even better than an MBA and you will also be over $200,000 richer than if you had gotten an MBA.

Finally, consulting firms often offer MBA-like training.  McKinsey sends many of its non-MBAs to a 3-4 week mini-MBA boot camp to learn the most important tools and concepts. In 1993, 61% of new McKinsey recruits had MBAs, but that number is now down to less than half, which demonstrates that McKinsey believes it quickly train non-MBAs to be consultants. You should research the training opportunities at a firm if that is important for you.

If you are reading this right now, that means you are likely already more motivated and qualified than most to apply to a consulting job.

The conclusion is simple: in most cases, if you are considering a consulting job, it is best to apply now.

The worst thing that could happen is you use up a few dozen hours and end up being much more knowledgeable about consulting firms. The experience can even help you evaluate your true interest in consulting.  Additionally, assuming you didn’t do anything rude or unprofessional, firms will see your commitment if you re-apply later on.

What would be the other 20% of candidates?

In some cases, it actually may be better to get an MBA first if:

1. You have more important long-term goals besides consulting (e.g. starting an international trade company) and your own assessment shows that you need the MBA to serve those long-term goals.  For many people, however, long-term goals are unclear and therefore not factored into consideration much. How to perform such an assessment is outside the scope of this blog.

2. You are extremely passionate about learning the management theory that an MBA has to offer, whether or not you will use it. (i.e. you love learning for learning’s sake even if it’s really expensive) Many MBAs comment that they only apply a portion of what they learned toward their actual consulting jobs.

3. Your previous experience is utterly removed from the corporate world (e.g. you spent 2 years writing a novel about unicorns)

4. You’ve already applied to 15 consulting firms and got rejected from all of them, even after writing a great resume/CL and properly preparing for interviews. (For the vast majority of our readership, I would be surprised if this happened.)

5. You feel that your past experience would qualify you to get into a top 10 business school but not a top 25 consulting firm. (e.g. you spent 2 years successfully fighting AIDS in Africa and you have a 760 GMAT score)

Getting an MBA is really expensive, and real-world experience usually trumps theory, so you should be very sure you need an MBA before you apply.

MBA admissions and consulting

OK, so let’s say you are still set on getting an MBA. Some people think of the relationship between the top business schools and the top consulting firms as a revolving door, i.e. people from McKinsey get into Harvard Business School, and people from HBS get into McKinsey.  Well, that’s true to an extent, but it’s not quite that simple.

Although business schools see consulting as great work experience, schools also try extremely hard to achieve a balanced, diversified student body.  This means that, even if hypothetically a third of a school’s applicants are consultants, there is no way the school is going to let a third of their study body be ex-consultants, which implies a lower acceptance rate than average applicants for consultants in this situation.

INSEAD (which sends roughly one-fifth of its students into McKinsey, BCG, and Bain every year) has once stated “We’re hoping the [number of students from consulting backgrounds] does not increase any further.” That even a consulting talent powerhouse like INSEAD wants to limit their consulting students shows just how much business schools value diversity.  (As a side note, you can see from the placement statistics that INSEAD and other schools may actually be a better choice than Harvard for breaking into consulting.)

This produces the paradoxical situation of consultants wishing they had some “unique work experiences” and non-consultants wishing they had consulting experience when applying to b-school.  What should you do? Easy: stop worrying.  Focus your time on improving your application and telling your life story better instead of spending time worrying about whether or not you have consulting experience.

It is impossible, and also pointless, to estimate just how many consultants are applying to a school on a given year.  If you are a not a consultant, focus on business experiences and explain how an MBA combined with your past experiences can make you a great business leader in the future.   If you are a consultant, focus on why you are more accomplished and more well-rounded than other consultants.

I’m currently a student with little or no work experience, and I’m interested in consulting.  Is it too early to apply to MBA programs?

The short answer is yes.  It will be extremely hard to get into an MBA program with little work experience (except for the unique Harvard 2+2 program) and you may not have the experience necessary to judge if you really need an MBA. In almost all cases it’s better to get some actual work experience first, whether it’s consulting or not.  If your grades, major, or school reputation makes it hard to enter consulting, try to accumulate specialized knowledge in another field while taking on business responsibilities (like team leadership).

How much of what you learn in business school actually helps in consulting?

This depends a lot on the school/curriculum you choose. Each firm will train you anyway with the management frameworks and tools that you will need, and that training will be more directly relevant.  That being said, if you choose your school and curriculum well, you could develop new perspectives to approaching business problems, and you can also improve your general teamwork/leadership skills, which always helps.  More on this in the next post.

I’m already a consultant. Do I still need an MBA?

If you want to return to your current firm, this answer depends on the firm.  For many firms, no.  How can sitting in a classroom and talking about business problems teach you more than working on those problems directly?  For other firms, an MBA is recommended for most consultants aspiring to more senior positions, since they will benefit from an expanded network and enhanced perspectives on business problems. You should observe the system of promotions in your firm and talk to your colleagues who have done an MBA before. As an example, CapGemini and Booz & Co. promote non-MBAs more readily than Bain and BCG. The answer also varies by region; for example, the Japan and Germany offices of global consultancies tend to have less MBAs among the top ranks.

If you want to change to another consulting firm, an MBA may make sense if you are targeting a firm that is much more selective than your current firm or a firm that places heavy emphasis on MBAs.  Given your previous consulting background, an MBA is usually unnecessary unless you are dead-set on a small number of certain firms.

In our next post, we’ll address how to choose the most suitable MBA program for a consulting career, as well as provide advice for current MBAs to maximize their educational experience and chances of landing the ideal management or strategy consulting job.

About the Author:

The author of this article is a long-time team member of Management Consulted and has extensive experience in consulting and at bulge-bracket investment banks, including interviewing MBA applicants. He has requested anonymity to protect his employer.

If your overall GPA is above 3.5, or your major GPA is above 3.6 – you should be fine for most “screening criteria”. If your GPA is under 3.5, you’ll need to have a strong resume and network your way to success.

We’re doing something new and exciting today in the “networking arena” today.

Brian and I have agreed to record a live discussion answering your networking questions.

Here’s how it’ll work:

• Comment below with your most urgent question(s) about networking and the job search process
• Brian and I will choose the top 10-20 questions
• We’ll record a live audio discussion of our answers – tackling both finance and consulting
• We’ll post that mp3 on both sites in about a week (May 11 onwards) along with a text transcript

This means we need your questions! Feel free ask us anything networking and job search-related.

To get you started, here are some hot topics that people have been asking us lately:

• From boutiques to Bain: How to “upgrade your firm” by meeting the right people
• Firm events and mixers: How to stand out and make the right contacts when you only have one shot
• Recruiters and gatekeepers: How to build relationships and make sure your resume gets reviewed
• Backup plans B, C, and D: What to do when recruiting and lateral hiring fails, and how to keep your contacts warm for when the economy improves

Please comment below with your questions. We’d like this session to be a mix of beginner’s and advanced networking topics.

If you have a burning question that is not networking related, go ahead and comment anyway. We’ll probably throw in a few responses to non-networking questions for variety’s sake.

After our recruiting talks from last year, this is our first live discussion.

If all goes well, we’ll expand the format to other topics (eg, conquering interviews, editing resumes, experienced hire recruiting).

Looking forward to it!

*After a recent Q&A answer regarding LinkedIn, many of you emailed to ask for an extended tutorial on how to best use LinkedIn for the job search process. Expect a detailed post (may even publish it as a free ebook!) in the next few weeks and thanks for your continued feedback!

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