With interviews happening and offers soon to come (hopefully for all of us!) thought it’d be useful to have some insight into consulting rankings past MBB.
Three key factors I’m considering:
1) Prestige - perception of the firm within and outside the industry
2) Compensation - perks of working at the firm
3) Lifestyle - work culture, the people etc
Feel free to update thoughts in the comments and I’ll summarise in the main post.
Going to try to tier these firms based on views of the three categories, but these will obviously differ based on your priorities.
Tier 1
McKinsey
BCG
Bain
Tier 2
Also interested
The Pharma Guy can you chime in?
Tier 2s are typically ATK, LEK, OW and RB. In London OC&C is well known too so it may fit in here or in a "Tier 2.5". Let me also clarify that compensation is pretty aligned between all of these with none offering a salary with a delta of more than 5-6K for entry level positions. Let me break down the firms with a couple more insights for each:
ATK: Similar work to MBBs in that you often travel for pure management consulting projects (operations, implementations etc.). Friendly people from what I've heard
LEK: Well paying sweatshop. Heavy focus on healthcare and CDDs but people regularly work 70-80 hours (which for banking may seem like a slow week but not for consulting standards)
OW: Nice people, laid back teams and still quite FS focused
RB: Very European firm with lots of travel. Pretty varied across industries but hours can be long. A friend at a continental European office (think Paris, Madrid or Munich) said hours can be 70+ some weeks depending on projects). I assume London won't be very different
OC&C: Very strong on FMCG and Consumer goods. Don't know much besides that.
After these you start getting to the "firms within a firms" and rankings probably go something like: PEY/Strategy& Marakon/Monitor
Marakon/Monitor have much more pull in the US than PEY or Strategy
What is the average entry salary for this positions, a friend of mine told me that he got an offer for +100k pounds for a 2nd year position in London, is that true?
Sounds like bullshit to me. A friend of mine got an offer from LEK for an analyst and had a base fo £42K + a couple thousand signing bonus (can't remember the exact amount but it was somewhere between £2-3K). Another ended up at PEY with a similar salary. ATK and RB pay on par with those (neither surpassing £45K for analyst base).
If you land a 2nd year position you may get a base of £60K (at most) and a £5K signing bonus. If we assume that you could get a VERY generous bonus of 20%, your year-end compensation would be £77K. £100K+ is impossible.
Thank you very much for your insights, I also thought it was bullshit but had no idea about the UK market. Really appreciate sharing your wisdom
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