Consulting Firms Hiring Robustly

Hiring at consulting firms is looking especially robust of late. Fred Staudmyer, Cornell’s b-school’s career services director, told the WSJ that recruiting in that sector “came back with a vengeance,” in the last year to year and a half.

The odds that Mark Howorth, head of global MBA recruiting at Bain & Co. would disagree with Staudmyer’s statement are pretty small: Bain plans to hire even more people this year than did before the Great Recession, as the company looks to meet the rising demand from new clients in energy, financial services and private equity. It will stock its offices with first years numbering in the mid-hundreds, by far Bain’s largest incoming MBA class ever.

Not to be outdone, Accenture, the management-consulting firm, has plans to hire some 64,000 new employees this year—as many they did last year, and up from 25,000 three years previous. John Campagnino, a recruiting director at Accenture, said those new hires will be a mix of experienced and recently graduated; unfortunately, only a “relatively small” percentage of the newly hired will be from MBA programs.

Jack Oakes, an assistant dean for career development at UVA’s Darden, believes good news for consulting firms could mean good news for other firms.

If companies are willing to spend on outside consultants, Mr. Oakes said that was a good indication they would be willing to spend on new talent, too.

[WSJ]

Related: The MBA Hiring Climate According to Recruiters