top consultant 2010 recruitment channel report

Management Consultancy

Recruitment Channel Report 2010

http://www.top-consultant.com

TABLE OF CONTENTSTop-Consultant.com

Part I - Recruitment and retention trends 4 Recruitment trends 6

Retention rates 9

Part II - Recruitment channel use and Social Media 15

Part III - Historical trends in recruitment channel use 20 Corporate sites 21

Personal referrals 22

Newspapers 23

Recruitment agencies 24

Internet job sites 25

Part IV - Recruiter and media awards 26 Best individual recruitment consultants 27

Top 10 recruitment firms by reach 28

Top 8 recruitment firms by praise 29

Choosing internet job site suppliers 30

INTRODUCTION

For most of the nine years that this report has been produced we have enjoyed buoyant market conditions. Understandably hiring sufficient consulting staff to meet client demand has been the prevailing concern of Consulting Partners and their recruitment teams.

We publish this 2010 edition at a time when the UK consulting industry has just undergone a savage contraction. Within the last months market sentiment suggests consulting has turned a corner and the sector is growing again, albeit very modestly. But it’s also acknowledged that 2010 will be another tumultuous year, with post-election cutbacks in the public sector bound to impact consulting practices and particularly regional consulting practices.

As we publish this year’s report, the key concern of our stakeholders is to understand the scale of hiring we can expect to see in 2010 and how this will vary from practice to practice. Only a secondary concern – unlike in preceding boom years – is to understand how consulting candidates can best be attracted, though for our candidate readership this will be keenly watched again I’m sure.

Our thanks go to the 138 consulting employers / recruiters who took part in our client survey and the 1,088 consulting candidates who participated in our candidate poll, without whose responses this unique data could not have been produced.

We hope you derive valuable insights from this report and as always look forward to serving your needs as the year unfolds.

Tony RestellCo-Founder and DirectorTop-Consultant.com

Top-Consultant.com

Recruitment and retention ratesData collected from 138 management consultancy recruiters

ONEPart

Management Consultancy Recruitment Channel Report 2010PAGE 5

Our interactions with clients over the last months, together with the survey data collected in January and February 2010, point to a number of significant factors that will shape the hiring market over the coming year:

1. Hiring volumes will rise fourfold in 2010 compared with 2009. Whilst this sounds like a dramatic change in fortunes, we must remember that with 2009 as our backdrop we are starting from a very low base. So the anticipated fourfold increase could equally be described as a market where hiring volumes will only be 60% of what they were during the boom years of the last decade. Overall the picture is one of a glass half full.

2. Hiring demand by practice area has undergone a sea change in the last months and this is expected to accelerate during 2010. The public sector practice areas that kept many firms afloat during the downturn are now scaling back significantly in anticipation of the downturn that awaits them following the election – and indeed the squeeze that has already been set in motion. By contrast, private sector demand is increasingly buoyant and

Financial Services practices which languished in 2009 are now looking to hire aggressively in 2010. Several other private sector practice areas also anticipate a decent upturn in hiring in 2010.

3. An expected deterioration in staff retention rates will increase the demand for new hires; whilst an increase in consultants looking to leave the sector will make it harder for firms to replace these staff like-for-like with other experienced consulting hires. Competition for candidates will therefore increase more than the economic climate might otherwise suggest.

4. The capacity available to support a hiring upturn – both within consulting firms’ recruitment teams and externally within recruitment agencies – has been dramatically cut back in the last 12-18 months and shortages in this area are likely to drive up the average cost per hire as the market picks up.

SUMMARYRecruitment Trends

Top-Consultant.com PAGE 6

Analysis of key metrics for the UK consulting industry allows us to produce an aggregate hiring profile for the industry. As the table shows, required hiring volumes as a % of existing headcount averaged around 33% during the boom years. This figure fell to around 5% during the recent severe recession, which explains why the hiring market has seemed quite so morose in 2009. By contrast, it is rising sharply with every month of 2010 that passes and for the year as a whole is likely to have reverted to a hiring requirement of 20% of existing headcount.

Figure 1: Required hiring volumes

Boom years

Recent past - severe recession

Modest economic recovery

Market Growth 15% -12% 2%

from fee rate increases

2% -4% -1%

from volume growth (billable days)

13% -8% 3%

Growth that can be fulfilled through Spare Capacity

-5% N/A 0%

Recruitment needed to fuel growth

8% -8% 3%

Attrition rate 25% 13% 17%

Required hiring volumes as a % of headcount

33% 5% 20%

This statistic explains why recruitment agencies have experienced a rapid change in fortunes in the last months, particularly when set against the backdrop of a sector that has shed 1/3 of its pool of recruiters during the downturn. It also explains why job board advertising volumes have been picking up consistently during the last months. We must be measured in our assessment of these figures though – for whilst a fourfold increase represents a very healthy step in the right direction, it is also being achieved by an industry starting from an exceptionally low base. To put it in its right context, we must look at the activity levels that reigned in the boom years and see that hiring activity will still only be 60% of what it was during the most recent recruiting peaks.

Fourfold rise in hiring volumesRecruitment Trends


Market growth

For much of the last decade the UK consulting industry has enjoyed revenue growth rates approaching 15% per annum. This has almost entirely been achieved by an increase in the volume of billable days sold, rather than by fee rate inflation – a consequence of the fact that procurement departments have driven an increasingly hard bargain with consulting providers.

Not every firm has yet released their annual figures for 2009, but based on those already in the public domain it seems likely that the industry will have suffered a revenue decline of around 12% during the year. Some of this will have come about through a reduction in fee rates but the lion’s share is actually a product of a ~8% decline in the volume of billable days sold.

During the course of this year, it is expected that consulting revenues will see a very modest return to growth. A resurgence in private sector client demand is likely to be weighed down by reductions in the public sector spend on consulting services, resulting in only 2% revenue growth for the year.

Spare capacity

In the boom years a modest volume of new client wins could be resourced by drawing on employed resources currently “on the bench”; but any sustained increase in demand translated quickly into the need for additional hires. During the severe recession we have just endured, the situation was rather reversed, with consulting firms needing to scale back significantly on their consulting headcount to avoid a massive ballooning in underutilised staff. An interesting feature of the modest upturn we are now experiencing is that growth is unlikely to be able to be resourced at all by drawing on consultants “on the bench”.

Those whose public sector assignments have been drying up and who find themselves lacking a billable client project to work on do not generally possess the private sector experience, sector knowledge and commercial acumen that is being demanded by the rebounding private sector client base. Hence a growth in private sector client work is translating immediately into the need for new hires – and hires with very specific skillsets at that.

Staff attrition

The last piece of the puzzle is the expected deterioration in staff retention rates that the industry will face in 2010. Given that career moves in the last 2 years have been challenging to say the least, it is no surprise that as recruitment picks up more and more consultants can be expected to start assessing their prospects with alternative employers. One of the biggest surprises of the survey is perhaps that employers do not expect a greater deterioration in staff retention than we have factored into the calculation table above. Any underestimation of staff attrition rates would translate directly into the need for greater numbers of hires and that is a factor we must keep in the back of our minds as the year unfolds.

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More compelling still is the trend over time, where recruiters’ expectations are more positive than they were at the beginning of 2008. Now let’s remember that that poll was conducted before the collapse of Lehman but after the troubles at Northern Rock had caused us all to be more cautious in our business projections. Let’s also not lose sight of the fact that the results from 2007 – at the height of the boom – were noticeably more positive than they are now; and for completeness let’s also restate that the 2010 figures must clearly be set against a far lower base of hiring in the preceding year than any of the other data points. So this trend is in no way a prediction that mass hiring will unfold in 2010, but rather that a decent improvement on the preceding year can be expected. For what it’s worth, our own expectations are that hiring will not be back to boom levels until the 2012 Olympics have been and gone.

One of the questions we were most eager to learn the answer to was how employers felt their hiring volumes in 2010 would compare to 2009. At the beginning of 2009 this same question had very clearly pointed to the impending hiring slump that we could expect to see unfold, so any change in sentiments for 2010 would be closely watched.

Top-Consultant.com’s survey of 138 recruiters clearly shows that over 3⁄4 of organisations expect to increase hiring this year whilst 1⁄3 expect to do so aggressively. Again we must stress that this is against the backdrop of a very low level of hiring in 2009, so for firms not to expect an increase at all would be both surprising and worrying. But the findings do very much validate our impression that a corner has been turned.

0%

5%

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15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%

Make considerably

more hires than last year

Make slightly more hires

than last year

Make as many hires as last

year

Make slightly fewer hires

than last year

Make considerably fewer hires

than last year

2008

2009

2010

Figure 2: 2010 Recruitment targets vs. 2009

Make considerably

more hires than last year, 31.16%

Make slightly more hires than

last year, 45.65%

Make as many hires as last

year, 13.04%

Make slightly fewer hires

than last year, 6.52%

Target for the year is to make

considerably fewer hires

than last year, 3.62%

Figure 3: Recruitment targets 2008 - 2010

Expectations point to a hiring upturnRecruitment Trends


Fundamental to our assertion that incremental project wins will not be able to be staffed by consultants on the bench is the expectation that public sector demand is tailing off and private sector demand is on the up. By asking employers to identify the areas they expect to be undertaking the most hiring we have been able to prove that this is indeed the expectation for 2010 and also to identify some other interesting growth projections by practice area.

A score close to 1 in our chart indicates firms expect to make little or no hiring in that practice area; while the greater the number the more hiring is anticipated. Two significant changes leap out at you from the above chart. Firstly we can see that at the beginning of 2009 there was a minute amount of hiring in Financial Services expected to take place; yet one year on this has leapt to being the single biggest area of hiring activity. As the largest source of private sector consulting spend, this change of fortunes in FS is particularly welcome as we look to 2010 and hope that the year will produce modest growth for the consulting industry as a whole.

Equally stark though is the collapse in hiring expectations within the public sector practices. The single largest area of growth in the 2009 survey, this has slumped in 2010 and is almost the mirror opposite of the trend seen in Financial Services. It explains why growth expectations for consulting in 2010 are not more buoyant, with the very real fear that public sector spend on consulting will be hit by the impending general election. Putting a positive spin on this, the possible reality that politicians discover they cannot make the massive savings in public sector expenditure needed without the involvement of external advisors may actually mean these cutbacks are nothing like as bad as is being feared. But nonetheless, the possibility that this picture is borne out cannot be ignored.

Elsewhere we see other interesting changes. Consulting in education shows an expected drop in demand to mirror

that in public sector spend. Whilst numerous private sector practice areas show encouraging expectations of hiring growth including Energy & Utilities, Telecoms, Media & Entertainment, Technology and IT practices.

Likely hiring patterns by practice areaRecruitment Trends

Figure 4: Recruitment activity by practice area

1 2 3

Financial Services

Energy & Utilities

Telecoms, Media & Entertainment

Healthcare & Pharma

Information Technology

Technology

Public Sector

Purchasing & Supply Chain

General Management

Retail / Consumer Goods

Engineering & Manufacturing

Education

Distribution / Logistics

Transportation

Automotive / Aerospace

Chemicals

Facilities Management

Science / Research

Leisure / Lifestyle

2010 2009


For the second year in succession Business Process Improvement consultants are expected to be in the great demand from a hiring requirements perspective.

Strategy consulting, often the quickest to be hit in a downturn can also be amongst the last to recover during an upturn. In many respects it’s the most discretionary type of consulting spend there is – and this has spillover effects on the hiring trends within strategy consulting. Given this, it is therefore heartening for the industry as a whole to see a general consensus that strategy consulting hiring will gather pace this year – one of the strongest indicators that as an industry we perceive the worst to be very much behind us.IT consulting entered 2009 having struggled with an unsustainable growth period where revenue growth was far outpacing the industry’s ability to increase headcount through quality hiring. This imbalance – and the total lack of spare capacity at the time – explains why the sector entered 2009 perceiving there to be a massive hiring requirement in 2009. With that imbalance having been rectified – in part by hiring successes and in part by a curtailing of client demand – it is no surprise to see the significant dip in IT hiring expectations for 2010.

Likely hiring patterns by type of consultingRecruitment Trends

Figure 5: Recruitment activity by type of consulting

1 2 3

Business Process Improvement

Strategy

Project / Programme Management

Outsourcing

Technology

Finance / Accounting

CRM

HR Consulting

Economics & Environmental Consulting

IT / Software Development

Marketing & Sales

E-Business

2010 2009


Looking at the data for 2008-2010, it is clear that over the preceding 12 months firms have consistently seen their staff attrition rates getting more subdued. The proportion of firms only losing 0-5% of their consulting staff in the year can be seen to rise over the period; whilst correspondingly the proportion losing more than 10% in the preceding year has been falling. This fits with our opening analysis showing that improved staff retention rates had accelerated the decline in hiring activity that we have seen within the UK consulting market.

Staff attrition expected to deteriorateRetention Trends

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35%

Staff attrition rates will worsen

considerably

Staff attrition rates will

worsen a little

No change in staff attrition

rates expected


improve a little

Staff attrition rates will improve

considerably

2008 2009 2010

Figure 6: Staff attrition rates 2008 - 2010

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When looking to the future, employers’ expectations are that in the coming year we will see a modest deterioration in staff attrition. The only surprise here is that the consensus view is not for a more marked deterioration than this. Maybe this is a reflection of the fact that candidates turning down job offers has become a pronounced factor in the hiring market these last months. A significant number of candidates appear to be risk averse when it comes to leaving an organisation where their reputation is established and where they are clearly valued having generally avoided culls in the last 12 months. But whether this can be expected to continue as the market further improves and job opportunities become more extensive, that is a matter for some debate. We have kept in our calculation a modest deterioration in staff attrition rather than anything more pronounced, but any worsening of staff attrition beyond this during the year would clearly give rise to the need to increase our expected hiring projections for the year.

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

Staff attrition rates will worsen

considerably


worsen a little

No change in staff attrition

rates expected


improve a little

Staff attrition rates will improve

considerably

Figure 7: Staff attrition rates 2010

The Consultancy Careers Fair 2010

Taking place on 24th September, this year’s careers fair is expected

to attract 40+ exhibitors and 2,500+ consulting candidates. A discount

of 30% is available on all exhibitor bookings received

by 28th May.

For a brochure call the Top-Consultant.com team on

+44 (0)207 667 6880


Two interesting findings from this year’s survey are i) that consulting firms want overwhelmingly to make their hires from the ranks of the experienced consultant. Whilst in parallel ii) there’s a reduction in the number of experienced hires who’ll be looking for a new job within consulting – with increasing numbers planning to either stay put or to look for a new role outside of consulting.

Taken in combination, these statistics paint the interesting picture of an industry where not all firms will be able to hire in the volumes they need – or will have to compromise on the backgrounds of those they hire and open their hiring up to a wider range of prospective candidates. Recent history teaches us that the latter outcome is the more likely and it is our expectation that hiring “must have criteria” will soften as the year progresses and these hiring difficulties become more pronounced.

Market will feel tighterMarket Trends

Figure 8: Desired hiring profile 2010

1

2

3

4

5

Experienced hires from

other consulting

firms

Experienced hires from industry

Experienced hires from

Government or Public

Sector bodies

Experienced hires from the

City

MBA finalists University leavers / Finalists

Figure 9: Candidates’ career intentions for 2010

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

Most likely to accept a job with a consulting employer

Not looking to change jobs in the next 12 months

Most likely to accept a job with a client organisation

Most likely to secure some other kind of role outside consulting

Most likely to accept a job in the City

Most likely to accept public sector/ charity job

2009 2010

Recruitment channel useand the role of Social Media

TWOPart


An overview of the candidate pool participating in this survey

The following candidate job search trends we will be presenting are based on data collected from 9,000 management consultancy candidates over the past nine years. Candidates from all the major consulting firms have participated, together with consultants currently working at niche consulting firms and potential industry hires looking to move into consulting.

Profile of respondents:Most this year were Business Transformation / Change Management consultants (23.6%), Strategy consultants (21.4%) or Project / Programme Management consultants (19.3%). The sectors that candidates this year had most experience of working in were Financial Services (40.0%), then Public Sector consulting (31.8%), Telecoms, Media & Entertainment (26.7%) and Energy & Utilities (23.5%).

Survey responses this year were generated via direct mailshots to the Top-Consultant.com readership; an invitation sent to all screened consulting candidates on the Get Headhunted CV database; promotions via Twitter, LinkedIn, Google News and Yahoo News, Forum posts and by invitations sent to candidates by recruitment agencies.

Overall 63.7% of candidates have changed jobs within the last three years.

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Let us now look back at candidate activity over the last 12 months and specifically the channels used to look for new career opportunities. Every year we ask candidates to record the channels they used and the number of applications that they made through each. Collating that data allows us to analyse the penetration performance of the channels (how many candidates have used each) and the share of applications achieved from each of the six major recruitment channels:

• Corporate websites

• Personal referrals

• Newspapers

• Recruitment agencies

• Internet job sites

• Social media

When looking at which application channels candidates used during their last job hunt, it is striking to see three of the recruitment channels being used by a far greater proportion of candidates than the others. Personal contacts / referral schemes had been used by a greater number of candidates than any of the other channels; with recruitment agencies and internet job boards also scoring highly.

Candidate activity over last yearSocial Media

Figure 10: Application channels used last time to apply for a job

20%

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60%

70%

80%

Personal contacts / referrals

Recruitment agencies

Internet job sites

Corporate websites

Social media sites

Newspaper adverts


Despite consulting firms’ best efforts to drive up their share of direct applicants, only a little over 40% of candidates have submitted any applications this way – a statistic that has proven remarkably difficult to raise above this level as our historical data will later show. Social media sites and newspapers generated applications from barely 1 in 5 of the candidates surveyed. The latter is not really a surprise given the demise of print media and the low volumes of print media job advertising that have prevailed in the last couple of years. The lack of impact of social media is quite a finding though, particularly as we will see in subsequent pages that consultants do make significant use of sites like LinkedIn. They use these sites, but just don’t seem to use them as a place to hunt for jobs.

When the number of applications made by channel is factored in, the lack of impact of social media becomes even more pronounced. Social media sites in total produced less than 5% of applications, compared with the 1/3 of all applications generated by internet job boards. Personal contacts and referral schemes – whilst popular with candidates – are limited as an application channel by candidates’ ability to apply to all the firms of interest this way. Sites like LinkedIn may strengthen this route in coming years by extending people’s networks further and more importantly by making candidates’ existing networks more transparent to them. Corporate sites, meanwhile, have stagnated with an application share of around 15%.

Figure 11: Share of applications generated in last job search

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25%

30%

35%

Internet job sites


Corporate sites

Personal contact

referrals

Newspaper ads

Social media sites

Why not try advertising for consulting candidates on

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Our low-priced advertising packages allow you to see

for yourself the types of results that recruiters are experiencing by placing

their job listings on Top-Consultant.com.

Click here to find out more



Candidates were asked to score the likely channels they would use when next hunting for a new job, both to allow them to change their bias to allow for dissatisfactions with their most recent job hunt and also to factor in new developments they’ve seen affecting the market like LinkedIn.

As you can see from the chart below candidates clearly intend to modify their job hunt strategies only marginally during their next job search. What is particularly striking though is the next chart where candidates’ past activity can be cross-compared with their intended future activity – the correlation between the two is unmistakable! Given this, it seems likely that the share of applications employers’ will receive from each of the hiring channels is likely to remain fairly constant for the foreseeable future.

Looking forwardSocial Media

Figure 12: Channel most likely to be used now

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

5

5.5

Personal contacts / referrals

Recruitment Agencies

Internet job sites

Corporate websites

Social media sites

Newspaper adverts


1

2

3

4

5

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

Internet job sites


Corporate sites Personal contact referrals

Newspaper ads Social media sites

% of applications penetration future use

Figure 13: Channel matrix 2010

Recruiters – available for a limited time only!

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appearing on Top-Consultant.com will be

added to Jobsite for you at no additional cost.

Take advantage by registering for a

trial advertising package


Historical trends in recruitment channel useData collected from 1,088 management consultancy candidates

THREEPart


Let us now look at the penetration performance of the channels and the share of applications achieved from each of the five major recruitment channels. Data on the use of social media as a recuitment channel has been collected for the first time this year and as a result the historical trend data is omitted for this channel.

Over the last few years we have seen a fall in the number of candidates making applications directly via corporate websites. Free text survey responses have suggested to us that much of the reason for this fall is that the perception of corporate websites is that they were primarily designed by the firm to streamline the application process rather than to maximise direct applications. This year, we’ve seen a slight drop in the use of corporate sites and now little over 40% of survey respondents report that they made direct approaches last year.

Corporate sites seem stuck in a rut of being able to generate only 14-16% of application volumes.

Corporate sitesRecruitment channels

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5%

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20%

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Figure 15: Shares of applications - Corporate websites

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2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Figure 14: Penetration - Corporate websites


For the last eight years, bounty schemes have consistently achieved high market penetration generating applications from ~2/3 of all candidates. What’s more, as we shall see later, they have also been the most highly-preferred way for candidates to make recruitment applications in management consultancy.

Personal referrals will never be able to generate a massive share of applications – few consultants are so well-connected to be able to leverage many approaches through their networks – and indeed this year the share of applications achieved through personal referrals has fallen to just 11%. However, it would not be wise to discount entirely the impact that the continued growth of online social and professional networking may make to the effectiveness of this channel.

Consultancies that are able to mobilise an effective internal referrals scheme will be at a distinct advantage over competitors who cannot.

Personal referralsRecruitment channels

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2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Figure 17: Shares of applications - Personal referrals

Figure 16: Penetration - Personal referrals

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20%

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010


In the main, the historic newspaper advertisers (direct employers and recruitment agencies) have continued to switch spend to online solutions - newspapers have suffered most in the last 8 years with candidate penetration levels having fallen very considerably indeed down to just slightly above 20%.

Some newspapers are countering this and looking to maintain what remains of their share of applications by offering a number of agglomerated industry special editions to advertising clients. Despite this initiative, newspapers are now responsible for only 8% of applications from respondents to this year’s survey.

NewspapersRecruitment channels

Figure 19: Shares of applications - Newspapers

Figure 18: Penetration - Newspapers

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2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

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2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010


Recruitment agency candidate penetration has held up much better during this recession than it did during the dot-com downturn. Back in the dot-com crash, minimising cost per hire became a real focal point of consulting employers – which played into the hands of low-cost sourcing options and harmed the recruitment agency sector.

Noticeable during the last year has been a change in employer emphasis. Driving down the absolute cost-per-hire has been seen as less imperative than ensuring that recruitment costs are only incurred when a successful hire is actually made. In some respects consulting employers have been able to use contingency recruitment agencies as an insurance policy for their businesses. Pipelines of prospective new candidate hires have been sustained by recruitment firms at no cost to consulting employers - until such time that is as a hire is actually made. Where hires have been made they have typically resulted in consultants being brought on board who are then immediately billable on client work - and so the cost of the hire has been far less of a concern to the consulting employer than tying the cost of the recruitment activity to a successful outcome.

Of course recruitment channels live or die based on the volume of attractive roles that they are able to offer to candidates; and so it is no surprise that if a greater proportion of vacancies have come to recruitment agents during this recession that candidates should have migrated to using them more also.

Recruitment agenciesRecruitment channels

Figure 21: Shares of applications - Recruitment agencies

Figure 20: Penetration - Recruitment agencies

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2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

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2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010


Internet Job Sites enjoy the highest share of candidate usage.

Internet Job Sites achieved just under 70% market penetration this year having taken share from other channels consistently for the last eight years. It is possible that their use is plateauing: time will tell.

Whilst there has been some volatility in job boards’ share of total applications, they remain the single biggest source of applications accounting for over 1/3 of all applications made by candidates.

Internet job sitesRecruitment channels

Figure 23: Shares of applications - Internet job sites

Figure 22: Penetration - Internet job sites

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2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

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2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010


Recruiter and media awards

FOURPart


Don Leslie BLT

Chris Sale Prism

Mark Pierce Michael Warwick Nicholls

Peter Nicholls Michael Warwick Nicholls

Angela Heath BLT

David Lancefield Selecture

Simon Trott Michael Warwick Nicholls

Richard Stewart Mindbench

Consultant Agency

By polling 1,088 management consultancy candidates, we are able to recommend suppliers on three different grounds:

1. The best individual recruitment consultants in the UK

market

2. The recruitment agents that have the greatest

penetration or market reach amongst consulting

candidates

3. The recruitment agencies that receive the most

praise (and the least complaints) from management

consultancy candidates

One caveat we should state at this point is that selection firms are for more likely to feature in this section than search firms. The former interact with huge volumes of candidates, whereas the latter target specific individuals. As such, a search firm that does a lot of work in the consulting space would not necessarily feature in the following sections.

We asked candidates to help us identify the best recruiters based on their own experiences. We asked them:

“If you have been particularly impressed with an individual recruitment consultant you have worked with in the past, please provide their name & company so that we can give them special recognition”

Eight individuals received the most praise. They are listed in no particular order.

Best individial recruiterAwards

Figure 24: Best individual recruitment consultants 2010


The Consultancy Careers Fair 2010

Taking place on 24th September, this year’s careers fair is expected

to attract 40+ exhibitors and 2,500+ consulting candidates. A discount

of 30% is available on all exhibitor bookings received

by 28th May.

For a brochure call the Top-Consultant.com team on

+44 (0)207 667 6880

As part of the poll analysis, we also track the applications that the respondents have submitted to the various management consultancy recruitment firms. This allows us to chart the reach of the different suppliers. The Top 10 firms by candidate reach are displayed below. As more than 60 firms were mentioned by candidates again this year, all firms appearing within the Top 10 listings are in the top third of suppliers in terms of the reach they have in the marketplace.

The other factor to consider is that some firms will have well-maintained candidate databases that enable them to proactively approach more candidates than this data would suggest. Therefore this chart should mostly be viewed as a barometer for how effective the firms have been at attracting candidates via recruitment advertising over the last couple of years.

Top 10 recruitment firms by reachAwards

Michael Page 1 8.6BLT 2 8.5Mindbench 3 3.8Prism 4 3.8Hays 5 3.4Consulting Point 6 3.0Michael Warwick Nicholls 7 2.9Reed 8 2.5Selecture 9 1.9Hudson 10 1.6

2010 % of Recruitment agency rank applications

Figure 25: Top 10 recruitment firms by reach 2010


The penultimate question in the candidate poll is:

“Are there any recruitment agencies you would particularly praise, and why?”

And the final question asks candidates to record any disappointing experiences they may have had when working with recruitment agencies. Taken in combination, we are able to produce a league table of the Top 10 most highly regarded management consultancy recruitment firms, as voted by consultancy candidates. Our warm congratulations go to the following eight firms.

Special congratulations must go to BLT as outright winners in this category, candidate feedback about BLT was truly exceptional.

Top 8 recruitment firms by praiseAwards

1 Beament Leslie Thomas 2 Michael Warwick Nicholls 3 Prism 4 Mindbench 5 Selecture 6 FreshMinds 6 PSD Group 8 Korn Ferry 8 Investigo 8 Rethink Recruitment 8 Timothy James 8 Wilton & Bain

Rank Recruitment firms

Figure 26: Top 8 recruitment firms by praise 2010


Top-Consultant.com maintains a considerable lead over both generalist job boards and other niche sites serving the sector.

… and also remains Consultants’ preferred site for finding Management Consultancy jobs.

Choosing internet job site suppliers

Figure 27: Regulartly review for consultancy job opportunities Figure 28: Best rated for finding a consultancy job

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

Top-Consultant

Exec-Appointments

LinkedIn

Monster

Jobsite

Totaljobs

Executivesontheweb

eFinancialCareers

ConsultingLadder

Accountancy Age / Management Consultancy

Consultantsboard

MCA

Twitter jobsearch

2010 2009

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Top-Consultant

LinkedIn

Exec-Appointments

Monster

Jobsite

Totaljobs

Executivesontheweb

eFinancialCareers

ConsultingLadder

Accountancy Age / Management Consultancy

Consultantsboard

MCA

Twitter jobsearch

2010 2009


We’ve been involved in The National Online Recruitment Audience Survey (NORAS) which polled 95,000+ candidates in the UK, to assess the demographics of the 62 participating job boards.The conclusions solidified Top-Consultant.com’s market leading position within the management consulting industry.

Other findings showed that the average Top-Consultant reader has a salary of £75,100 with 56% having a postgraduate degree and 27% having a professional qualification.49% of our 115,000 unique monthly visitors work in consulting / strategy giving us far greater reach than any other UK jobs board.

NORAS Findings

Figure 29: Job board reach NORAS ratings

Find out how your firm could attract consulting hires by:

• advertisingonourwebsites

• advertisinginourconsultancy-focusedpublications

• accessingourCVdatabases

• runningbespokecareersevents

• participatingintheannualConsultancyCareersFair

CALL TO SPEAK WITH ONE OF OUR TEAM For more information on Top-Consultant’s services or if you have any questions about the data in this report please contact Graeme Underhill on 0207 667 6880 or email him on [email protected].

REQUEST A BROCHUREAlternatively, please feel free to request a PDF brochure detailing our services. You may do this online by visiting the following web links:

Top-Consultant.com – for management consultancy hires http://recruiters.top-consultant.com/UK/clientcentre/Solutions.aspx

TopITconsultant.com – for IT consulting hireshttp://www.topitconsultant.com/brochure.aspx

EMAIL USFeel free to email our Customer Services team with any questions you may have, using the address [email protected].

© 2010 Top-Consultant.com. All rights reserved.

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