Candidate activity reaches 3 year high in management consultancy industry

Striking figures released today illustrate that job hunter activity within the management consulting industry is at a 3 year high, with this buoyancy expected to last through until the summer.

The trend data, released by management consultancy careers website Top-Consultant.com, shows the number of job adverts being reviewed by candidates has broken through the 400,000 per month barrier for the first time since Q2 2005. This follows robust February figures which had also hit a two year high.

The timing of annual bonus rounds typically means that the early months of a new year are active times for job-seekers. Some, having secured sizeable bonuses, are liberated from the need to stick with their employer for fear of missing out on bonuses. Others, whose expectations have not been met, are clearly incentivised to look elsewhere for their next career progression step.

What is noticeable this year is that this surge in candidate activity is likely to last right through until the summer months. With 22% of consulting firms having delayed the start to their recruitment campaigns in 2008, only now are many of them starting to advertise the roles that consultants would aspire to move to (source: Top-Consultant survey of 150 management consultancy recruiters). Hence pent-up candidate demand to find and apply to attractive roles is expected to boost job board activity levels through until the summer.

Bryan Hickson, Sales Director at Top-Consultant.com comments ìIt's a great time to be recruiting consultants right now. There's an awful lot of candidate activity - I thought it had peaked in February but it just keeps growing. However there have also not been as many campaigns live as we would normally expect at this time of year due to ongoing market jitters and school holidays/ the early Easter. So we can see that those campaigns that are live are getting a lot of responses and any recruiters holding off on kick-starting their recruitment campaigns are really missing out on some exceptional candidates.î

Assessing the types of roles consulting firms are looking to fill, it is interesting to note that Financial Services practices are advertising more aggressively than any other practice area ñ with Public Sector consulting practices and then generalist consulting roles making up the top 3 in terms of sector specialisms. This suggests that the difficulties being experienced by the worldís large banks are actually stimulating demand for consulting services rather than harming the amount of business out there to be won. In terms of types of consultants in demand, business process improvement & business transformation consultants are in greatest demand ñ followed by programme management consultants and strategy consultants.