Changing jobs the surest way for Management and IT consultants to secure a pay rise

Top-Consultant.com and sister site TopITconsultant.com have this week published their annual salary benchmarking report, detailing remuneration levels and trends in the IT consulting and management consultancy sectors.

Based on detailed survey responses from over 1,600 readers, the report highlights that pay rises and bonuses in the last 12 months have been modest at best - with the biggest gainers being those who've secured a rise through a change of employer.

Changing jobs the surest way for Consultants to secure a pay rise
Tony Restell, author of the report, comments that overall the picture is one of modest gains in remuneration over the last year, with a significant proportion of consultants - particularly at the lower levels - seeing their real incomes actually shrinking.

The key findings illustrate that the consultancy market is now a mature price-sensitive industry, less able to pay headline-grabbing salaries than it could during the dot-com era:

- Pay rises averaged 6% for those that received a raise at all - however 26.5% of consultants received no raise over the course of the last 12 months.

- Bonuses averaged 13.5% of basic salary for those that received a bonus - but 33.4% of respondents received no bonus this last year.

- This bonus figure is down from 14.6% a year ago - and the proportion receiving no bonus has also risen - highlighting the fact that margins are tight in consulting and rewards are being targeted at individuals whom the firms are most concerned to retain or to entice into employment.

- The likelihood of not receiving any bonus is far higher for those in the earlier years of their career, with 50.7% of junior consultants and 36.6% of senior consultants receiving no bonus this last year.

The report illustrates that consultants a couple of years into their careers can expect a total remuneration package of 42,700; rising to 79,700 by the time a consultant turns 30; whilst those making it to Partner can, on average, expect total remuneration of 167,600. For a small minority of top Partners, remuneration can even become a multiple of this amount.

The figures, though, highlight why consulting firms have been struggling to hit their recruitment targets in recent quarters. From a purely financial perspective, the attractiveness of employment in the City has left consulting in its wake. Simultaneously, many recruiters questioned for the report confirm that FTSE employers are offering more attractive packages to move out of consulting than consultants can secure by remaining within the sector. The overall impact is a brain drain out of consulting and into those sectors of the economy that can afford to pay more for talent.

Amongst the categories of consulting assessed within the report, Strategy consulting and Business Transformation / Change Management consulting emerged as the two areas of consulting most able to compete for talent on financial terms. Consultants surveyed from these sectors typically enjoyed the highest basic salaries and the highest total packages (basic benefits bonus) across the various grades of consultant.

Full report available for download - readers wishing to download a copy of the full 2007 salary benchmarking report (in PDF format) may do so by clicking here