Under the new scheme, McKinsey consultants considering leaving the firm can avail of the company’s in-house career-coaching services—including help with resume updates—as well as the use of email accounts and other resources to support their job hunt.
In addition to this, McKinsey is also offering managers up to nine-months of pay to conduct their job search without being required to work on company projects. Come the end of the period, staff must leave the firm irrespective of whether they have been successful in their job hunt.
Originally reported by The Times newspaper, the report confirmed the incentives have been offered to managers in the UK, while similar offers are available to US-based staff. In total, hundreds of employees across both the UK and US firms will likely be offered the proposal.
It’s the latest example of belt tightening across companies within the consulting sector, which combine to employ thousands of business school graduates each year. McKinsey and its fellow MBB firms, Bain & Company and Boston Consulting Group, rank among the largest employers of MBA graduates each year.
The Big Four accounting and professional services firms—Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, and EY—all of which boast large consulting practices, also regularly hire from business school cohorts.
All of these top employers announced pay freezes moving into 2024 as salaries across the industries stagnated. Earlier in 2023, EY announced staff and pay cuts for consultants in the UK, while Deloitte delayed start dates for its MBA hires.
The measures are largely in response to an ongoing decline in demand for consultancy services that began in 2023 and coincided with widespread economic challenges.
Hiring across the consulting sector also ballooned during the Covid pandemic, and a low ‘attrition rate’—the number of staff who leave to take on jobs elsewhere—at many top firms has resulted in bloated headcounts, forcing them to act.
