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The Collection Wed, 28 May 25 |
Multiple stories, multiple perspectives, one theme worth your time—every week. |
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“If action is what you seek, then certainly not consulting.”
That’s straight out of one of our recent Two by Two episodes exploring the prospects of young management graduates just entering the job market.
This might surprise you. After all, consulting has been one of the most desirable careers to pursue for MBA grads for a long while now, and consulting firms have been among the top recruiters at B-school campuses, including this year. At IIM Bangalore, consulting accounted for 40% of the roles offered this placement cycle.
But consulting has been sliding down the pecking order of late, at least as a great first job for MBAs. Among the reasons is certainly the one our Two by Two guest quipped about. During our first live event on careers last month, Vasuta Agarwal, chief business officer at Inmobi and ex-McKinsey, said something very similar when talking about why she left a consulting role.
[As a quick aside, our third live event is slated for 21 June and it will be on health, fitness, and wellness. We have an incredible lineup of guests: Nisha Millet, an Olympian swimmer and coach; Dr. Cyriac Abby Philips, a highly respected physician-scientist—you may know him as The Liver Doc on X, Instagram, and Youtube; and Viren Shetty, Narayana Health group’s vice chairman. If you have thoughts or questions on the subject you want us to ask the panel, do send them to us here.]
Others in the consulting sector agree with Vasuta, as we reported in a 2023 story about rising attrition in Big Three consulting firms.
One of the reasons for this is its strategy focus. A 32-year-old consultant at McKinsey, responsible for advising technology companies, feels that he is involved only in strategising and not execution.
“We give advice, but we don’t have to live with the consequences of that advice. To make it happen is a different ball game altogether.” He left McKinsey to work as a product manager for a technology company.
A job with McKinsey, Bain, or BCG trumps everything. Or it used to
So, that’s one reason. But is that all? Are there other factors that make consulting a less-than-stellar option for young graduates now? Why? What else is changing? What is happening at India’s top consulting firms? That’s the theme we explore in this week’s edition of The Collection.
It’s not just the skewed focus on strategy that is rubbing some of the sheen off consulting gigs. If you’re joining a Big Three consulting firm right now, don’t be surprised if the more creative aspects of the job seem diminished too. Thanks to AI.
To quote a McKinsey consultant: “Often, you’re discouraged from thinking through problems yourself. Instead, they specifically ask you to work with AI.”
With consultancies fully embracing AI solutions—being among the first sectors to deploy them in a majority of projects—junior consultants find themselves under more pressure than ever before, and severely disillusioned.
My colleague Abhirami’s story from April is a must read if you want to understand the ways in which AI is shaking up consulting.
How AI is creating a rift at McKinsey, Bain, and BCG
Instead of making consultants’ lives easier, generative AI has led to shorter deadlines and vanishing creativity
Of course, it’s not just the role of consultant that is changing, but the very companies and businesses that employ them.
With generative AI disrupting workplaces, Accenture, for instance, is turning reskilling employees for AI into a full-stack business. Over the next three years, the company plans to invest $1 billion in its learning and development vertical.
In another story from earlier this month, Abhirami explored how Accenture aims to maintain its relevance by not just adopting AI for its own business processes, but actually offering it as a solution to clients struggling to stay competitive.
Accenture’s latest offering in the wake of AI: Survival as a Service
As GenAI deconstructs work, Accenture is busy acquiring companies to reconstruct it, aiming to beat TCS’ 10-year game of L&D
No doubt, AI is making things worse for consultants. But even without it, entry-level consulting jobs have been on a slide in terms of both desirability and job satisfaction.
That quote is another one from the Two by Two episode I began this edition with.
In fact, a major theme that emerged from that discussion was how it might make more sense right now to view early-career consulting as a “finishing school”.
Two By Two • 35 |
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B-school graduates also seem to be shying away from consulting roles that aren’t in tier-1 firms. Consider what happened last year. Top-tier firms recruited moderately, creating an opening for tier-2 and -3 consulting firms to scoop up top talent. Yet many of these graduates preferred joining a product-first startup or even opting for an off-campus job instead, because they felt the career pipeline for consultants wasn’t as strong as before.
Why students have accepted offers from PwC, EY, Accenture Strategy, but don’t want to join them
Be prepared for pay cuts, longer promotion paths, and unguaranteed returns, say people who have been there and done that
Consultants’ heavy reliance on a few wealthy clients is also a risk, especially during uncertain times such as now, because an exit can cause shockwaves that lead to layoffs. In 2024, nearly half of Bain’s India business came from private equity. And when a big PE client had to cut its business, so did Bain.
This dependence, in fact, eventually pushed Bain to explore paths it once used to shy away from—like government consulting.
Tiger Global’s downturn hits Bain India. One in every five consultants loses their job
In early June, the smallest of the Big Three cut 15–20% of consulting jobs, as a crisis boiling since 2022 spilled over
That’s a wrap for this edition. Write to [email protected] with your thoughts and suggestions or leave a comment on our on-site edition.
You can find this week’s entire collection below.
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Rahul leads the promotion and distribution efforts for the journalism produced by The Ken. He works at the intersection of the publication's editorial and business operations.
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