Introduction

This report presents a comprehensive analysis of executive talent movements across the UK's management consultancy sector in 2024, focusing on traditional management, business, organisational and technology consulting firms.

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114

Firms with Moves Reported

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537

Moves Reported

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3

Executive Levels Analysed

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Monthly Moves

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Accessibility

This interactive report is best viewed on desktop for optimal viewing and readability. All charts feature interactive elements with multiple tabs showing different variables.

Methodology

The analysis was built on a on data that leveraged public information of Partner & Director-level executives across 114 UK consulting firms. Our dataset comprised of two segments: professionals at pure-play consulting firms (e.g., MBB firms) and professionals at multi-service professional service firms (e.g., Big Four firms). We considered every professional at pure-play firms as consultants. For multi-service firms, we included only those with explicit public mentions of involvement in management or tech consulting. We excluded executives who lacked clear ties to the consulting sector. While many executives joined consulting firms from industry positions, we excluded these industry hires to maintain clear visibility of competitive hiring trends between consultancies. All poaches in our analysis refer solely to movements between consulting firms.

Terminology

Educational Profiles

35% of total talent moves, in 2024, held a Masters degree. For the most part, executives were as likely to hold a Bachelors as they would a Masters. Despite a Bachelors being (marginally) the highest level of education attained by most executives, we see that most Partners & Associate Directors who were poached by another firm, were more likely to hold a Master’s degree.

The charts below show the highest levels of education received, based on role type and the type of move (promotion vs poach).

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Partner Promotions

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Associate Director Promotions

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Director Promotions

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Masters By Role Type

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• What happened to the MBA? </aside>

Promotions

While the highest concentration of promoted executives had amassed 1-3 years of time at their company before gaining a promotion, most executives had spent 3-9 years at their company.

Directors made up the highest concentration of professionals who were promoted with under 3 years of time at their company, while the highest concentration of Partners had spent between 4-6 years at their company before gaining a promotion.

The charts and tables below display the distribution of time spent at their company at the point of thier promotion. We have focused on showing you 2 sets of charts: one for all executive promotions (regardless of the time at which they’d been at the company), and one that accounts for the variance by focusing on long-residing executives only. We deem an executive to be long-residing based on the individual experiencing successive 3 promotions at the same company) as this standardises the variance that of a long-residing, and extremely short-residing, executive being included within the same data.

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Roughly 41 professionals, who had stayed at the firm for their past 3 promotions, had under 5 years of experience before making Director, while 46 professionals who’d stayed at the firm for their past 3 promotions, had between 6 -10 years of experience before making Director. The highest concentration of Partners had a minimum of 6-10 years of experience at their firm before making Partner.

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Partner-level professionals had spent an average of 8 years at their companies before promotion, while Directors averaged 7 years.

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Market Landscape Analysis