Top-Consultant's salary benchmarking report

Top-Consultant.com and sister site TopITconsultant.com have published their annual salary benchmarking report online (free of charge and in PDF format). 

...detailing remuneration levels and trends in the IT consulting and management consultancy sectors. Based on detailed survey responses from over 1,600 readers (this is what I like to see - a survey with a big sample group!), 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. 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.

The key findings are:

- 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.
- 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.

So when your consulting firm clients are asking why it's becoming so hard to recruit for them you can, in a well informed manner, tell them it's the money.

In fact within the report it states many recruiters confirm that FTSE employers are offering more attractive packages to move out of consulting than consultants can secure by remaining within the sector.

But do not despair if you are a recruiter specialising in this area the report shows that 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 across the various grades of consultant.

Just make sure this is your niche!