Deloitte win 2nd "Consultants Challenge"

The Young MCA this week attracted 12 teams comprising 120 consultants to compete in the 2nd "Consultants Challenge" - a fun inter-firm competition in aid of the charity "Depaul Trust"







Top-Consultant.com sponsored the event for the 2nd year running and £1,600 was raised for charity during the night. This year we brought along ten of our team to "strengthen" any other firms who were short of team members on the night. A big thank you from us to all the firms for welcoming us into their teams with open arms (and my apologies to the KPMG team at this point, to whom my only significant contribution was a series of bull's eyes on the rifle range!).

FINAL RESULTS

With Accenture having won last year's event, this year's was keenly contested and the top six teams at the end of the night were:

1st place -- Deloitte (aka "Glitter")
2nd place -- PwC (aka "Police")
3rd place -- Atos Consulting (aka "Bowler Hats")
4th place -- BT Global Consulting (aka "Blues Brothers")
5th place -- Turner & Townsend (aka "Straw Hats")
6th place -- PA Consulting (aka "Vikings")

* aka names signifying the style of hat the teams had to wear throughout the competition!

A fun night was had by all and our thanks go to Natalia and the rest of the team at the MCA for organising such a great event.

PHOTO GALLERY

Deloitte celebrate winning the trophy, flanked by honorary Top-Consultant team member Sacha Jackson

The KPMG team successfully identify 6 mystery cities, leading me to realise that gap years have moved on a fair bit since my days in the early 90s!

Tony Restell, Top-Consultant.com

Get your copy: Consulting supplement in today's Times newspaper

We've got a major consulting supplement appearing in today's Times newspaper. Looks like a good read for anyone wanting an update on trends and challenges in our industry.

You can get a free PDF of the supplement by clicking here

Happy reading!

Tony Restell
Top-Consultant.com

Consultants in the dock again

So the Public Accounts Committee has found that of the £2bn + of public money being invested in the services of the consulting industry, around £500 million a year is being needlessly spent. If this is really the case, it seems staggering to me that consulting firms feel the full force of the resulting outcry. Surely if government mandarins squander 1/4 of all tax revenues entrusted to them, it is they that should be in the dock. If they'd spent this money jetting public sector workers around the world to watch every Formula 1 race in the calendar, it would be government rather than Formula 1 bosses in the dock.

Yet this is the peculiar way in which the media report on anything to do with the consulting industry. Conveniently overlooking the fact that these public sector contracts are not hugely lucrative (witness the low profit margins of public sector practices) and can be very risky (think back to the NHS NPfIT programme for an example of consulting firms getting burnt on public sector assignments). Instead we are greeted with headlines like the following and the blame is effortlessly shifted away from those who are truly culpable:

Anger as government pays £63 a second to consultants (The Scotsman)
Labour blows £2 billion-a-year on army of Whitehall advisers (Evening Standard)

Now of course there are examples of consulting projects that have failed to deliver - and a whole raft of reasons for such failures. But to suggest that the majority of this spend has yielded no return to the taxpayer is just farcical.

We are, it seems, doomed to a perception with the public that's just marginally above that of an estate agent or used car salesperson...

Tony Restell

Last week was our annual recruiters' event in London, where we presented the latest recruitment trends to a packed house of management consultancy recruiters. The various findings (bonuses, pay rises, retention rates, candidate acquisition channels, etc.) will be reported in our newsletter over the coming month. But for now - for all those thinking of looking for a new career in consulting - I wanted to share with you just what a buoyant market this now is!

Based on data submitted by all the top consulting firms, we were able to calculate that to achieve revenue growth targets for the year, firms would need to hire the equivalent of 24% of their existing headcount over the coming 12 months. That's a phenomenal level of recruitment activity - and bodes well for anyone who's job-hunting in the next months.















As the chart shows, 18% revenue growth is expected in 2007 - a repeat of the growth seen in 2006. 7% of this revenue growth could come from an inflation of fee rates, but the rest needs to come from billing more days of consulting. With the top firms acknowledging they have no spare capacity at present, the rest of this growth (11%) has to come from bringing in new hires. Add to this the expected 13% staff churn rate for 2007 (up from 10.3% in the last year) and you have the 24% growth rate confirmed.

Exciting times for all you consulting candidates!

;-)

Tony

Your view counts!

In recent weeks there've been many forum threads on Top-Consultant.com, discussing the relative merits of using a recruitment agency - or avoiding them altogether. There've also been some comments about the most - and least - professional agencies out there.

Our annual reader survey has just been launched and gives you the chance to find out how consulting candidates are currently looking for a job; which channels and providers they recommend other readers should use; what the general recruitment market conditions are likely to look like in the coming months - and much much more.

It takes just a couple of minutes to share your thoughts - and your views would be highly appreciated! Every contributor will receive a copy of the full PDF report, so to take part simply click here now.

For those anxious to progress their job search ASAP, it may be helpful to know that the two recruitment agencies our readers have voted for most highly in the past are BLT and Prism.

Happy job hunting and thank you for taking part in this year's survey.

Tony

Videos - Accenture, Atos Consulting, BearingPoint, BT....

A short post to confirm that the careers fair recordings are now live - full length videos of all the presentations given by:

o Accenture
o Atkins Management Consultants
o Atos Consulting
o BearingPoint
o BT Global Consulting
o Celerant Consulting
o EDS Consulting Services
o Ernst & Young
o Hedra Plc
o KPMG
o Management Consultancies Association
o PA Consulting Group
o TATA Consultancy Services

To view these simply go to:
http://www.top-consultant.com/career_fair2006/contents.asp

Happy viewing! Tony

Careers Fair -- Videos

A great big THANK YOU to everyone - consulting firms and readers alike - who made this year's Consultancy Careers Fair such a huge success.

I've just seen the video recordings of the presentations given by many of the top consulting brands on the day - many provide fantastic insights into what it would be like to work at that particular firm. These will all be available to watch on Top-Consultant.com within the next week and I hope they will really help you to make the right decision about your next consulting employer.

In the meantime, my colleagues have loaded up a photo album that gives a great impression of the scale and reach of the Consultancy Careers Fair. If you missed this year's event do take a look here...

Will have those videos ready for you to watch ASAP.

Tony