Vault.com, the career website, has released a ranking of the most prestigious consulting firms. A little like the Oscars, which turns to the movie industry to tally its votes, Vault’s list comes from a survey of consultants who are asked to rank their peers and competitors. Vault ran its survey for six weeks in March and April and gathered votes from 9,000 consultants at 65 North American firms.
Vault does a number of other consulting firm rankings (best firms for work/life balance, for benefits, for compensation) , where it gives questionnaires to people in management positions and those managers distribute the questionnaires to employees.
For the prestige ranking, consultants were not allowed to vote for their own firms, and they were asked only to rate firms with which they were familiar. They rated each firm on a scale of 1 (least prestigious) to 10. Vault has been running the survey for 14 years, and every year McKinsey has come out on top. In fact, the top four are unchanged from last year: McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Bain and Deloitte Consulting.
Fifth place shifted this year. In 2014 Booz & Company was in that slot, but in the spring of last year, accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers bought it and gave it the infelicitous name “Strategy&.” Suddenly the firm lost its name recognition, says Vault’s Phil Stott, who’s in charge of the ranking. The Booz name was confusing even before the acquisition. In 1914 Booz & Company was founded and grew into government consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton (where Edward Snowden was doing contract work for the NSA before he leaked classified data). In 2008 its corporate consulting business, Booz & Company, spun off and in 2008, the Carlyle Group acquired it. Confused yet? In fifth place this year: Booz Allen Hamilton, up from sixth last year. Strategy& sank to 19th.
Why is prestige important in the consulting business? For job seekers, having McKinsey or Boston Consulting on a résumé can open up opportunities, as The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal would on a journalist’s CV. Also people simply care about prestige. Says Stott, “For many people, their career defines them,” says Stott. “They want to work for the most prestigious firms because of that.”
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The list is dominated by huge firms with workforces in the thousands and multiple worldwide offices. An exception: the Bridgespan Group, located on Boston’s Copley Place. The firm has 158 employees and its focus is the nonprofit sector. It spun off from Bain in 1999 but kept its ties to the firm. Bain consultants can take a leave and work six to 12 months at Bridgespan.
Here are the top 10 most prestigious firms according to Vault:
1. McKinsey & Company
2. The Boston Consulting Group
3. Bain & Company
4. Deloitte Consulting
5. Booz Allen Hamilton
6. PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC
7. EY LLP Consulting Practice
8. Accenture
9. KPMG LLG (Consulting Practice)
10. IBM Global Business Services
For the complete list, click here.
