The top 10 management consulting firms to work for in New York
McKinsey & Company is the top management consulting firm to work for in New York, according to an analysis of consultancies based in the Big Apple. The company, which also offers the highest base-pay of the list, is followed by The Boston Consulting Group and third placed Deloitte.
World renowned names such as Wall Street and Times Square continue to see New York renowned as the global centre of finance and innovation, making it an especially attractive locale for management consulting firms to place their operations. Evaluating the top firms based across a wide range of factors – including quality of engagements, office hours, salary, office appearance and culture among other criteria – reveals the top ten consultancy companies to work for in America’s main financial epicentre.
1. McKinsey & Company
Address: 55 E 52nd Street
Topping the analysis, McKinsey & Company has its headquarters and largest global office in New York, with over 900 consultants dedicated to serving clients. Established in 1926, the firm has been around for nine decades, establishing a diverse legacy, through over 3000 alumni including business founders and CEOs. The office in New York also boasts an equally diverse workforce, with employees originating from over 35 countries. In New York McKinsey offers advisory services in the financial, healthcare and advanced electronics sectors, along with TMT (technology, media, and telecommunications), automotive and assembly, chemical and electronic power and natural gas industrial consulting. They also boast aerospace and defence, capital and infrastructure wings in their extremely broad portfolio.
While such a chaotic concoction of fields of work might give prospective workers pause for thought, however, at a base rate of $139,000, with a management consultant’s salary is $160,239 on average, the appeal of working for McKinsey does not diminish, as the firm ensure hard work is well rewarded. McKinsey also promotes equality through recruitment practices as demonstrated by their award from the Human Rights Campaign Foundations 2016 for being enlisted in the top 10 in corporate equality index, measuring the opportunities with regards to LGBT rights and gender gaps at top firms. The firm also provides generous compensation and benefits, and is therefore highly competitive and especially hard to get into to.
2. The Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
Address: 10 Hudson Yards
BCG is prevalent through out the world, particularly in New York and neighbouring states Massachusetts and New Jersey. One of the truly unique features BCG offers is periods of consultation between staff and management when designing company infrastructure, which recently saw all employees given the opportunity to contribute their ideas and innovative thoughts for the new Hudson Yards office. This illustrates the upsurge in creativity across all sectors and from all backgrounds. According to data from Indeed, the average Boston Consulting Group salary is between $82,463 per year for Senior Analysts and $199,651 per year for Project Leaders. Hourly pay meanwhile ranges from $25.00 per hour for a CAD Designer to $91.59 per hour for Project Leader. The regional BCG office specialises in the sectors of corporate development and finance, digital economy, globalisation, growth, IT, marketing and sales, and post-merger integration and risk management, among a number of other strategic offerings.
3. Deloitte Consulting
Address: 30 Rockefeller Plaza
Big Four professional services giant Deloitte reaches beyond consulting to include audit, tax and financial advisory services offered by its over 5,000 trained professionals. Unlike most competing consultancy firms, the Deloitte’s New York office has a hoteling system, giving employees no assigned desk, instead opting for hot-desking when individuals aren’t travelling to various global clients. Perhaps the most environmentally friendly office in Manhattan, the site obtained US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certification at the Gold level for commercial interiors in 2013.
The firm, which recently received a 100% CarbonNeutral certification for the sixth year in a row, designed their national office to be a state of the art next-generation workplace. 30 Rockefeller Plaza, or 30 Rock, also happens to be a more prominent workplace than could be imagined, with NBC anchors and other TV celebrities going to work. The New York office has a vast diversity pool, and despite it’s heavy hitting office the top leaders tend to work remotely. With programmes such as IMPACT, 5000 employees are dispersed across New York City. It is not uncommon to see Deloitte workers at New York Cares Day, New York City Race for the Cure, the New York City Marathon, and the NYC Multiple Sclerosis Bike Tour as the company remains involved in a wide array of corporate social responsibility efforts. The base salary for Deloitte is $94,000, a significant drop from McKinsey.
4. PwC
Address: 300 Madison Avenue, New York 10017
Fellow Big Four firm PwC’s headquarters control a large range of member firms, with over 83 offices in the US alone. The offerings available to all PwC clients in the New York office include cyber security consulting, financial and tax advisory services, among others.
PwC aims to promote a contrasting workplace atmosphere to that of Deloitte meanwhile, and comparatively works to ensure its own employees work reasonable hours, and have a good work to free time ratio. Though PwC does offer consulting, it is no match for the consulting sector in Deloitte, and therefore offers a more worker friendly environment with lower levels of stress. The working hours are more relaxed than the aforementioned firms, as staff are permitted to work remotely as long as they complete their tasks, while the firm also offers generous holiday packages. Overall then, PwC does allow workers greater flexibility, with the office often being quiet on weekdays, especially for one of the professional services elite’s largest companies.
5. Bain & Company
Address: 1114 Avenue of the Americas, 43rd Floor
Established in New York 1973, the well-known consultancy moved to the Grace Building in 2015, right beside Bryant Park. The office also has a hi-tech conference room which is able to unite employees from all 55 offices. Bain generates a large revenue, and yet still fulfils an immense pro-bono case practice, with free consulting services are made available to non-profit organisations on an annual basis.
The New York office worked for the Alliance for Downtown New York, after 9/11 they hired Bain. The recommendations made by Bain in regards to transportation issues, involving numerous big companies in such as Bank of New York, AIG, Depository Trust, Standard & Poor’s and so forth were successfully executed in response to the attack. The city’s mayor even visited the new office in 2015 due to the prominence of the NYC DOE design project. Bain supports its clients in a large range of different industries, and tend to hire Associate Consultant and Consultant full-time positions from the most prestigious universities with a particular emphasis placed on Northeast Ivies. Summer internship programmes are also offered to first year MBA students as well s undergraduates, with an increasing interest in the APD recruiting. The average base salary is $ 64,000.
6. EY
Address: 5 Times Square
EY, another Big Four member and the world’s second largest accounting advisory firm, is located in the centre of New York, with a strong sector in consulting which has served numerous financial institutions as well as other organisations for decades. The introduction of a new lighting retrofit project in the New York headquarters was recorded as one of the largest lighting retrofits on record. EY is identified with Advisory practice areas. Since the acquisition of Parthenon, the major advisory sectors of the firm focus on performance improvement, risk management and IT.
The company generally takes more time to focus on the personal development of staff, with skills training not being particularly strong, the company does provide great opportunities for consulting due to further developments being made in the consulting industry. EY's CEO, Mark Weinberger, who is based out of EY's New York office, was recently named the most popular CEO of Big Four and consulting firms.
7. Accenture
Address: 1345 Avenue of the Americas and 11 Broadway
While Accenture has its headquarters in Chicago, the New York offices are often referred to as their home away from home, and are considered to be among the largest consulting offices in New York, with over 2000 employees. The main industries catered to by Accenture in New York are public services, production and the financial industry. The firm offers these sectors a range of services including analytics, high-end IT advisory, healthcare, media and communications consulting and cyber security expertise, among other things.
Accenture has two offices in New York, one on 1345 being known as the ‘second headquarters’, and a smaller office which deals with technology for the financial service industry, undertaken by consultants working in the Broadway office. The firm provides its employees a vast amount of career opportunities, including the chance to work with colleagues from different backgrounds such as tech geniuses and great compensation for all hard working employees.
8. KPMG
Address: 345 Park Avenue
The final member of the Big Four present on the list, KPMG’s New York headquarters for its the audit, tax, and advisory operations are located at the heart of Manhattan. KPMG is widely recognised as valuing corporate social responsibility highly, which sees the office of more than 2300 employees often participating in charitable activities. The firm’s employees focus on the audit and risk, advisory service and tax offerings of the company, with 152 audit and risk partners and 61 tax partners under their roof. Alike to EY, KPMG also features some aspects of strategy and management consulting.
KPMG boasts a rigorous training programme for new employees, and also attracts new blood through promotion of a good working atmosphere, rather than a higher-end pay packet. Compared with other members of the Big Four, KPMG provides a lower salary to its employees, and the number investments in an individual’s personal development beyond initial training is small.
9. Booz Allen Hamilton
Address: 1095 Avenue of the Americas
Booz Allen Hamilton was established in 1914, and for centuries has held a respectable reputation rising to one of the biggest firms in the consulting industry. Booz Allen Hamilton is diverse in the services that if offers, which include cybersecurity, modelling and simulation, organisation and strategy and systems engineers and integration, among others.
Booz Allen Hamilton is mostly centred around technical expertise, and however employees also gain access to a colossal amount of food, beverages and entertainment with the events that the company caters to through those fields. Beyond workplace feasts however, sustaining a lavish lifestyle in New York may be difficult for employees due to the lower salary offered in comparison to its counterparts. Job applicants need to display some interest in government in order to succeed meanwhile, as Booz Allen Hamilton primarily focuses on government-centric consulting work, therefore restricting opportunities for commercial and private sector work.
10. IBM Global Business Services
Address: 1 New Orchard Road
Unlike most other major professional service firms, IBM’s HQ does not lie in the city centre but rather in the suburbs. The key offerings of Big Blue naturally focus on IT infrastructure, with the historical field of the firm being technological expertise, along with analytics, mobile implementation, customer service management, cloud computing and cybersecurity services.
It’s a highly technical office, and strategy work performed by employees is largely diagnostic pre-sales to compliment IBM’s implementation services. While it is among the top places to work in the NYC consulting scene however, IBM staff face an uncertain future, and the firm recently had to cut back on their number of workers in the US, Asia and Europe, with a staggering 700 high-technology loss of jobs in New York’s Hudson Valley.
Related: The best consulting firms for graduates in Australia.