Recruitment Consultants

We've just finished compiling the results of this year's candidate survey, detailing the recruitment agencies you've had the best experiences of using, the job boards and newspapers you read most often and so on. Tons of insights and useful data for both management consultancy candidates and management consultancy recruiters alike. The full report is now downloadable (details below), but in particular I wanted to give special recognition to 7 recruitment consultants who were highly rated by our readers. We're always being asked for recommendations of recruiters that candidates should speak with - so here's a definitive list as voted for by you the Top-Consultant readership!

The following 7 individuals consistently exceeded candidate expectations in providing a thoroughly professional interface between candidate and client. Congratulations to:

>> Chris Sale - Prism Executive Recruitment

>> Martin Hancock - Prism Executive Recruitment

>> Angela Heath - Beament Leslie Thomas

>> Andrew Bott - EM Consulting

>> Nick Coppin - Acumen Search (formerly @ Madison Maclean)

>> Karl Mann - The Cornell Partnership

>> Victoria Lack - Prism Executive Recruitment


Hats off to all 7 of you!

Tony

PS a full copy of the report can be downloaded from this page

Salaries in Consulting

Big £$ salaries and Management Consulting used to go hand-in-hand, back in the good old dot-com days. With the consultancy market having rebounded of late, our suspicion has been that firms would be forced to pay more - come the 2005/06 pay review window...

... and now at last we can prove that this has indeed been the case. Our salary benchmarking report has just been published, based on data from over 1,000 participating management consultants. What's interesting is the wide range in salaries, pay rises / promotions and bonus payments of late. There have been some real winners in the recent consulting upturn - and others that have fared much less well.

Which category do you fall into?

Well now you can find out, because this report is available as a free download to all Top-Consultant readers. You can get your copy (in PDF format) from:
http://www.top-consultant.com/salary_report_2006.pdf

Any feedback on this year's report much appreciated. Do post your comments below...

Tony

Networking skills

Whenever you see the most successful consulting Partners in action, they seem to be natural networkers. People that can work a room, talk to anyone and everyone - and leave an event having made precious business contacts... that over time accumulate into an enviable business network and stream of new client leads.

Mention "networking" to consultants - or indeed any professional - earlier in their career and it seems to be a notion that fills people with dread. I for one love to be in a room of people that want to talk to me - but put me in a room full of strangers where I must make the first move: that's a totally different proposition! Are you the same?!

Having admitted to this, I personally loathe identifying a professional weakness like this and doing nothing about it. And so through some introductions via Ecademy I came across an organisation that specialises in teaching people how to network. We asked them to lay on an event especially for Top-Consultant readers and here's what they have devised for us. I'll feed back some of the gems of advice from the event on this blog mid-March time. But would be great to see lots of you there in person, so if you can make it on 10th March then do sign up for the event here.

And for those of you who are already experts at working a room, do please share your tips and your success stories by posting a comment here... Cheers, Tony

Recruiters adamant: 2006 will be a bumper year for candidates!

Here's some cheery news to share with everyone interested in the health of the management consultancy sector. For our forthcoming recruiters' event we asked the 250 attendees (a mix of HR managers and recruitment consultants) to assess the likely buoyancy of the consultancy recruitment market in 2006 - always a good indicator of how healthy the consulting market as a whole is looking...

On the back of a buoyant 2005, an incredible 81% of recruiters believe recruitment levels will be higher still in 2006. The remainder almost all believe the market will be as buoyant as it was in 2005. What other sector can boast that only 1% of executives believe the market will be quieter in 2006 than it was in 2005??

Here's to a bumper year for us all!

Tony

PS Here are those results in full:

Q. Do you envisage your company will make more hires / placements in 2006 than in 2005?

Significantly more hires / placements than in 2005
(35.53%)

More hires / placements than in 2005
(46.49%)

A similar number of hires / placements to 2005
(16.67%)

Fewer hires / placements than in 2005
(0.44%)

Significantly fewer hires / placements than in 2005
(0.44%)

Recharging for the New Year

A short post to wish all our readers a very Merry Christmas and enjoyable break from work.

Conversations with Consultants, FTSE clients, HR managers and recruitment agencies alike all seem to point to 2006 being a very hectic year for those of us working in the consulting industry. So do have a great break and come back in the New Year fully recharged and ready for a really busy year and sky-high utilisation rates!

Season's Greetings, Tony