EY Consulting (EMEIA FSO London) is in shambles. Second year graduate at PwC Management Consulting now gets £37k due to the recent pay rise plus a £1.25k bonus (first year was £31k). I’ve seen this payslip myself as my housemate works there. I can post a photo of it in the comments. Meanwhile, EY pays £33.5k, no bonus, treat grads like executive assistants and don’t win interesting work as PwC and Deloitte are clearly more competent. Rubbish organisation, senior leadership should be embarrassed.
I don’t work at EY but if I did I would tell you that’s a rubbish way to bring about change.
Grads don’t do real consulting work and it’s about luck for those that do. I’ve been “lucky” with some projects which I’ve really enjoyed. This unfortunately is 10% of the time. The majority of my experience has been me being told I cannot speak to a client as I’m an “investment” (EY way of winning work and offering a grad for free), or ending up doing admin (tracking project margins etc). I have to fight for more responsibility (apart from the good projects I’ve mentioned above), if I’m doing more admin work. Most of the applied learning has been diverted to side of desk. 5 grads in my competency alone have left before their first year have finished. They advertise real consulting work, but simply don’t provide it. Speaking to consultants who transitioned to EYP have said the same. I have friends at PwC and Deloitte who actually use their brains on projects and have more frequently interesting work in their pipeline. I have a 1st class degree and had more responsibility in my placement year in industry (which I won a company award for my work). I don’t mind being paid significantly below competition if I am actually learning something!
£37k in London.
How does one live off that 🤮
Serious budgeting 😂
I started out as a graduate trainee consultant in London 6 years ago and moved to NYC last year. The fact that new graduates in 2022 are still making the same starting salary as I did 6 years ago (with the COL having risen exponentially) is truly shocking.
In the US, starting salaries for college hires are revised every year and is now almost $95k base in high COL cities. The sad thing is UK grads (at least the people I started out with and the batch 1-2 years below us) are much smarter and skilled than the grads I’ve encountered in the US.
While I do miss London (NYC is bit of a dump) and miss some aspects of working as a consultant in London (the people, the socials, some of the work), I’m glad that I made the decision to move across the pond. To anyone just starting out, if you ever get the chance to move to the US or somewhere like Switzerland do it. I don’t see myself coming back to the UK to be a consultant unless I get offered Partners because you get robbed working as a consultant here. The UK is a terrible terrible place to be a consultant.
US starting salaries are MUCH lower than $95k unless you are referring to Parthenon.