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I take a good amount of PTO and easily hit my utilization targets due to 45 hour work weeks and some OT hours thrown in. I was like 120% utilized last year and took 5 weeks PTO.
B4 tracks it in the individual level to ensure we don’t have too many folks on the bench
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Ye, as a general rule, we charge 45 hours per client. We also, as someone above said, have separate codes for PTO, training, conferences, etc. that don’t impact your “effective” utilization, which is also considered.
Bain does not track hours utilization as an individual performance metric. We do track weekly/monthly utilization at a cohort level- we have to manage the business that way.
That said, we do look at how much a person is staffed in a 6 month review cycle. It is not possible to demonstrate progression on skills without being staffed.
So, don’t sweat the week to week. Do take cues from your staffing manager. And don’t say no to every case because they aren’t aligned with your interest. At the end of the day this is a job where you get paid to do work, you don’t get paid to have interests. And if you put together enough of a string of ‘not interested in this case’ the meta message you are sending is ‘not interested to be employed’
Are you brand new to consulting? This is probably the single most important metric for anyone in consulting. It’s essentially: of the time you’re working, how much of that time was spent billing hours to clients?
M1 I'm an S1 and my counselor at EY has told me utilization/charged hours are the single most significant factor in year-end performance reviews
At MBBs utilization is tracked but not leveraged as a performance mgmt metric (not factored into promotions). It is used as an operational metric in the back-end for scheduling & outliers.
At big 4 and other firms like Acn, utilization is highly focused on as a performance mgmt metric across all levels (seeps into regularly staffing decisions).
Personally I much prefer MBBs approach. The focus is on delivering quality work to satisfied clients you're serving. Big 4s and Acn's of the world that permeate it into performance reviews show by actions that it is a 'sweat shop' (sweat your assets and keep utilization high like a production line). You can tell right off the bat how these places have diverging cultures due to how they treat their people.
ACN1 if you performed so badly that people don’t want to staff tou, that would get reflected in performance reviews.
If you lack core skills, that would get reflected in performance reviews to an extent as well (acknowledging here that this applies more to tech consulting - you don’t that kind of upskilling on tools in strategy / management consulting).
All in all, utilization isn’t giving you any novel information that reviews aren’t capturing.
40 hour work week, how many of those are billable?
40 hours = 100% utilization. Most of the big4 have targets (requirements) of 90-95% utilization for all pre manager levels.
Makes it hard to do vacations, take trainings, etc, while still hitting your target
90-95%??? My target is 78% and it decreases as you move up because you are doing more sales and manager revenue work.
Thanks for the replies! Seems like a weird metric to track based on given how much of consulting is about PD opportunities and interest, so there could be down time while you find the perfect opp! But appreciate learning how it works elsewhere!
There's 2 different metrics here though - there is chargeability, which is time billed to a client directly, and recoverability, which would be time billing to a BD code for example.
Then there are internal charge codes, like training, leave etc
And finally unassigned, which can ding you a bit if it's for a very long time
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D3- we work far fewer hours than MBB folks do, so not sure how we would be considered the sweat shops. It is used as both an individual and group performance metric. If an individual is not highly utilized while their peers are, then there is empirical evidence that suggests either they don’t want to work or are not deemed as a solid resource. If the entire practice is under-utilized, then there is a different issue at hand with the practice leadership, number of personnel allocated to the practice, or industry itself.
Yes, correct BCG2. Thanks for the clarification
I work in a specialty technology. Our work is not as much about interesting cases. You join our practice because you like our methodologies, work/life balance, and you like this tech and want to keep doing it.
Therefore, for us to pay people decently and not give them OT we track utilization in a very detailed way. But it is mostly leaders who get the pressure to staff individuals. The individuals themselves know their number but an individual contributor can’t really sell work. If things get really bad we might ask them to take on a short case outside their main skill.
NAP, yo, cmon
Doesn’t every firm do this? What firm doesn’t do this?