Top Management Consulting Ranking

1. Top Consulting Firms by Size

The Gartner, a global analyst firm, released a report on largest consulting firms in the world 2016 based on revenue. But please keep in mind that the definition of “management consulting” can be interpreted in a number of different ways. But it’s still interesting to see how these all firms stacked up together.

Through this research, the Big Four accounting firms are the world’s largest consulting firms, accounting for nearly 40% of the industry’s $150 billion global market. PwC, Deloitte, EY and KPMG are followed by McKinsey & Company and The Boston Consulting Group.

McKinsey & Company and BCG (known as the most prestigious and highest-paying companies) completed in top six in this ranking.

Sources: Data from Gartner and Vault

2. Top Consulting Firms by Salary

Top management consulting firms generally pay handsome salaries thanks to their high-margin businesses based on a relatively small workforce. McKinsey & Co. and Boston Consulting Group may not be the biggest, but they certainly pay big salaries.

To come up with this ranking, we collected data from a number of source, e.g: industry insiders, readers’ reports, and other independent sources.

The ranking below is classified for both Undergrad level as well as MBA level. The data is mainly applicable to US offices. Other offices around the globe generally pay the same level of salaries with some adjustments for the local cost of living.

Ranking of Salary of entry levels, US ($ thousand per year)

Besides that, we also collected the salary data for higher level: Managers, Principals, etc. of some notable management consulting firms. That data is summarized here.

Salary of all levels, MBB+, US ($ thousand per year)

For an updated, comprehensive list of salary figures from 12 major consulting firms,
for all positions and backgrounds, see this article below:

3. Top Consulting Firms by Reviews

As we discussed above, management consulting is a highly-rewarding career — However, which are the best firms to work for, and why? 

Hence, based on various resources, I want to show rankings of the top consulting firms in consulting industry and other industries as well.

First, based on statista.com and vault.com, we want to show rankings of the top consulting firms in consulting industry in 2016, by prestige rating. The ranking considers a firm’s reputation as well as employees’ satisfaction with key factors influencing their work life, such as culture, compensation and promotion policies.

Thanks to raising employee satisfaction while maintaining prestige, McKinsey was the first best-rated consultancy firm to work for 2016, following by the Boston Consulting Group and Bain & Company.

Here is the overall ranking for the best consulting firms to work for 2016:

Besides that, we also collected data from glassdoor.com and Forbes to feature where top consulting firms comparing with other companies of all industries.

These rankings are based on employee’s opinions on the reason to work for the company such as their satisfaction with their employers overall, their CEO, career opportunities, compensation and benefits, culture and values.

Though there are some differences on employees’ reviews rankings between Glassdoor and Forbes, MBB (McKinsey, Bain, and BCG) are always on the top 11 of ALL companies to work for. There is no other industries can have up to 3 companies on the top 11 overall like this (even the hot Silicon Valley “industry”).

We have provided firm-by-firm rankings for 3 main dimensions. While there is some room for controversy as which is the leading company, we hope this is a fairly good point of view for those interested in applying to work in consulting industry.