If you're interested in becoming a senior consultant, one of the first things you should consider is the amount of education you need. We have determined that 68.3% of senior consultants have a bachelor's degree, and 21.7% have master's degrees. It's impossible to become a senior consultant with just a high school degree or GED. When it comes to advancing in your position, it's a little different in every company.
But for our firm, the career path is associate consultant, senior consultant, director and partner. You have strictly two years to advance to the next level, and if you are not qualified enough to move up every two years, it is suggested that you leave. We researched employers that employ senior consultants and discovered their number of senior consulting opportunities and their average salary. If you joined entry-level firms and didn't go to graduate school, you could theoretically become a partner in just seven years at McKinsey or eight years at BCG or Bain.
Although wage variation is often a major problem in the industry, consulting firms have done a very good job of standardizing the salaries they pay to their talent, especially around levels of common starting points (e.g., in addition to managing analysts, they simultaneously synthesize the results of lines of work and share updates on progress with senior team leaders). That's how long it takes to learn specific senior consultant skills, but it doesn't take into account the time spent in formal education. With a senior degree, you'll need a lot of experience under your belt before moving on to this position. They will also be responsible for managing workflow results, catching up with senior leaders and communicating with their customers to see if they are on the right track. So, instead of having to change professions, we identified the best employers for remote work as a senior consultant.
At Boston Consulting Group, partners are referred to as “general managers” and, if they have held that position for 5 to 10 years, they can be promoted to senior managing directors. For example, when I was in the Boston Consulting Group office in Boston, it seemed that there were 8 to 9 beginning “associates” each year, compared to consultants of 30 to 50” (or more). In consulting projects, there are only three levels: they correspond roughly to the titles of the positions, with slight variations here and there. While all of these firms hire for beginners, the competition for these positions is much fiercer than for positions outside of graduate school. While legally most of the seniors in the three firms are referred to as “partners”, meaning they own a share in the company, they hold different titles. Most partners and senior leaders started at the beginning level (either after graduating from graduate school or after graduate school) and have worked their way up through every career position.
