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McKinsey’s recruitment tests featuring its AI tool for business school graduates reflects a wider trend: new hires will have an AI-augmented career path, requiring new, and sometimes still unknown, skills.
It has always been tough to get an entry-level role at a top consultancy, but the Big Four (Deloitte, KPMG, EY, PwC) have been recruiting fewer new entrants, with some reportedly cutting graduate entries by nearly a third between 2023 and 2025. Top consultancies have frozen starting salaries for the third year running.
AI is on everyone’s mind, as it takes over some of the entry-level work in knowledge-based professions, even though its effects in isolation on graduate hiring overall is yet to be proved. An FT analysis in July 2025 found “other factors, including economic uncertainty, post-Covid retrenchment and offshoring are probably playing an equal or bigger role in falling graduate hiring”.
What does it take to be a standout candidate for a consultancy? Boston Consulting Group’s global people chair Alicia Pittman says the firm is looking for recruits with deep technical expertise, but adds that “what enables real impact is how well people bring technical insight together with business judgment, collaboration and leadership”.
These so-called “human skills”, previously known as “soft skills”, are in high demand in the job market. Pittman adds: “The fundamentals remain constant: curiosity, judgment, resilience and teamwork. Those traits matter even more in an AI-enabled environment.”
Once hired, consultants will usually find AI-augmented work processes are embedded in all areas of their training. EY global consulting talent leader Sonia Sande says day-to-day that means: “Our early career consultants increasingly use proprietary AI tools such as EYQ and our EY.ai agentic platform to streamline tasks like data entry, research and initial analysis. This frees up time for more value-adding work, including examining complex client issues, collaborating across teams, and supporting strategic decision making.”
With entry-level work tasks run through AI, she says it allows more time for “higher-judgment activities”, including involvement in client work and developing problem-solving skills.
Not all employers are focusing on AI skills as a top priority. Fionnuala O’Conor, partner at digital transformation consultancy OpDem, expects all recruits will already be proficient with AI, but says that “LLM [large language model] use is kryptonite for developing great consulting skills”. For new entrants, it “damages those problem-solving, prioritisation, determination and human muscles”. Instead, O’Conor says: “I focus on helping [new recruits] develop skills and judgment. As a boutique, we can’t afford not to deliver outstanding work, and that means nurturing outstanding consultants.”
In future, there may be far fewer consultants staying with a single employer and eventually becoming a partner. Management Consultancies Association chief executive Tamzen Isacsson says she is seeing people moving from industry into consulting and back again. “The consulting expertise [are people who] perhaps worked in the water industry, have worked in regulatory environments, and are providing advice around that.” She says industry and sector-specific skills, such as cyber resilience, digital skills and AI are in particularly high demand, reflected in the 66 per cent rise in the size of the consulting industry’s workforce over the past six years.
UK’s leading management consultants
This article is part of the UK’s leading management consultants Special Report.
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While later entry into consultancies may become more common, another option is to start at a large consultancy, then move to a smaller firm where opportunities to advance may come more quickly. Claudine Menashe-Jones, an executive coach and leadership specialist, who previously led a consulting firm, says: “Boutique firms aren’t big enough to train an army of consultants, so they need the skills to be there already. The ideal candidate is someone who has been trained up by the Big Four, but decides they want to be in a smaller pond. It still means your consulting skills have to be slick.”
Isacsson is optimistic that, long-term, entry-level jobs will continue to open up. If that is indeed the case, what is the future-proofing advice for anyone looking to enter consulting as a career? Deloitte UK’s director of early careers Lauren McCafferty says: “I’d advise students to get to know the industry and research jobs they are thinking of applying to in advance, engaging with employers early on. They should go to employer events and connect with people doing the work, getting to know what the job looks like day to day.”
