Consulting giants McKinsey & Co. and Bain & Co. are delaying start dates for new M.B.A. hires, or in some cases paying them thousands of dollars to put off starting their jobs.
Consulting firms are among the biggest recruiters of business-school talent. Delaying the start dates for so many fresh grads is causing anxiety on campuses and suggests these businesses may have wider concerns about the economy.
Bain told M.B.A.s with offer letters that if they waited to start until April 2024, the firm would pay them $40,000 to work for a nonprofit or $30,000 to learn a new language or participate in an educational program, in one communication that suggested hires could also become yoga instructors or go on safari for $20,000.
At McKinsey, many M.B.A.s hires don’t have start dates yet, several students with offer letters said. The company, which is in the process of laying off as many as 2,000 workers, said those new hires will be brought in over a series of months, from shortly after graduation through February 2024.
The decision to push back start dates into next year in some cases is an about-face for the consulting industry, which boomed during the pandemic as companies sought advice about how to revamp and adjust their businesses.
On Monday, Ernst & Young LLP, the accounting and consulting firm, said it would cut about 3,000 U.S. employees, or less than 5% of its workforce, after assessing current economic conditions. KPMG LLP said in February that it would lay off several hundred people in its consulting division in February, according to a spokesman.
Delaying start dates by months for new consultants “becomes more important when the economy is in a downturn,” said Keith Bevans, Bain’s global head of consultant recruiting. “We try to encourage more people to start earlier when times are busy.”
The campus of Harvard Business School.
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Consulting is one of the highest paying post-M.B.A. jobs, with median salaries reaching $175,000 for students who graduated in…
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