Three of the UK’s largest management consultancies are boosting the amount of young people and graduates they recruit this year amid sector-wide concern that AI will disrupt junior hiring. 

Both Bain & Co and Alvarez & Marsal’s UK bosses said they will be stepping up the amount of junior hires over the next few years and believe AI will not impact junior consultants in spite of widespread fears it will. 

Managing partner of Big Three firm Bain & Co, Clare Gordon, told the Times that the company, which guides chief executives and boards on strategic planning and major deals, has increased its targets for recruitment twice this year already. 

Gordon said that graduate hiring would be 25 per cent higher than last year at the firm as Bain & Co “needs juniors working alongside more senior experts, so they can develop the judgment, the expertise, the pattern knowledge of how you drive change through organisations”.

She added that this would see graduate hiring “well above pre-pandemic levels” and it would amount to “triple-digit numbers of graduates and junior hires up to consultant grade”. 

Alvarez & Marsal’s European Practice lead, Antonio Alvarez III, also said the firm plans to ramp up their graduate hiring over the years to come, and has set up talks with educational institutions in the US and Europe to set up graduate schemes. 

“We’re in the process of making some alliances with leading institutions. We’ve recruited on campuses before, more in the US, less so in Europe. But I think that’s where we’re going to need to go. I’m hiring more junior people — I actually need grads,” Alvarez said. 

Alongside Alvarez and Bain & Co, Big Three consulting giant Boston Consulting Group (BCG) also said the firm “plans to hire consistent if not slightly increased numbers this year”.

Sector facing a reckoning with AI

The consultancy sector for years has relied on a traditional model and profitable formula to stay afloat, but it is facing major disruption as many firms cut headcount because of AI reshaping how consultants work, especially juniors.

There has been a lot of noise around the future of the junior consultant as the technology automates much of the grunt work juniors would traditionally be dealt – such as research and data analysis.

Last summer, it was revealed that the Big Four giants began to cut hundreds of entry level jobs and majorly pulling back on graduate recruitment.

Clients are also reshaping their expectations of firms and how much they charge for their services as AI is increasingly being used.