How to negotiate a job offer.
I’ve been waiting for ages to do a video like this because whether you are new to consulting,
just finding it for the first time, or you have an offer in hand, this is one of the
most common questions that we get, and there is so much misinformation around it.
Now, negotiating a job offer in general you should do in every situation.
Ask for more: ask for more base, ask for more bonus, ask for more position, ask for more
of all things.
In fact, many firms bake in a negotiation around your initial offer when they make an
offer to you.
However, in consulting, the playing field is a little bit different, so I’m going
to walk through different positions and how in each position you should handle negotiations
for consulting salaries.
I’m Jenny Rae Le Roux, the Managing Director of Management Consulted, and if you want to
work one-on-one with somebody to prepare a negotiation, we would love to work with you.
We have coaching on our site at managementconsulted.com, and you can also just shoot us an email.
So let’s walk through some of the different information where we’re going to talk about
how you negotiate a job offer in consulting.
First of all, as an undergrad or an undergrad intern, you have absolutely no way to negotiate
for 95% of your comp package.
What that means is that the base that they are going to pay you, nonnegotiable.
And you basically have no other options.
If you’re going to investment baking versus consulting, they’re going to say have a
great time.
You’re going to hate it there, we are going to love our life here, you’re going to end
up in a good place, but don’t worry about it.
They are not even comparable.
If you try to compete firms against one another, they will say this is our firm, this is who
we are and this is what we pay.
So at the consulting firm level, there is no gender gap disparity based on who negotiates
and who doesn’t.
There is really no issue with how you negotiate because the focus is just here is the offer
letter, here is how it’s going.
The 5% that you can negotiate for is just what the non-tangibles are.
So, for example, if you are thinking about a start date, usually if you accept early,
they are going to give you the first choice of start dates.
But if you have a project that you want to do, or some travel that you want to go through,
you can often negotiate your start date.
You might be able to negotiate whether or not something historically factored in, if
you’re going in as an experienced hire.
So let’s say you worked for two years in the Peace Corps, and they are saying that
counts for zero.
Maybe you get it to count for six months.
All that it means is that you are on a different promotion cycle, but not different comp process.
So overall, really, basically nothing that you can do at the intern and undergraduate
level.
At an MBA level, it becomes a little bit different because as a summer intern, you have additional
things, like your office location that might really matter to you, and at the MBA or the
postgrad level, you’ll find more people that have a significant other that they are
working around, and consulting firms can help with that a little bit.
You’ll also find some people that are working at an international location and they want
to change offices post internship.
So our recommendation is that you take an offer that is in a place that you would want
to work only if you are really happy to work there.
You cannot try to negotiate it later, so if you want to ask for the intangibles at the
MBA level, you need to do that on the early side of the conditions.
When you go through the MBA full-time process, or MBA internships, there is no comp discussion.
Again, the base comp is the base comp, and they are like look, you may have had this
many years of previous experience, and this many years of this, but we are hiring you
out of an MBA program and everybody gets paid the same.
We are transparent about it.
This is a team environment.
So the firms are very strong about that.
But, signing bonuses can have timing tiers to them.
The earlier that you sign, the more you get to keep out of the signing bonus.
You might also have performance compensations.
But honestly, in the core, other than the same things like your start date and also
the office location, you don’t have a lot to negotiate on when you are at the MBA level.
When it becomes super interesting is when you are an experienced hire.
Because there, the firms don’t have anybody to keep you equal with.
Now, they are still finding an importance in transparency and in making sure that that
the team is the team, and there is no hotshot who’s coming in from the outside who’s
making twice as much as anybody else.
There are basically four levels at a consulting firm, and inside those levels there is the
number of years that you’ve been there.
And basically, everyone is on the same pathway.
So the major thing that you can negotiate for at the experienced hire level is how many
years down the pathway you should get counted, and that will affect your base comp, your
bonus target, and even potentially 401k match and other pieces of the comp package.
Overall, in consulting the things that you can always negotiate are those intangibles,
the things that are not directly related to the numbers of the comp, and then only when
you are an experienced hire can you do a lot for the negotiations.
If you’ve got questions, we’ve got lots more data on both how much firms are paying
to make sure you’re getting a fair deal, and also making sure that you’ve got all
of the information that you need to appropriately negotiate a salary without breaking down relationships.
If you’ve got questions about negotiations, or you have salaries that you are trying to
benchmark that are not published in our salary report, please reach out to us, or come visit
us at managementconsulted.com.