How long does it take to get promoted in consulting?

Most new consultants arrive at their consulting firm with unrealistic expectations of how quickly they’ll be promoted. 

This blog is intended to be an insight into realistic promotion timelines for each level. 

Analyst to Consultant: 2 years

On average, most analysts are promoted to consultant after about two years. Some firms have a level in between analyst and consultant such as senior analyst. In this instance, you might find it takes closer to three years to make the consultant grade.

Consultant to Senior Consultant: 2-3 years

This transition is all about refining and maturing your consultancy skills. By the time consultants are ready to become senior consultants, they’ll be proactive strategic thinkers who have started to hone some leadership skills through managing a small team of analysts. 

Some consulting firms don’t have a senior consultant level which means you’d be jumping straight from consultant to Manager. In this instance, you can expect to take 3+ years for promotion. 

Senior Consultant to Manager: 2-4 years

This is where durations can vary. The quickest senior consultants will take around two years to make Manager. Meanwhile others might take a little longer for a variety of reasons. 

Having the right engagement and client to build your consulting manager promotion case is essential and it might take a bit of time to find the perfect project.

You’ll need to be demonstrating strong commercial awareness as well as good leadership skills to earn your manager promotion. This is all on top of having an engagement of sufficient complexity to show you can handle the tougher work. 

Manager to Senior Manager: 3-5 years

Some people claim this is the hardest promotion jump in the whole consulting career trajectory.

Stepping up to Senior Manager shouldn’t be underestimated and it takes time to refine and perfect your skills. You should expect to spend at least three years at Manager level before you’re ready for Senior Manager. There are some rare outliers who will make it quicker but this is very unusual. Even three years is considered very good.

The average promotion time to Senior Manager in consulting is around four years. This is because you need time to build your commercial acumen and also the relationships that will translate into sales. When you reach Senior Manager, your time will be starting to shift away from being predominantly client focused into a more equal split between client and firm. 

You will be expected to be actively contributing to sales and building commercially focused client relationships. Alongside this, you need to have strong leadership skills to ensure your consulting teams are delivering high quality engagement outputs, without the need for you to micromanage. 

You need to be patient and invest the right time into building your Senior Manager skills, if you try to rush this, you’ll only get tripped up when you’re trying to make Partner.

Senior Manager to Managing Director/Partner: 4-8 years

Now you’re playing at the top table and want to make it to the big seat. Managing Director or Partner is the cherry on the consulting career cake. If you want to know the difference between Managing Directors and Partners, check out this blog. 

It takes an average of six years to be promoted to Partner and the promotion process isn’t easy. You’ll need to present your pitch about why you deserve to be Partner and have a series of interviews to ensure you’re ready for the step up.

Most people don’t succeed the first time so you might need to try a few times before you make it. 

Is consulting a fast promotion career?

The very best in McKinsey, BCG and Bain make Partner in nine years; for the Big Four this is more like 15 years. 

If you consider the compensation packages as well LINK, this means you could potentially be earning a base salary of £155 000 by the time you’re in your mid-thirties.

By contrast, in industry you’d have to keep changing companies to have any chance of making that level of seniority that quickly. 

Even if you take an ‘average’ amount of time to get promoted in consulting, it is still a more promising promotion path than industry. 

The Takeaway

There’ll be examples of people who’ve gone faster than this and people who’ve taken a little longer. Ultimately there’s no right or wrong and everyone should travel the consultancy promotion path at the speed that’s right for them.