Getting the Most Out of Harvard B-School

Which Industry Has The Highest Turnover Among MBAs?

In full-time MBA employment reports, you’ll often find consulting as the top consumers of talent. At MIT Sloan, for example, consultants have gobbled up nearly a third of the last three graduating classes, while offering the highest average salaries. In fact, according to Bloomberg Businessweek data, consulting trumps finance and technology as the industry choice.

While consulting does a magnificent job at attracting the best-and-brightest, it also does the worst job of any industry in retaining talent. Bloomberg Businessweek reports that 63% of consultants leave the field within six to eight years. And it’s not even close, with the second highest turnover rate coming in retail at roughly 52% (followed by transportation at approximately 49%). Worse yet, the turnover rate in consulting more than doubles those in the finance and tech industries, where the rates are 27% and 28% respectively during that same timeframe. The data was based on survey responses from over 12,700 MBA alumni who participated in Businessweek’s business school rankings.

On the surface, this seems counterintuitive. With consulting, you get big paychecks, diverse projects and clients, and (sometimes) world travel. Not to mention, you’re hobnobbing with senior executives and continuously learning. Over time, you build a skillset as enviable as your network. Then again, these benefits may also explain the turnover. For many, consulting is a stepping stone, an experience that makes them more coveted in the market over time. It exposes them to executive decision-making, industry details and successful organizational structures and methods.

Even more, as many consultants soon learn, their employers aren’t threatened or embittered when they leave the nest, says Tony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education & the Workforce. “Consulting firms know that the young talent they work so hard to lure in with all the perks and travel and flexibility will probably leave sooner rather than later,” he tells Bloomberg Businessweek.

More than that, they view former consultants as potential clients down the road, adds Julia Zupko, assistant dean and director of career development at the Yale School of Management. “Consulting firms want their alumni to continue to give back to the firm,” she points out in Bloomberg Businessweek. “They view it as a long-term relationship.”

And that’s particularly important considering the wide range of industries where former consultants end up. The largest number (just 13%) move into technology, with another 10% migrating to financial services.  In other words, 77% of former consultants are sprawled across the rest of the marketplace. That means they can give their former employers a foothold in new companies and industries. And that turns these firms’ alumni networks into the gifts that keep on giving.

DON”T MISS: Consulting: Why So Many MBAs Do It

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek