MANAGEMENT consultancy: a career full of helicopter rides and long lunches with chief executives discussing how best to maximise turnover. Very glamorous. Try telling that to the new-starter consultant who’s just spent six months crunching numbers in Crewe, living out of a suitcase at a “four-star” hotel.

Still, the reality doesn’t stop it being a hugely popular career choice for graduates. Consultancy firms have a skills gap, the legacy of a recruitment freeze during the economic downturn in 2000-01, and they can’t recruit people quickly enough.

Dominic Reimbold, a senior consultant in professional services at the recruitment consultancy Imprint Search, says that companies are having to work hard to recruit candidates at every level. To make the most of the jobs market, candidates should send out 20 or 30 tailored CVs, as well as picking up the phone to ask “what have you got?” Many consultancies are hosting get-to-know-you evenings and “that wasn’t happening two or three years ago”, Reimbold says.

The Big Four professional services firms have long been graduates’ favourite employers. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) recruited 70 graduates and Deloitte 150 graduates into consultancy last year. This year Ernst & Young and KPMG advisory services will recruit 20 graduates and 55 graduates respectively. The consultancy giant Accenture recruits about 500 graduates a year.

“Analytical skills are the backbone of consultancy and while Deloitte takes on graduates across all degree disciplines, we are actively recruiting people with degrees in IT, science, maths and business,” Ian McNeil, a recruitment partner in consulting, says. “We also go for people who have travelled the world and who have job experience. We find that many have done charity work. It’s that roundedness of experience that we’re looking for.”

Those who miss the graduate intake shouldn’t give up. “We’re keen to market ourselves to people who have left university, started a career and realised they have made a mistake,” says Tim Forster, the head of experienced higher recruitment at PwC. Many who go into the advisory arm of PwC join as trainee accountants — “cross-pollenation” is common practice in firms with multiple business areas.

Small firms offer less structured career paths, giving candidates the chance to get closer to the action, but are not a soft option. “We try to instil the same rigour as the big firms but we take on fewer graduates,” says Sonja van Oudtshoorn, the HR director at Kurt Salmon Associates (KSA), a consultancy working in the consumer products, retail and healthcare industries.

“Graduates see clients very early on, so they have to be full, rounded people,” Van Oudtshoorn says. KSA also seeks graduates fluent in a second European language. Mercer Human Resource Consulting says that it now places equal emphasis on “behavioural competences” and technical skills. Atkins Management Consultants says that it will recruit ten graduates this year, all of whom will have good interpersonal skills backed up with an IT or business-related degree.

The message is clear: there’s never been a better time for graduates to get their heads around management consultancy. Just don’t forget to hone your social skills along with your CV.

A REWARDING JOB?

THEY USED TO BE MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS

Meg Whitman, president and CEO of eBay, the internet auction company, used to be a consultant at Bain & Company, as did John Donahoe, the eBay Marketplaces president.

John Tiner, chief executive of the Financial Services Authority, became the head of Arthur Andersen’s world-wide Financial Services Industry practice in 1997, having joined the firm 21 years earlier. He led the Bank of England review of banking supervision in 1996.

Brendan Meehan, the managing director of Resolution Management Services, which provide financial and administration support to Resolution plc, the closed life funds consolidator, was a partner at KPMG, where he advised the life assurance industry.

William Hague, the Conservative MP and Shadow Foreign Secretary, worked at McKinsey & Company and has also enjoyed stints as Leader of the Opposition, a biographer and a media personality.

Richard Granger, director general of IT at the NHS, was a partner at Deloitte Consulting before he took on the task of modernising health service IT. He has also worked on London’s congestion charging scheme.

Helen Andrews, a senior HR business partner at Mastercard Europe, was an executive consultant in the Atos People & Change Practice. She worked as an IT and business consultant.

Ian Watmore, the head of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, was Accenture UK’s managing director. He has also been the head of e-Government and has served as the president of the Management Consultancies Association.

Kenneth Chenault, the chairman and CEO of American Express, ended a career as a lawyer to join Bain as a consultant. He held a number of senior posts at Amex before rising to his present position in 2001.

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