- AI is changing what it means to work in consulting.
- Technologist roles are on the rise, and firms are refocusing talent initiatives towards upskilling.
- Business Insider spoke to nine executives and industry insiders about what skills are in demand in the AI era.
AI is pushing consultants to their biggest-ever talent overhaul.
As firms shift from slide decks and advisory work to multi-year AI-driven transformation projects, the profile of the ideal consultant at firms like Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey, and PwC is changing.
"Going to a client and purely proposing an army of consultants doesn't really work anymore," Gert De Geyter, a former AI lead at Deloitte US, told Business Insider.
Instead of the "pure traditional consultant," firms are now looking for a blend of "generalists and technical experts," said De Geyter, who left the firm in July to join AI startup Teragonia.
Business Insider spoke to nine executives and industry insiders to understand how consulting firms are hiring, retraining, and redefining their workforces to meet the moment.
A good time to be a technologist
The work that consultants do is changing. Straight advisory projects are being replaced with building, implementing, and maintaining tools for companies, requiring technology expertise over research skills.
Hiring data reveals how aggressively top firms have been expanding their technologist ranks. Accenture's latest annual report shows it added nearly 40,000 AI and data professionals in the last two years. They now account for roughly 10% of its global head count. EY has added 61,000 technologists since 2023, according to its latest annual report.
At McKinsey, the "AI engineer" is the fastest-growing non-entry-level role, followed by procurement officer, data scientist, and software engineer, according to workforce intelligence company Revelio Labs.
At Boston Consulting Group, software engineers, frontend developers, and Python developers are the fastest-growing entry-level roles.
BCG, which brought on 1,000 employees last year, has ramped up hiring technologists since launching its tech and AI arm, BCG X, in late 2022.
"We're essentially building a tech company inside a consulting firm," said Sylvain Duranton, Global Leader of BCG X. "Our job has always been to help companies transform. But tech has become so critical to transformation that we needed to have a grip on it ourselves."
Its regular consulting division is also adopting a more tech-centric mentality.
Scott Wilder, a BCG partner and managing director, told Business Insider that a new team, called "forward deployed consultants," is rising through the ranks. It takes inspiration from a software engineering role popularized by Palantir, Wilder said.
These consultants are vibe-coding and building tools on client projects, he said. When one of these tools is a hit, it goes back to the R&D team and becomes a broader tool that everyone can use.
Moving between worlds
For firms like McKinsey and BCG, the must-have hire in the AI era isn't a pure engineer or a pure consultant — it's someone who can move between both worlds.
"What we want to be able to do is find those people that actually have a propensity to either be this great McKinsey consultant, and or a great technologist, and then groom them to be both," Alex Singla, a senior partner at McKinsey who co-leads its AI arm, QuantumBlack, told Business Insider.
He added that candidates also want hybrid roles: Many don't want to spend years building products for a cloud company like AWS, nor do they want to be traditional consultants.
Singla said McKinsey is looking for "5Xers — they're deep in one thing, but can do three or four different things well."
QuantumBlack, with its 1,700-person team, drives all of McKinsey's AI initiatives, which account for 40% of the firm's work, but McKinsey's technical talent isn't limited to that group, Singla said. There are about 3,500 people building internal technology for McKinsey, and another 4,000 to 5,000 consultants who are leading the technical work from the business side, but don't necessarily have technical expertise.
The upskilling imperative
The consulting talent landscape has been in flux since the pandemic, when a surge in demand prompted top firms to aggressively staff up. As that boom faded and demand for advisory work slowed, many firms found themselves overstaffed, triggering layoffs and a more selective approach to hiring.
Amid the shifting market, the traditional pyramid model — built on large cohorts of junior consultants — started to recalibrate as firms focused on roles that deliver value over manpower. That focus has only sharpened with the rise of AI, prompting firms to invest heavily in upskilling their existing workforces.
"Everyone is reckoning with the fact that AI has exploded onto the scene," Saurabh Sarbaliya, PwC's AI Lead, told Business Insider.
"The demand for people who can make AI work in the enterprise is only going to grow — but there just aren't enough experts. So you have to focus on upskilling your existing workforce," he said.
At KPMG, Sam Gloede, the firm's global trusted AI leader, said it is prioritizing upskilling over hiring.
"There is not a massive change in our workforce," Gloede said. "It's just a focus on upskilling, literacy, and learning."
EY is taking a similar approach and prioritizing the AI capabilities of its employees, Imgard Naudin ten Cate, EY's global leader of talent acquisition, told Business Insider.
In October, EY held a two-week learning event to teach employees to build AI agents for use in their day-to-day work. The firm has also rolled out 15-hour courses on topics including AI engineering, applied AI, and AI compliance.
Nearly 100,000 employees — roughly a quarter of the workforce — have earned a digital "AI badge" for completing one of the courses, said Simon Brown, EY's global learning and development leader. The initiative has been "a phenomenal way at scale to build deep AI knowledge," he added.
Sometimes, tech skills aren't necessary
Technologist roles are in high demand, but don't expect a team of hoodie-wearing Silicon Valley types when your company hires consultants. Most in the industry are still generalists with strong problem-solving and communication skills — and they'll likely show up in a suit.
Even as firms hire more technologists, most consulting work still doesn't require deep engineering expertise. Traditional consulting roles at top firms are still on the rise, growing from 250,000 globally in 2022 to 340,000 in 2024, according to Revelio Labs.
"A lot of the clients are still just dipping their toes in the AI pond, so over-engineering solutions for them doesn't work," said de Geyter, the former AI lead at Deloitte US. "It's a lot more helpful that someone supports them with setting up the right data governance so they can get ready for AI solutions down the line."
A senior software engineer at Deloitte, who requested anonymity as they are not permitted to speak to the media, told Business Insider that the technical literacy of most employees is improving, but remains in a "very nascent state."
"They're looking less for people who know the inners of how these black box models work or could train one themselves, and more at people who can quickly leverage them for a specific solution set," the person said.
Still, they warned that the current skill level poses a strategic risk: "We can't let it continue for too long."
Jim Rowan, head of AI at Deloitte US, told Business Insider that its employees have "the latest technologies and certifications to effectively work with machines and unlock even more impactful business outcomes for clients." Deloitte is not just hiring more data engineers and technologists, but "actively investing" in upskilling its workforce, Rowan said.
Soft skills still matter
Several leaders told Business Insider that soft skills are becoming more relevant now that AI can perform specific quantitative tasks.
"When we get asked a question of what we are looking for when we recruit, the core fundamental thing is actually attitude," KPMG's Niale Cleobury said. Communication, collaboration, and agile learning — "the sort of things AI can't really do" — are the standout qualities, he said.
McKinsey is still active on college campuses recruiting undergraduates, MBAs, and PhDs, said Kate Smaje, McKinsey's global leader of technology and AI.
In its screening process, McKinsey emphasizes elements of judgment and conceptual thinking in problem-solving, resilience, and the ability to learn quickly.
The ability to build relationships and the core EQ leadership qualities can be "fairy dust" on top of what you can do analytically that will now set you apart, said Smaje.
"What we really hire for is voracious learners, people who are curious about the world and have the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn," she said. "Those are the people we really want."
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