BANGALORE: The Big Four professional services firms — Ernst &
Young, PwC, KPMG and Deloitte — are together likely to hire about 43,000
people in the next four years, top officials from the firms say. This
is being propelled by a rise in business in tier-II and tier-III cities,
growing work in telecom, infrastructure and state government projects,
aggressive ramp-up of global shared services centres, and increased
focus on emerging markets by global headquarters.
Fresh graduates, engineers, chartered accountants and MBAs are likely to account for roughly 60-80% of the new hires. On an average, the Big Four firms typically pay salaries of Rs 3 lakh per annum for fresh graduates, Rs 4 lakh for engineers, Rs 7 lakh for chartered accountants and Rs 11 lakh for B-school pass-outs. Higher salaries are not uncommon. Much of the hiring is done at tier-I colleges.
Lateral hires will also play a big role in all this. Aggressive poaching of partners and even full teams between KPMG, PWC, and Ernst & Young — something that's been hitting newspaper headlines lately — is also likely to intensify. The industry is already seeing attrition rates as high as 25% in some pockets, the highest in recent times.
KPMG, the smallest in terms of manpower strength, plans to more than double its headcount in four years; Ernst & Young and PwC intend to grow their talent base by 22-24% and 15%, respectively, every year for the next four years and Deloitte intends to hire 9,000.
Together, the Big Four earn revenues of over Rs 6,000 crore from an assortment of services ranging from auditing to consulting.
KPMG, which now has over 8,000 employees on its rolls, will add another 9,000 executives by 2018, including 225 partners (including internal promotions). "We have put before ourselves a very ambitious target of becoming a $1-billion organisation in the next 4 years. For this we need 17,000 people and 460 partners," says Richard Rekhy, CEO, KPMG India.
It has just hired the managing director of consulting firm, Protiviti Consulting and its entire seven member leadership team.
Earlier, the firm had snagged the whole team of Eicher Consulting Services that was acquired by PwC. Industry sources say that Big Four firms, in their aggression to find the talent to grow, have also repeatedly tried to poach entire teams from other firms like Grant Thornton and BMR.
In the last year, the Big Four have been aggressively building out and expanding business lines," says Sonal Agrawal, Managing Partner, Accord, a search firm. "There has been a constant demand for revenue generators and product specialists.
Typically, they are seeking higher quality talent, or replacing high-cost talent with value hires. Additionally, team hires are becoming more common."
Not one to be left behind, PWC, on its path to recovery after the Satyam fiasco, has big plans too. The firm that currently is 7,000 strong (190 partners) typically takes 15% growth per year in employee strength as a benchmark. "We have been hiring in particular areas that have been growing fast for the firm," says Mark Driscoll, leader human capital, PWC. The areas where Driscoll and his team are out on a hunt are tax (especially transfer pricing), financial services, advisory (risk advisory, compliance and forensic), tax consulting, new types of IT services like cloud etc, and specific skill sets like Big Data and analytics. Market leader Ernst & Young won't be left behind in the rumble.
It expects to grow its talent base by 22,000 to 25,000 in the next four years taking its overall employee base to 40,000 plus in 2018. This will include staff at outsourcing centres in Gurgaon, Bangalore, Trivandrum, Chennai and Kochi where more than 9000 people are employed now.
Deloitte will also show its aggressive side by taking on board more than 9,000 employees by 2018. With 20,000 employees on board, the company will still recruit at 8-10% more every year, says P Thiruvengadam, Senior Director, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India.
Hiring for Deloitte will focus around technology, enterprise application, research and analytics, financial advisory. Deloitte also runs perhaps the biggest shared services centre among the Big Four in Hyderabad. Interestingly, while large numbers are being hired in some service lines, the entry into the coveted apprenticeship programs of the Big Four still happens to be toughest across industries with each firm hiring just a handful of youngsters (between 20 and 25) after a gruelling interview process each year. The Big Four firms have navigated the slowdown well, growing at 15% to 20% annually since 2008.
Among various service lines, tax has grown at a fair clip due to new overseas regulations and rising complexity. Audit has been a stable business, but bigger and more complex businesses now require more services as number of statutory requirements increase; advisory market though is down due to price cutting and damp investment climate, but hiring continues.
Transactions work has dipped due to low number of M&A and PE deals, but firms are maintaining team strength. Shared services centres being run out of India by Big Four firms are expected to be a big growth area on the back of a push from global headquarters.
Source: Economic Times
Fresh graduates, engineers, chartered accountants and MBAs are likely to account for roughly 60-80% of the new hires. On an average, the Big Four firms typically pay salaries of Rs 3 lakh per annum for fresh graduates, Rs 4 lakh for engineers, Rs 7 lakh for chartered accountants and Rs 11 lakh for B-school pass-outs. Higher salaries are not uncommon. Much of the hiring is done at tier-I colleges.
Lateral hires will also play a big role in all this. Aggressive poaching of partners and even full teams between KPMG, PWC, and Ernst & Young — something that's been hitting newspaper headlines lately — is also likely to intensify. The industry is already seeing attrition rates as high as 25% in some pockets, the highest in recent times.
KPMG, the smallest in terms of manpower strength, plans to more than double its headcount in four years; Ernst & Young and PwC intend to grow their talent base by 22-24% and 15%, respectively, every year for the next four years and Deloitte intends to hire 9,000.
Together, the Big Four earn revenues of over Rs 6,000 crore from an assortment of services ranging from auditing to consulting.
KPMG, which now has over 8,000 employees on its rolls, will add another 9,000 executives by 2018, including 225 partners (including internal promotions). "We have put before ourselves a very ambitious target of becoming a $1-billion organisation in the next 4 years. For this we need 17,000 people and 460 partners," says Richard Rekhy, CEO, KPMG India.
It has just hired the managing director of consulting firm, Protiviti Consulting and its entire seven member leadership team.
Earlier, the firm had snagged the whole team of Eicher Consulting Services that was acquired by PwC. Industry sources say that Big Four firms, in their aggression to find the talent to grow, have also repeatedly tried to poach entire teams from other firms like Grant Thornton and BMR.
In the last year, the Big Four have been aggressively building out and expanding business lines," says Sonal Agrawal, Managing Partner, Accord, a search firm. "There has been a constant demand for revenue generators and product specialists.
Typically, they are seeking higher quality talent, or replacing high-cost talent with value hires. Additionally, team hires are becoming more common."
Not one to be left behind, PWC, on its path to recovery after the Satyam fiasco, has big plans too. The firm that currently is 7,000 strong (190 partners) typically takes 15% growth per year in employee strength as a benchmark. "We have been hiring in particular areas that have been growing fast for the firm," says Mark Driscoll, leader human capital, PWC. The areas where Driscoll and his team are out on a hunt are tax (especially transfer pricing), financial services, advisory (risk advisory, compliance and forensic), tax consulting, new types of IT services like cloud etc, and specific skill sets like Big Data and analytics. Market leader Ernst & Young won't be left behind in the rumble.
It expects to grow its talent base by 22,000 to 25,000 in the next four years taking its overall employee base to 40,000 plus in 2018. This will include staff at outsourcing centres in Gurgaon, Bangalore, Trivandrum, Chennai and Kochi where more than 9000 people are employed now.
Deloitte will also show its aggressive side by taking on board more than 9,000 employees by 2018. With 20,000 employees on board, the company will still recruit at 8-10% more every year, says P Thiruvengadam, Senior Director, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India.
Hiring for Deloitte will focus around technology, enterprise application, research and analytics, financial advisory. Deloitte also runs perhaps the biggest shared services centre among the Big Four in Hyderabad. Interestingly, while large numbers are being hired in some service lines, the entry into the coveted apprenticeship programs of the Big Four still happens to be toughest across industries with each firm hiring just a handful of youngsters (between 20 and 25) after a gruelling interview process each year. The Big Four firms have navigated the slowdown well, growing at 15% to 20% annually since 2008.
Among various service lines, tax has grown at a fair clip due to new overseas regulations and rising complexity. Audit has been a stable business, but bigger and more complex businesses now require more services as number of statutory requirements increase; advisory market though is down due to price cutting and damp investment climate, but hiring continues.
Transactions work has dipped due to low number of M&A and PE deals, but firms are maintaining team strength. Shared services centres being run out of India by Big Four firms are expected to be a big growth area on the back of a push from global headquarters.
Source: Economic Times
No comments:
Post a Comment