Having worked on consulting engagements with most of the oil majors now I'm considering applying for positions there in change management or even internal strat.I'm interested to kow how the pay will compare with consulting as I know more or less what I could expect to make at each level. Are 6 figure earnings possible at a young age? How much do senior positions pay as a general range and yrs experience? I'm reluctant to ask my client counterparts because of the sensitivity around it.

The pay is generally lower than consulting with a few rare exceptions. Big oil has pretty conservative career structures and attitudes to talent management - the big money goes to:* traders (to stop them deserting to i-banking commodities desks)* technical engineering specialists with hot skills* independent contractors (lobbyists, security for operations in less stable parts of the world, etc.)* long-term expatriatesChange, strategy, and other such staff functions aren't particularly well paid though benefits and work conditions are good. For example, I earn £55k in external consulting; a colleague with similar experience who moved to Shell internal consulting is on £40k but has 9-5 hours, a better pension, paternity leave, extra pay for any international travel, etc.

Anon, Mac and others, I am also interested in applying to the oil majors but my background is IT and thought the right approach is to work for any of the major consultancies to the oil sector first. Is this the right approach?Are there consulting companies you could recommend. General advice is most welcomed.Many thanks.

Accenture does a ton of IT work for Shell. You can pretty much work for ACN and go from one client-site Shell project to another for several years, if you want.EY and Chaucer Consultants do a lot of work for BP in IT project management.

And there was me thinking EY undertook the audit at BP and therefore couldn't do any consultancy work...hold on a minute, we don't even have an IT project management function.

Confused at EY, is that not one of the services that TSRS provide?Corporate Whore - http://corporatewhore.blog.com

PAS in TSRS might end up doing some IT project management, but it is certainly not a core area, nor is it an area we would want to focus heavily in. In general Project / Programme Management in IT is a fairly commoditised service and big-4 tend to be expensive in comparison to smaller consultancies and the contracting market. Anyway, my point was more that saying we 'do a lot of' IT project management work at BP is not true.

I'll take your word for it, but it seems like it depends who you talk to. When I met with EY at the consultancy careers fair, the person I spoke to based his sales pitch around EY being the first choice and main supplier for big IT project management services for BP. Maybe he was just trying to make it sound more attractive relative to my ACN/Shell experience.

Thanks ACN and others. I have checked the career section on accenture website but could not find any role that I can convincingly say involves working in the oil sector. What do I need to look for or how do I go about it?Thanks for your help and information.

A friend of mine recently moved from a senior consultant position at a niche consultancy (where he'd done a lot of work with oil majors) to an internal consulting role at a big oil major. The money isn't great - around £50-55K - but he loves the job.