im planning to move from industry into the EY ACP in london (rotational entry program)just a bit hesitant on 2 points, hope you guys can shed some light!!:Travel/lifestyle: typically, what % of time will be spent travelling vs in the office? how does this change as you become more senior?Promotion: rumour has it that promotion can happen after 18months to senior consultant with 40% pay rise..true/false?

I can't answer your second point, but want to address the first.Anyone moving into consulting who is asking about the balance of client side vs office based working needs to ask themselves if consulting is the right career.I don't know of any clients who are happy to pay top whack for consultants to sit back in ther own office day in day out. A lot of consultancies will try to get their staff back in the office on a Friday - but if the client isn't happy with this then the consultancy isn't going to argue.If your underlying question is will I be spending a lot of time in hotels then where you live and where your office is based are important. Obviously being in and around the South East means there is more chance that you will get 'local' projects. Some larger firms (including EY) may pretend that they have regional offices that they resource from, but the reality is that if your skills are more applicable than a colleague in a regional office, you will be deployed on a project over and above them - even if the project was in their city.Does this change as you get more senior - a bit. Around the Manager/Senior Manager level, you will have a mix of projects to manage and proposals to lead. With the latter, you could be in the office for a block of weeks.At Director and Partner level, if you're routinely in the office then you would have to ask what you are doing? You should be out there doing client assurance and selling. You will probably get home most nights (late) but will do a lot of travelling as you will rarely be in one place for more than one day at a time.

I would agree with the response above. If you live in or around London and specialise in financial services then there is a 50% chance that you might work for years and never be outside the city. However you could quite easily be shipped to Halifax on your second day and find yourself on a five day weekly commute their for the next 18 months. This could then be the pattern for the next ten years - doing weekly commutes to Bridgend, Gillingham, Poole, Pitreavy, etc, etc.At my first MC firm I had NO London clients in 5 years. At my second firm I spent ZERO nights away from home in three years.In short, you have to be prepeared for the worstIn terms of promotion, this may well be possible in those time frames, but the difficulty every new starter faces is the relatively random allocation of staff to projects. If you are allocated to a project and role with immediate promotion potential then you are in luck - from there on in its all down to your perfromance.In contrast, my first project at my first MC firm found me on a team of twelve with four other people (all more senior and more tenured) all trying to get a promotion out of the engagement. There is a sense that a project of that size can only yield a certain amount of "promotion brownie points". Fortunately for me, it was not an issue, but clearly all the kudos was goignt o be allocated ot those people first.

As "Soon to be Ey'er" has covered off the second point quite well I'll leave it there. Just to add I haven't been to the office in over 12 months, except on a couple of Saturdays to do some admin work I didn't want to do at client site/do at home.To address the first point; yes, that is correct. The ACP is a 2 year programme, exceptional candidates can be promoted to Senior Con within 18 months and the pay rise is closer to 50% than 40

As "Soon to be Ey'er" has covered off the second point quite well I'll leave it there. Just to add I haven't been to the office in over 12 months, except on a couple of Saturdays to do some admin work I didn't want to do at client site/do at home.To address the first point; yes, that is correct. The ACP is a 2 year programme, exceptional candidates can be promoted to Senior Con within 18 months and the pay rise is closer to 50% than 40

Really 40-50% from C to SC?So at EY you start off at £31.5k. You're saying after 2 years of the ACP upon promotion you'll be on (50% increase) = £47k. Two years experience, and increase to £47k?This doesn't seem right, especially that equivalent experience grades at PwC, Deloitte and KPMG are more along the lines of £38-40k.Please clarify?

I did say closer to 50%, not exactly 50%London based Consultants move from 31.5 to 45

Wow. How come EY pay £7k more than their three competitors for the same line of work?If this is indeed true, I'm moving from my current Big4 to EY after my promotion for my hefty pay rise. My next grade is £37k start, so if EY are paying £45k for the equivalent, that's quite a rise. Why is it that they pay so much more for the same grade?

I'm afraid that I can't answer the reasoning behind paying so much. I can make an assumption however... EY has gone through a very large growth spurt in the Performance Improvement space in the last twelve months, and this is set to continue. They are recruiting large numbers of graduate consultants, and have been hiring heavily from other consultancies (and paying premium rates) to help build the practice as quickly as possible.I will caveat the above raises slighty, these raises are specific to the IT Advisory service line, my understanding is that the other service lines that sit within Performance Improvement may not have increased pay on the same scale, although I can't say if that is a definite or not. I'd assume it might be as IT Advisory has the largest growth targets within PI and has also done the majority of the recruting I referred to above.

Apologies... I just realised I didn't actually include an assumption in the above post!My assumption is that they are paying a premium to new SC to support the practice growth and to attract the best talent possible, and retain that talent

thanks guys - appreciate itIt does seem that the jump after the ACP is higher relative to the equivalent in other big 4 firms..Could this early jump imply slower salary growth/progression thereafter??

Anecdotally most experienced hires fall into the SC category. Therefore the higher average salary is due to a higher negotiated entry point for outside talent (not due to a retention strategy).

I applied to Deloitte/ consultant position at Human Capital some two weeks ago - haven't heard anything from them yet, other then e-mail acknowledgment of receipt of my CV the same day I applied. Should I give them a call or something? Thanks