Canada’s top consulting firms are raising the bar for new hires while keeping pay flat, with one recruiting agency predicting that the “era of automatic, year-over-year starting salary increases is over.”

While offers for entry-level consultants are stagnating, expectations are not. Firms are pushing job candidates to prove specialized skills, like data analysis, even at the interview stage, said Namaan Mian, chief operating officer at Management Consulted, which helps aspiring consultants with interview prep and collects salary data from both consulting firms and candidate offer letters.

Salaries across the global consulting industry stayed largely unchanged for the third straight year in 2025, according to Management Consulted. 

Consulting remains a lucrative field—with average base salary offers of about $107,900 for fresh graduates of undergraduate, MBA or PhD programs, according to The Logic’s analysis of Canada-specific data provided to Management Consulted. But career advisers who work with job seekers say it’s getting harder to get a foot in the door. While some consultancies offer top talent extra perks in lieu of salary bumps, performance bonuses for entry-level undergraduate and master’s graduates globally have been capped at about US$30,000 for years, the report said. 

Kathleen Polsinello, head of BCG Canada, did not comment on the exact salary figures provided by Management Consulted, but said in a statement to The Logic that the firm’s recruiting has become more rigorous earlier in the process because of higher application volumes, and that candidates look at the “full value proposition, not just salary.” PwC spokesperson Anuja Kale-Agarwal said starting Canadian salaries for consulting currently range between $75,000 to $85,000—higher than the $72,000 listed as the firm’s 2025 base salary in Management Consulted’s list—and said it offers development opportunities and other incentives as it evaluates a candidate’s “experience, skills, and location.”

“Technology can support early screening, but hiring decisions are still human-led,” said Polsinello of the BCG’s screening process. “Instead of treating ‘AI skills’ as a standalone checkbox in interviews, we focus on strong fundamentals and look for candidates who can apply AI thoughtfully.”

Still, career advisors say consulting firms across the industry are asking applicants to analyze more charts and data in their interviews, which traditionally include a business-case exercise, said Mian. Candidates are also expected to turn that data into persuasive narratives for mock clients.

Part of the reason that firms are hiring more carefully is that they are adopting AI rapidly—letting them do more work with the same number of workers, said Mian. At McKinsey interviews, for example, some interviewees are reportedly asked to use a chatbot, and the firm considers its 20,000 AI agents part of its workforce.

A similar shift is underway at the University of Waterloo, where career advisor Alicia Flatt trains students to ace interviews run by AI bots and cautions that candidates are now more likely to be interviewed in an AI simulation than meet a real person. It’s all part of an increasingly drawn-out interview process that now includes multiple interviews and live simulations, with both the employer and the students using AI in the interview room, said Flatt. 

Mian said AI is not the only force reshaping hiring. Canadian salaries trail U.S. counterparts partly because there are fewer big tech companies and investment banks to bid up salaries for new grads. 

Management Consulted tracks the highest reported offers for two categories: graduates of undergrad and master’s programs, and holders of MBA and PhD degrees. It found that Accenture Strategy, for example, offered PhD or MBA holders in the U.S. US$175,000 as a base salary, compared with an offer of $160,000 made to a Canadian candidate. Most other firms Management Consulted tracked also had gaps in cross-border compensation. Accenture declined to comment, citing employee confidentiality. EY also declined to comment, and KPMG and Deloitte did not provide comment by deadline.

Recruiting firm Robert Half, which works with accounting and finance firms, has seen salaries at accounting firms plateau for about 18 months, said director Tara Parry. Employees and firms alike have been playing it safe, she said. But roles can only be vacant for so long, and she expects hiring could pick up again this year. Still, personality fit now carries less weight for hiring managers, who increasingly test for technical skills. 

“Companies have a very long grocery list of what they want to hire,” Parry said, “which is why we’re seeing the labour market be a bit stagnant.” 

Both Mian and Parry see potential pockets of opportunity despite the tough market. Firms are defying fears that AI will replace financial modelling specialists, since forecasting a company’s future finances remains a sought-after skill during economic uncertainty, Parry said. Mian said Canadian cities outside of Toronto and Vancouver can offer good opportunities for entry-level consultants, and consulting firms across the country are hiring for specialized skills like trade or export market experience. Unlike in the U.S., Management Consulted still sees Canadian consultancies enlisting specialists in environmental, social and governance issues, Mian said.

Flatt said that the University of Waterloo’s career office has navigated past boom and bust periods, including a shortage of chemical engineering roles during oilpatch downturns, and a spike in demand for graphic design students during the pandemic. In the long run, she said, automation could benefit business-school graduates who can leave the grunt, data cleanup roles to AI and focus on more strategic projects. For now, however, the sector is experiencing some “growing pains,” as jobs no longer arrive “on a silver platter.”

“In the consulting and business world, we’re seeing that flux,” said Flatt. “I don’t think that it means the extinction of the role, or that I would counsel a 16-year-old student wondering what to do to stay out of consulting.”

“We’re not panicking.”