Firm: Oliver Wyman Location: New York Billable consultants: 2,200 Who knew? Current CEO John Drzik was Oliver Wyman’s ninth employee when he began with the firm more than 20 years ago.

As a firm, Oliver Wyman has existed only since May when Mercer Oliver Wyman, Mercer Management Consulting and Mercer Delta were combined. Two of those firms—Mercer Oliver Wyman and Mercer Management Consulting—tied for eighth on our list of Best Firms in 2006. So, it should come as no surprise then, that the newly formed Oliver Wyman would also rank No. 8 on this year’s list. Or maybe it is surprising, considering all that’s had to happen over the last six months to bring three firms into one.

“The legacy firms had similar values and commitments to culture, so it was easy to bring the two together under the Oliver Wyman brand,” says John Drzik, CEO of Oliver Wyman. “Things are going very well right now. Externally, we’ve gotten very positive feedback on the rebranding, and internally, our people are excited about it. I think it’s a great time for us to be able to tell the Oliver Wyman story.”

A big part of that story is growth. Over the last few years, Oliver Wyman has been growing at a pretty impressive pace—20 percent a year. “If we continue at that growth rate, we’ll double our revenue in another four years,” Drzik says. “There’s plenty of market opportunity for us, so I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t continue to grow at that pace. It’s really a question of attracting the talent we need. The constraint, if anything, will be on the talent side, not the demand side.”

And as it enters its first recruiting season, the firm will continue to attract top talent the same way it always has—by offering its people a faster track to success. “We make a strong promise to people that if they come to Oliver Wyman, their career will develop faster. Firm growth helps lead to personal growth.” Drzik says. “People develop more rapidly with Oliver Wyman and are given greater responsibility earlier in their career.”

This quick-track development, Drzik says, could be one of the reasons Oliver Wyman scores among the best when it comes to compensation on the survey. “I think the reason is two-fold. One, the firm has been performing so well. We’ve been one of the fastest-growing firms among the leading consulting firms for a few years now. Our growth and performance is reflected in pay, such as performance bonuses,” Drzik says. “Two, because we give people greater responsibility sooner, they tend to earn higher compensation. It’s not that we can afford to pay a lot more than the other firms for a certain level of responsibility, but we can move people up that value ladder faster so they can get to a higher comp level earlier in their career.”

“We make a strong promise to people that if they come to Oliver Wyman, their career will develop faster.” —John Drzik CEO, Oliver Wyman

Another area where Oliver Wyman excels on the survey is work/life balance. Several consultants who took the survey said it’s a big reason they’re still working at Oliver Wyman. One of the programs consultants point out is Oliver Wyman’s 10/11 Month-Year program. If they wish, employees can work 10 or 11 months and get paid 10/12 or 11/12 of their annual salary. In another program, Nonprofit Fellowship, Oliver Wyman will pay 40 percent of an employee’s salary for them to go work at a nonprofit organization for six months. In addition, Oliver Wyman also has a very friendly sabbatical leave program for employees.

“All of these options are there if people want to slow down for a period of time,” Drzik says. “We try to maintain a balance on workload and personal time that enables people to commit to us long term. We want to make sure our consultants are developing both personally and professionally. If we do that, we think that many of our  employees will choose to have a long career here at Oliver Wyman.”