It's Best Firms to Work For time and that can only mean one thing: time to reach for the reading glasses for the printouts and time to zoom the laptop to 200 percent for the screen work. Here come the spreadsheets, the data and the decimal points. It's that time of the year when hundredths, and even thousandths, can be the difference between a Top 5 finish and not even making the cut as one of the Best Firms to Work For. It's the time of the year where Excel tabs marked "raw data" are not meant for the faint of heart.
Actually, analysts with ALM Intelligence do the heaviest lifting. They spend a solid week crunching the numbers to make sense of it all. With some 10,000 responses from more than 300 firms, it's no easy task. But I've always believed it's the single most important editorial endeavor Consulting magazine does each year. That's why we're devoting 48 pages to The Best Firms to Work For and the Best Small Firms to Work For coverage.
But don't take my word on it. In consulting's perpetual war for talent, firm leaders who have been on the list several years running have pointed out how recruits and prospective employees have come to know their firm almost exclusively from its appearance on Consulting magazine's Best Firms to Work For list. This is particularly true of our Best Small Firms to Work For, since many of those firms aren't household names and don't have a ton of brand equity on campus.
Speaking of brand equity, not much is needed for repeat winner The Boston Consulting Group. BCG is back again for the fifth year running as the No. 1 firm on our list, followed by Collaborative Solutions, West Monroe Partners, Slalom Consulting and AlixPartners rounding out the Top 5.
And how's this for making a grand re-entrance to the Best Small Firms to Work For ranking? This year's No. 1 Best Small Firm to Work For—MorganFranklin—was 12th on the list in 2012 and 6th back in 2008.
Joseph Kornik Publisher & Editor-in-Chief jkornik@alm.com
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