Unfortunately journalists have newspapers to sell and recruiters stand to gain by enticing candidates away from IBM. So a restructuring programme that is focused on mainland Europe and outside of the core business consulting practice areas is nonetheless portrayed as the death knell for the consulting business. You’ve seen it everywhere – in newspapers, on chat forums and even in blogs.

So allow me to set the record straight.

At the beginning of 2005 IBM told Top-Consultant readers that its recruitment target for 2005 was to hire an additional 450 UK consultants as it sought to grow the consulting business. Our IBM source confirms that “this target is unchanged and we are on track to hit 450 new consulting hires by the year end. We are still out there, still actively recruiting and looking to make external hires”.

What has happened is that late 2004 and early 2005 were exceptionally successful periods for IBM’s recruitment team. The consulting business made so many successful hires in Q1 2005 and had such a strong pipeline of candidates that it was actually ahead of target going into Q2. As a result the recruitment team “took their foot off the gas a little” in these last months, focusing their efforts on the graduate recruitment front while catching up on the backlog of experienced hires applicants.

But the target of hiring 450 additional UK consultants over the course of the year still remains and IBM have confirmed Top-Consultant readers will see a renewed recruitment drive for experienced hire candidates in the coming weeks. The picture is believed to be the same within the US consulting business and readers are reminded that the restructuring IBM recently announced is largely confined to mainland European countries such as Germany, France and Italy.

Related link: View the latest graduate consulting opportunities at IBM

IBM spoke to Top-Consultant Director Tony Restell in response to concerns that the situation at IBM’s consulting business was being poorly portrayed within the media