Consulting firms like Accenture are giving recent grads $25,000 stipends to push back their start dates

• Consulting firms are now pushing back start dates for some new hires fresh out of college.
• Accenture is offering some new hires up to $25,000 to start next April, Bloomberg reported.

Work has been slow at many top consulting firms over the past year. New hires straight out of business school are running errands and watching Netflix — to the tune of $175,000 a year — because there's not enough work to go around.

Others are being offered tens of thousands dollars to push their start dates back to next year.

And it looks like the consulting cooldown hasn't spared the undergraduates either, according to a recent report from Bloomberg.

Firms like Accenture are offering some new hires out of college up to $25,000 to push their start dates to next April or later, while Deloitte is giving new hires $2,000 for every month their start date is delayed, Bloomberg reported.

One recent graduate from Pomona College was on track to start at Accenture this month, Bloomberg reported. She was asked to push back her start date to next April and given a $25,000 bonus to make up for the disruption.

She told Bloomberg that she viewed it as a "golden opportunity" and made plans to travel in Southeast Asia.

For others, the delays have ushered in financial struggles and uncertainty.

One undergraduate who had his start date at Deloitte pushed back by five months is working a retail job and is also job hunting because he's concerned about the start date getting pushed back even further — or perhaps canceled altogether — Bloomberg reported.

In a post on workplace discussion site Fishbowl from late July, one recent college graduate disclosed that their start date at a "big 4 consulting firm" had been pushed back to July 2024. "In need of some help or guidance on what to do and also open to other opportunities," they wrote.

Those in the comments offered words of encouragement and a dose of perspective.

"Don't despair, you'll find all kinds of stories of similar experiences in this bowl, this certainly isn't the end of the world," one person wrote. "Careers are long and none look the same."

Are you a recent college graduate who's had your start date pushed back at a consulting firm? We want to hear from you! Contact reporter Lakshmi Varanasi at lvaranasi@insider.com