Each year hordes of ambitious graduates head to London in search of big opportunities and lucrative pay deals at the leading consulting firms. Yet one thing often missed on the milk round is that the regions abound with smaller, niche consultancies – and a quite different definition of consulting.

Lifestyle is one obvious reason why consultants eschew the capital’s smoke in favour of the regions. For Louise Earle, a recent graduate working for ER Consultants in Cambridge, it was an easy decision: “I made a conscious choice not to live in London.” Just as client sites often take city consultants out of town, Earle’s work means she is often in the capital. “I get a city life during the week, but I can escape at weekends.” The chance to get on the property ladder earlier also proved an attractive draw.

Nick Blythe, director of the corporate PR division at Propaganda, a brand consultancy in Leeds, began his career in London. “I thought big consultancies had more prestige,” he says. Moving North seemed like a risk at the time. “In retrospect, it was the best decision I ever made.”

Working for a regional consultancy usually means smaller teams. Blythe says that this makes it easier to spot talent. “You’re more visible – your achievements are always transparent.” Earle says “there are more opportunities to work closely with senior managers”.

But small teams do not mean small projects. Colin MacKenzie, a director at Charter Solutions in Lancaster, works on profit-making strategies for small and medium-sized enterprises. “There’s a real entrepreneurial spirit. We see tangible results a lot sooner,” he says. Many of his clients are local and have been coming to the consultancy for years. “It allows you to form personal relationships. We’re less anonymous.” And fewer corporate processes mean more freedom to be creative. Blythe’s firm’s work rebranding GHD helped the hair-care company to become The Sunday Times’s fastest-growing company of 2006. “We can’t trade on our name as much as a big firm. We live and die by our results,” he says.

Travel is common to all consultancies. Regional firms may not have offices on every continent but they do global business just the same. And don’t be fooled by the fast-paced city myth – the shires are anything but sleepy. “Clients are more demanding. They want to make money quickly,” MacKenzie says. Starting salaries are lower outside London, but the ladder is there to be climbed. Blythe, 32, joined Propaganda two and a half years ago and is already a board member. “Career progression is faster,” he says. All three firms recruit graduates, although they don’t offer formal schemes. “A big name will always look good on a CV,” he says. “But a regional consultancy will let you make your mark a lot quicker.” And you get to go home at five o’clock, right? “Rubbish,” he says. “I’ve never worked so hard in my life.”

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