Re: Consulting Exit Opportunities [ #permalink

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Since I can't sleep I'll jump in.



In my experience,



* Consulting is good if you have no idea what you want to do, but people grossly overestimate the pay and underestimate the lifestyles downsides. There's a joke that gets told every now and then. It goes like this.... some MBA dies and faces god, who it turns out a McK consultant. God asks him if he wants to go to heaven or go to hell, so the MBA says 'well, probably heaven, but ill take a look at both' . So the MBA goes up to heaven and everyone is hanging out, the sun is shining, nothing looks amazing but it looks pretty good. Then he goes down to hell and people are partying, drinking beer, eating steak, it looks awesome. He goes back up to God and says 'Well, im surprised by this, but I pick hell, it looks awesome!". So back down he goes - and now everyone is screaming, yelling and crying... The MBA turns back to god and says "Whoa, whats up?" and god replies "Oh, that was our summer associate class". ..... Point is, there's a reason McK and others hire 100 MBAs a year - its not because people are exiting into SVP roles left and right... It reminds me of a story someone who interned at one of the MBBs told me about their internship. Over drinks, all smug and full of himself, he starts to tell me about how all the Summer Associates are invited to a "off site all hands in Miami as a project debrief" and when I sort of snicker he tells me "Oh thats how things are here, everyone has team debriefs in Vegas or Miami or the Bahamas". I didn't have the heart to tell him that he was being a sold a massive bag of goods. As most consultants will tell you, team debriefs are a steak dinner with your partner, not a week long all expenses paid junket to Nassau. Make no mistake about it: consulting companies treat their summer internships as a 10 week sales process.



* The 'payout' is there is you are prepared to invest the 7 to 10 years (e.g. get to a senior principal level, exit into corporate at a VP or SVP level). In these cases you have sufficient depth of expertise within an industry or vertical to be a credible executive.



* The risk in the two to three year strategy (which I think most people have in their mind), in my experience, is that you are still a jack of all trades and a king of none. Right out of school you will join as an Associate or Consultant, 2 years out you might make Sr. Associate or Manager or something similar but you still will be staffed to whatever projects are going on at that point. 6 month project in insurance, 3 month project in financial svcs, 2 month project in some IT firm, etc. You learn a little about a lot but not a lot about a little - and that makes it VERY difficult to move yourself into a "Senior Mgmt" (or even Mgmt) role in corporate. Take a look at any corporate mid level mgmt position - or for that matter even entry level mgmt - and you'll frequently see some VERY specific expectations about what you know/can do: e.g. "At least 5 years experience in CPG product development... familiarity with X, Y, Z" -- Consulting doesnt generally lend itself well to those kind of roles, at least not until you end up in a quite senior consulting role. For that reason, I generally see two outcomes for people who go to consulting after a few years. (1) The majority stay 1 to 3 years, burn out/get frustrated and leave for a "Sr Analyst" or "Manager" level role in corporate which would be comparable to what you would be if you just skipped consulting altogether. (2) Another chunk find another firm to go to and end up in similar roles.



Worst of all, if you DO leave for corporate you are actually at a disadvantage compared to your peers that went straight there - sure your 3 years of consulting may have been useful, but your peers have been developing company or industry specific skills and knowledge for those three years. Jack of all trades, kind of none. Put differently, the problem with a 3 year MBB exit strategy is that you lack sufficiently deep expertise to be credible as mgmt but are overqualified as a analyst.



* I'm not sure mgmt consulting really prepares you for much. It's an intellectual exercise - a lot of recommendations that you make but never execute. The client is always left to make your idea happen (at least with most strategy firms). That makes you good at building decks but awful at actually making something real happen. It's easy to say 'We should do X', its hard to do X. Now that I'm out of consulting I find myself having to use a whole bunch of skills that, quite frankly, just dont get developed by sitting around making decks and tossing them over the wall to some mid level SVP and then moving to the next project. Alex alluded to this and frankly did a better job of describing than I.



In the interest of full disclosure:

* I'm an ex consultant

* I was not MBB however