Hey Mysterio24
I may not be in a position to provide advice on opportunities in your specific location since I'm in Australia but out of my undergrad, many years ago, I secured offers from both Accenture and Deloitte. While I was working at one, I noticed that while they hire graduates every year straight out of college they also hire from a lot of other consulting firms and from industry. For example, my gf at the time was working in small 10 person accounting firm and she was offered a role in Deloitte after 2 years.
My advice if you are serious about getting into consulting would be:
- you mentioned you got to the final rounds - this means you probably have the contact of someone in HR that takes care of graduate recruitment. Unlike B-school apps most of these people are happy to provide you with feedback. I would find out why you were not offered and use it as constructive feedback. Also keep in touch with this person, every person in HR that I've known from a Big4 has gone on to work in HR in other big 4s or other prestigous firms.
- look at what you want to do - are you going for people, process or technology? are you trying to be aligned to fin services, media, telco, pharma etc? If you know where you want to be, I would consider jobs in those industries in functions that will allow you to transition to consulting. Also, do not discount smaller consulting firms, if you get into one of these firms you may not have the prestige of a big 4, but in msot cases your hands on experience will equal or be better than a big 4 where there are a LOT of other graduates out there. Your climb career in consulting may even be faster than if you were at a big 4.
- I really wouldn't be too upset about it. In hindsight, my friends and I all competed for the same roles, obviously we did not all get into the roles we wanted, some have gone on to do great things, others have also left consulting etc. So graduate recruitment is really only the first step.
good luck.