Consulting Exit Opportunities

Good thing you're not drinking the Kool Aid haha

I have to give credit to management consultants for one thing: they are phenomenal recruiters (in fact, a good "exit option" could be getting recruited into the Church of Scientology j/k).

Whether it's undergrad or MBA recruiting, they have this way of convincing newbie students (and not the cynical ex-consultants) that if you were to enter their hallowed doors, a golden path to the executive suite awaits you, even if you get "counseled out" (read: fired) after a few years.

Which couldn't be further from the truth. Yes, there are ex-consultants at high levels, but given the ARMY of people they churn through the consulting system year after year (they hire armies of MBAs, and turnover is very high as 80-90% get leave after 2-3 years, only to be replaced by fresh faced MBAs), of course a few are going to end up in the executive suite.

The reality is, a lot of the ex-consultants I have known end up in a comparable place in many industries as other MBAs who never went into consulting at all: most end up in middle to mid-senior management -- some in strategy, some operations, product management, it runs the gamut. And once they're in industry, how fast they get promoted then is a case-by-case circumstance (individual effort, luck, strong/poor company growth, politics, etc.).

So in sum, they end up just fine. That's the positive.

Consulting is a good place to start post-MBA if you don't know what you want to do right away. And unlike investment banking (or any financial services - research, sales/trading, asset mgmt, PE, etc.) you're less likely to get pigeon-holed. In other words, while you won't exactly be anywhere close to being a CEO type after only a few years at MBB, you have easier access to a broader range of middle management industry jobs than someone coming from financial services (because for the most part the skill set and knowledge you get as a consultant is broader).

So no, it's not the golden ticket or anything, but it's sort of like an "extended MBA" if you're unsure about what you want to do.

However, if you're sure about the industry you want to work in, then you really should just focus on getting into industry right after b-school, since as a mgmt consultant NO MATTER WHAT THE CONSULTING RECRUITERS TELL YOU OR PROMISE YOU -- as an associate you have very little control over the kinds of client engagements you work on. You may say you want to work on telco, but you work on what the partners bring in. If it's a coal mining project and you're available - you're going to be a coal mining expert for the next 6 months to maybe even a year. If you want to work with tech clients, the office may take note of that, but they will staff you on what client projects are brought in -- or you get shipped/rented by another office that desperately needs bodies (i.e. you're based in SF, but the Dallas office happens to be short staffed, and they need someone on a oil/gas project asap). The thing is, even the best intentioned firm partners and staffers can only do so much to accommodate an associate's interests -- they are still running a business, and they can't staff you on projects that don't exist.

I can add my 2 cents to this discussion. I have friends who have worked for MBB (pre-MBA and post MBA) who left after working there for about 2-3 yrs. One chap went and joined an early stage VC firm and is now joining the Wharton MBA program. Another person switched over to another MC firm. From what I have seen, many consultants who are perfectly happy with the way things are moving along, stay on with the firm to become Partners/ Directors.

Alex, thanks for the insight. My own discussions with former and soon to be MBB consultants has made me realize that consulting isn't so much of a career accelerator as it is a way of broadening skills and industry exposure. That being said, another selling point for many firms is the idea that their alumni that are out there in industry will help with the job search when it's time to consider (or required to) exit the firm. I'm curious what your thoughts are on this.

Alex, can you pls further expand on your comment that if one knows the industry he/she would like to work in then it's best to join that industry post MBA. What I find that even though one knows & enjoys working in that industry, staying w/ same firm can get boring n may not provide an understanding/access to complex problems in that industry. I feel MBBs can do a better job of showing problems from many industries including ones preferred one. And I think for that reason it might still be worth working at MBB post-MBA. Pls feel free to share if you disagree.

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I think most people (consultants or not) are well intentioned - they try to help when they can, but they're not going to create jobs that don't exist, or roll out the red carpet for you and bring you into their inner circle just because you happened to work for the same firm at different times. It's not a cult or secret society. It certainly is an avenue, but I think consulting recruiters oversell this aspect -- again, it's no different than working at any other firm. If you're at GE and run into another ex-GE guy, that ex-GE guy may be more willing to pick up the phone; and replace "GE" with any other firm.

Again, the mgmt consultants who oversell this aspect of their "alumni" network is akin to a landlord selling the fact that the apartment has running water.

Sounds like a narrative straight out of a consulting recruiting presentation.

The biggest blind spot with mgmt consulting is this: confusing "thinking" with "doing". If the intellectual/abstract aspects of business interest you more than the actual execution, then you probably should remain in consulting, or become a professor.

Consulting can expose you to all kinds of business situations -- but it's still very conceptual. You spend your time researching, compiling, analyzing, and writing. And that can give the false impression of actually doing.

If it were sports, it's sort of like coaching versus playing. Just because you have a brilliant mind for game plans, set plays, etc. as a coach has nothing to do with whether you can actually make plays in the clutch as a player.

And in many ways, I think that is a HUGE problem with the mentality of MBAs: they tend to overestimate the difficulty of the 'thinking' (strategy, planning, analysis, etc) and underestimate the difficulty of execution. To be blunt, all the stuff you learn in school, the conceptual stuff that consultants do, etc. are actually the EASIER aspects. The hardest part is actually doing it.

When the reality is, it's much harder to *do* than to simply *recommend*. And spending time learning how to *recommend* as a consultant really doesn't prepare you any better for the realities of *doing* and actually having to run a group, business, etc. where you are fully accountable for your decisions.

Great post Alex. Love the sports coach to player analogy.

While in school and since I have heard more than a few senior executives at large companies say the skills management consultants are usually what companies want. They focus on generating ideas and creating strategies but the vast majority do very little execution of implementation. One CEO who spoke during my time at Kellogg said he likes ex operations consultants but management consultants are more difficult to transition, and if you want to go into GM/Marketing/Corporate Finance etc. then just go do it.

Going into consulting allows you test the waters in multiple industries. It lets you put off the decision of what you want to do for a little long. If you know what industry you want to be in or what you want to do career wise you are better off going straight for it in my opinion. MBA programs often expose you to lots of the management team, this network is incredibly valuable. Coming in post consulting you will be just like other experienced hires, and its unlikely you will be brought on work trips or invited to dinners with the top guys at the company.

My company uses consultants, but I can't think of any of the senior leadership I know that has a consulting background. I know at least two of the big wigs that completely dislike them because of having to deal with the results consultants have delivered in the past. My boss has joked that next time we go to a customer who is using a consultant he is bringing me along so I can do use their frameworks right back at them and ask what slides out of their generic deck were used to create their ppt presentation.

I think it's important to define of "post-consulting" and have realistic expectations. Anyone who thinks that 2-3 years in consulting is a golden path to being an executive is severely lacking good judgement. The fact is most people (with a few exceptions) don't become senior executives until late 30's/early 40's at the earliest (and C-suite far later). There is simply too much time between when one leaves consulting after 2-3 years and when one would likely be up for promotion to that level to draw direct connections to the fact they were a consultant.

That being said, it really is not unrealistic to make the jump straight from consulting to a SVP/EVP position. This generally only happens though with people who have been career consultants (10-15 years) and are recognized as experts in their given industry. Even among this group, the common path to C-suite is several years at the SVP/EVP and some hoping between companies before finally making the leap.

Bottom line, consulting can certainly be a feeder but as with anything in life, there aren't shortcuts.

"What do the top MBA's who drop out of MBB...end up doing with their careers?" They end up doing what they've actually wanted to do all along instead of putting it off for the indefinite future in hopes of building an ever more rounded set of skills.

Yes, of course that statement is way too strong of a generality. But for the sake of students who find themselves "defaulting" to a career in management consulting because of its prestige, that statement needs to be made to rebalance the equation.

Here are my claims, feel free to debate them:
1) You learn enough in business school to be "well-rounded" and develop a sharp strategy-focused mind. A few years at MBB will have marginal returns.
2) Specialization is more valued. Companies value a deep industry expert over a generalist unless they hire the generalist young and are willing to train him / her.
3) Career prospects after 2-3 years at MBB are worse than doing what you want to do right after b-school. You will be undertrained and overpaid for any company.

For your reference, I was at one of the MBB firms.

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

I worked for a boutique consulting firm that specialized in one particular industry (life sciences)

1. When you work for large well known companies, projects were typically for senior directors of a particular functional unit ( the brand team, market access & pricing, etc). For smaller companies (that often had less money), you maybe working with the C-suite but that's because the company was very early stage and they were the commercial team.

2. Consulting is great experience for those making a transition to the business side, but clients don't pull the red carpet to hire you. I've seen co-workers that have successfully made the transition and those that have not. The ones that did not were often the result of the client saying that's all great experience, but the lack of industry experience (handling a P&L) was often held against them - since they lacked the P&L experience to be somewhere senior but were too experienced for a junior role. If industry is where you want to be, go for it as soon as possible so that you aren't labeled a career consultant. The ones that did make it often worked on my multiple projects with a certain client that the client got to know them and asked them to join when he/she had an opening that could not be filled internally. Don't get me wrong, consulting is great experience and very marketable but it would be complete misnomer to believe that it puts you at the top of the to hire pile as your job to lose.

What does MBB stand for? :S

Thanks! Very amateur question from a second year engineering student haha.

Thanks Alex.

What are the exit opportunities from investment banking for a post-MBA associate with 2 years experience? I've looked at some online job postings and almost every PE firm is looking for "pre-MBA" associates.

Exit options for bankers:

- marriage and full-time mom/dad
- extended unemployment (becoming more common post-2008)
- other finance (IB, research, back office, private equity, hedge funds, investment management)
- family biz
- a clean break and into something completely unrelated (i.e. back to med school, carpentry, opening a restaurant, real estate agent, etc)
- drug dealer a la Breaking Bad

Regardless of what you pursue (banking, consulting, industry, etc.) -- you guys have to STOP thinking about exit options. You can't map out your career and life in such a calculating manner where you're planning two or three steps ahead.

You mean I can't see 20 years down the road from where I now sit? This is counter-intuitive to a cold, calculating, pre-MBA . But that's how life is, right? You never really can see around the bend. At the end of the day it's about making the best choice you can in something that you enjoy and then doing the best job you can in that function.