Question For Those Familiar W/ Consulting Industry

Question

I'm curious what "tier" of consulting firm is realistic for someone with my profile.

I don't have any consulting experience. I have five years of industry finance experience which has required a skill-set that has a decent amount of overlap with that of a consultant (client-facing presentations, lots of ad-hoc projects, financial modeling). 

I'll be going to Stern. So I know the top 3 firms (McK, Bain, and BCG) don't really recruit at Stern. People from Stern DO get jobs there, but these companies don't actively recruit there (although some people have said McKinsey does, but haven't verified this. even if they do, they don't take many people like they do at M7 schools).

So I'm wondering what tier of consulting firm I could realistically expect to land a job. I see the tiers something like this:

Tier 1 - McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group

Tier 2 - Booz Allen Hamilton, Monitor Group

Tier 3 - Places like Deloitte, AT Kearney, LEK, Parthenon Group

This isn't any formal sort of ranking, just the perception I have of the relative difficulty of landing at these places. Is anyone familiar enough with these places to know if it would be incredibly difficult for me to land a Tier 2?

Also, does anyone know at what point it's better off to be at a very good boutique as opposed to a low-prestige big firm?

chillonamill · Answer

Aim for tier 1. The rest are mediocore at best. One of the things I recently did was contacted the admissions office at my target school and asked them if I could bounce a couple of questions off an alum in the industry I plan to go into post MBA. They got back to me the same day with 2 people I could contact.

Praetorian · Answer

Sorry to hijack the thread. Good to see you back, johnnyx9

johnnyx9 · Answer

Hey Praet - Thanks, good to be back. I was away visiting family for a long weekend there (not a lot of internet cafes in the rural Northwest).


Chillonamill - Tier 1 would be nice, but I don't know that's realistic given my lack of consulting experience and the fact that I'm not attending an ultra-elite. What do you mean when you say the other firms are mediocre? If you look at the leadership of any of the firms I listed in tier 2 or 3, they're still dominated by people from ultra-elites. Like 90% of the Parthenon group partners are HBS grads.

chillonamill · Answer

Well, I know people at Deloitte, BAH, and knew a person at AT. The friends at Deloitte and BAH both would describe their firms as mere flesh peddlers. If I were you, I'd contact admissions at NYU and have them put you in contact with alums at Bain, McKinsley, and BCG. Build up those relationships ASAP.

GMATT73 · Answer

Could you please elaborate a little on that industrial jargon? That's the first time I've ever seen it used (at least in this context).

milkrate · Answer

David Maister is kind of a guru in this consulting and if you are at all interested in the field, I would recommend picking up a book or two of his ("The Trusted Advisor" is probably a good one to start with). In "Managing the Professional Service Firm" he describes 3 points on a spectrum of projects:
1. Brains
2. Grey hair
3. Procedural

Brains projects are unique and complex. Clients hire the team they are convinced will be able to deliver the degree of innovation and creativity that their project requires.

Grey hair projects aren't as unique or innovative, but they do require a degree of experience. There's some junior staff around to do some of the routine or heavy-lifting type of work, but not very many. Clients want consultants who have experience doing this.

Procedural projects aren't terribly complex or the steps involved are just so routinized/well-known that you can basically write a step-by-step guide to give to a team of junior staff. These projects typically involve a lot of young bodies. These projects are often won based on price.

For the record, I worked for a few years as a junior analyst at a consulting firm that's somewhere between grey hair and brains, but probably closer to grey hair.

died4me · Answer

milkrate,

Thanks for the information!

dukes · Answer

I would guess that it depends on what you want to get out of it and just how low prestige the big-name firm is and how well regarded the boutique firm is. I've started doing basic research on this and it seems like Parthenon and Marakon are true boutique firms that get the same caliber MBA hires as M/B/B (or even higher). When you're hiring less than 20 MBAs a year you can afford to be really picky and you can limit recruiting to top 5 schools. They also tend to have more interesting work, so based on my limited knowledge I personally would prefer those over Deloitte, or even BAH. But I definitely plan on going to all the campus presentations, talking to alums who work at these places, etc.

Question For Those Familiar W/ Consulting Industry

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