The actual process of exiting consulting
Hey Everyone,
I'm about to finish my first year in the Strategy division of a well known consulting firm (think Accenture Strategy/ Deloitte S&O/ PwC Strategy&). I chose consulting because I could explore different options without accidently pigeonholing myself. While I enjoy the work I've been doing, I plan on leaving after my second year hopefully as a consultant.
I know consulting has a bunch of exit opportunities but there does not seem to be much literature on the actual process of exiting. For some options (i.e. B-school), the process is straightforward but what about jumping to the corporate development group of a Fortune 500 company or a private equity firm?
The obvious answer is to network like hell and interview around. However, with IB analysts jumping to PE/HF, there seems to be a beaten path of headhunters reaching out to them before they finish their first year. Also the offer is typically slated to begin after their second year.
What is the "beaten path" for strategy analysts? Having a client poach us? LinkedIn? Reaching out to headhunters ourselves? I would greatly appreciate any advice on this!
Brief Background: I went to a target undergrad business school and graduated in the top 10% of my class.
The paths are pretty different depending on firm. The major difference between MBB and the next tier is that VERY few people in the firms you mentioned above land in buyside roles after 2 years (due to low headhunter exposure) and you'll likely have to be more proactive in the process.
At MBB, a really rough outcome of where people might exit after 2 years might be:
3rd year (20% of class): Really varies year to year and firm – but usually only a minority stay much past their second year.
Buyside (20% of class): In the first year/second year, MBB analysts get the same headhunter exposure as most BB analysts, but are recruited into a smaller subset of firms and a mix of operational/deal roles. While the majority of positions get filled through headhunters – a significant minority also get pulled in via alumni from the firm.
Corp dev role (30% of class): Majority of these roles come from either being poached by the client or pulled in via alumni; a significant minority hired via head hunters.
Start-up/entrepreneurial (20%): Friends/alumni/self/headhunters represent the majority of how these roles come into play.
Grad school/MBA (10% of class): Really varies year over year, but hasn't been as attractive in recent years even with sponsorship. Largely because 24/25 is still pretty young to be doing an MBA.
Take a look at the following for some insights. Doing this from my phone so could be a little wonky.
https://charlesaris.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Charles-Aris-Strateg…
Some random thoughts below. I exited consulting in 2013 and moved into industry but I stayed a bit longer than you're planning to (around 3.5 years) and joined with an APD so my experience might be different to yours:
I started getting a lot of calls from headhunters around 15 months into my consulting job so it may be that they're not contacting you yet because they view you as only recently having started and unlikely to want to leave in the next few months (which is the timeline that they typically work to)
If there's a particular headhunter you want to connect with, it might be more effective if you can get a mutual contact to introduce you to them through E-mail or LinkedIn. I was advised that gives you a bit more credibility and with LinkedIn it's super easy to see who knows who
For me, by far the most helpful source of finding exit opportunities was my Firm's alumni network. I identified companies I wanted to work for and then just mailed an alumnus working there explaining my interest and asking to have a chat. 95% of the time they were more than happy to speak and after this, all offered to put me in touch with relevant people if I wanted to explore further
The above is how I found the role I exited to- I mailed a guy who had exited before me to an interesting company and set up a call. On the day we spoke, he happened to be meeting someone important in the company. He passed on my CV, I was invited in for a chat the following week and they created a role for me a few weeks after
Partners at your firm can also be helpful at finding you roles. If you have a partner or two you trust working with an industry you'd like to exit to, you could always ask them for their help in connecting you with relevant people
Good luck!
Working at a MBB firm in a regional office in a post-undergrad role. I'm still here and happy in my current role, but I can speak to various exit options and what you can do.
Started getting headhunter emails as early as few months into the job - mostly PE/HF/VC types, but I think they are only MBB focused. To be honest, these guys are not that useful since they deal with bankers as well (some names are CPI, Glocap, Bellcast). Good if you're strongly interested in PE, though it's tough if you're not MBB, and don't have finance experience.
About 1 year in , will start getting headhunter emails for more strategy/corpdev/startup positions, since you're in the pre-MBA sweetspot. Roles have titles like biz ops associate, strategy manager - generally interesting roles with comp around 100k (20%-30% higher than post-undergrad base, but less than what you'd make as a direct promote).
Most folks who leave at the undergrad level work with headhunters. The big ones reach out to you directly with e-mail, but plenty also contact via Linkedin InMail. I think it helps if you're a Premium Linkedin member and have a filled out profile, because then they know you're more likely to respond. Also, Linkedin is useful because it sends out notifications on your network when you hit a milestone (e.g. 1 year), pinging headhunters.
Finally, MBB firms generally have a internal job posting site - I think at least Deloitte has something similar. Try to see if you have an internal career services group. These are usually extremely confidential, and it's fine to explore but not seriously look. Consulting firms are generally supportive of folks exploring transition since they want to maintain the relationship later in your career.
TL/DR: get in touch with headhunters (Charles Aris is good one for consultants), update your Linkedin profile and get premium, reach out to internal network. PM me if you have questions.
I spent ~2 years at Tier 2 firm (Parthenon/LEK/OW/Booz) before moving to PE. Some general thoughts below:
-I found corporate strategy recruiting and PE recruiting to be very different. Corp strategy recruiting, at least for me, required much less prep and was relatively easier than PE recruiting - in part because you're not trying to compete against bankers, who have PE-centric technical skills. Anecdotally, I know multiple high-performing consultants that spent months interviewing for PE firms before they got an offer. Most folks that wanted to do corp strategy found things much quicker. So, if you're interested in PE, I think it's better to start the process early -Headhunters started reaching out 3-6 months into the job, and inbound volume increased at 1 year mark. As people have said, Charles Aris is a good place to start. If you want to work with a specific HH, introductions are good. I also found it helpful to ping headhunters every once in a while to see if they had anything I was interested in -I found alumni helpful as well - particularly ones 1-2 years out who I had worked with. Employee referrals are very effective -One channel that was surprisingly helpful for corporate jobs was LinkedIn's jobs listing. Lead to some interviews with Fortune 500 companies for me
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