Consulting Career Advice

signposts:

As things currently stand, it is significantly easier to get hired in Asian MBB offices and thus harder to move to the U.S. from Asia than vice versa. I believe all of the top firms have international programs at the consultant level (ranging from international staffing on a single project to ambassadorships).

That being said, it is not easy to get staffed in China earning a U.S. salary simply because the math doesn't work out (your billing rate barely covers your salary in some cases) - I hear this is getting better, but was still a major challenge for U.S. consultants looking for Asian experience when I left my firm.

I think this one comes down a lot to what you mean by "I want to be involved with Southeast Asia". If you mean involvement as in living and working in a country, then you should definitely start there. Relationships are incredibly important in Asian business culture, as you no doubt know, and you will be hard-pressed to make up the lost time. The differences in learning experience between regions will be minimal compared to this gap.

On the other hand, if you mean you want to occasionally fly out to Southeast Asia or spend stints there on expat packages while still primarily working out of the states, then I would absolutely start in the U.S. In most of these cases, you will travel for expertise, representing HQ or American interests at an Asian operation, or because you are backfilling senior management roles (employee turnover is high in Asia for multinationals, so this is a pretty common situation). In these cases, you will be able to plug into your firm/employees' networks fairly seamlessly for the short term and you shouldn't be badly handicapped so long as you know the language and local customs.

I don't mean to suggest that the above are the only examples of international work - just pointing out that a big part of this decision comes down to your vision of working internationally in SE Asia.

Hope that helps - feel free to add more details or other questions if you feel I can clarify anything.

Ok. I have to disagree with some points raised by signposts. Some of the things this poster said might be true, but I think that using Asia as a category is not the best way to go about this. It is even a little ethnocentric (And I don't say that with the intention to offend), as it obscures the HUGE diversity in the region. I mean it is not the same to do business in China (eastern Asia), in Kazakhstan (Central Asia) or in Singapore (southeast Asia).

Since the original poster (OP) wants to focus on China I have to disagree even more with the following two points: 1) "it is significantly easier to get hired in Asian MBB offices" 2) "it is not easy to get staffed in China earning a U.S. salary"

1) I don't know how much easier it is to get hired in the MBB offices in smaller countries (Thailand and Malaysia, etc), but getting hired in China, whether in the mainland or in Hong Kong is NOT easier than getting hired in a US office. This is just a fact.

I won't elaborate much, but it suffices to say that 1) MBBs in China are increasingly uninterested in foreigners in general and particularly in ones that want a brief stint in the region 2) Everyone wants to be in China. I know people that successfully transferred there and they say it was near impossible and getting harder. They told me point blank if you plan to start in a US office planning to start in China, you might get very disappointed. Think of it you have to compete with thousands of smart graduates from top Chinese universities, with all the returnees that studied at the top schools abroad and with legions of American Born Chinese and other Mandarin speakers.

2) For the post-MBA positions all Chinese consultants at MBB make global pay, dollar for dollar. And for pre-MBA employees make less in absolute terms, but the same in terms of cost of living. Why would anyone think that a Chinese employee in Shanghai would be making much less than someone in Atlanta or Charlotte? This people also went to MIT, Harvard, Stanford, or the Chinese equivalent.

What I am not qualified to comment on is how easy it is to transfer to the US from China, but I can't imagine that it would be too hard. At MBB in China you would not only learn how to operate in China, but would also acquire all the skills that a consultant acquires in another office. Those skills travel! It might be harder to move to the US if you are a Chinese consultant (especially if you were educated in China and have little international exposure) for many reasons among them the green card, but if you are American you would still certainly have all the cultural skills that would allow you to operate in your home country and be legally eligible to do so.

I think that if you wanted to move back it would depend more on what specific MBB you are at (McKinsey, for example, is more global in its structure and might be more flexible for this sort of transfer), the availability of positions in the office that you want to, and of course your performance.

I am really not trying to just disagree or be uncouth. My intention is to help the OP. Btw, knowing Chinese will be key for getting an opportunity to go there, but be prepared to be thoroughly tested.