Deloitte S&O/Tech/HC

Senior graduating in Spring 2016. Recently accepted my offer as a BTA for Deloitte.

I know S&O is a notch above the other two consulting lines at Deloitte (HC/Tech), but I am wondering how large this margin is. In terms of career advancement, will being a BTA instead of a BA in S&O greatly limit my exit opps? I guess a follow-up question is: how much harder is it to break into S&O compared to Tech and HC?

 

Career advancement is the same regardless of line - each has the same org structure. Choosing any of the three limits your exit ops to what you'd specialize in for that line of business. S&O allows you to exit to Corporate Strategy, Corporate Development, a manager/director role in your vertical, etc. Tech would allow you to exit to tech-oriented roles. It all depends on what your goals and interests are. The biggest change in outcome is that S&O positions you better for top b-school matriculation and pay will increase at a faster rate. That said, if you have a good undergraduate profile and a solid story, you can still go from tech consulting > M7 b-school.

To answer your follow-up, it's much harder to break into S&O than Tech/HC for the most part.

My final comment is that S&O is not a blanket "better" option than Tech/HC. If you're a rockstar techy then you will probably be more successful and fulfilled in tech than S&O. Don't do everything based on prestige; make sure you play to your strengths.

 
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Career advancement is the same regardless of line - each has the same org structure. Choosing any of the three limits your exit ops to what you'd specialize in for that line of business. S&O allows you to exit to Corporate Strategy, Corporate Development, a manager/director role in your vertical, etc. Tech would allow you to exit to tech-oriented roles. It all depends on what your goals and interests are. The biggest change in outcome is that S&O positions you better for top b-school matriculation and pay will increase at a faster rate. That said, if you have a good undergraduate profile and a solid story, you can still go from tech consulting > M7 b-school.

To answer your follow-up, it's much harder to break into S&O than Tech/HC for the most part.

My final comment is that S&O is not a blanket "better" option than Tech/HC. If you're a rockstar techy then you will probably be more successful and fulfilled in tech than S&O. Don't do everything based on prestige; make sure you play to your strengths.

One more thing. Post-MBA, I know tech can have slightly slower promotion cycles.

 

DeepLearning did your friend mention why this was difficult? Did he mention any specific challenges he faced? From what I have seen, a lot of my S&O Colleagues work with tableau and data visualization, and deriving insights from data that they've analyzed. (I'm in Deloitte Tech Consulting and have attended S&O Training seminars before at my local office). I've also attended 2 M&A training sessions held by the S&O team (granted these M&A S&O folks were quite exceptional - and by no means do I think it would be easy to break into that particular part of S&O)...still surprised though by how difficult everyone here makes the regular S&O Practice seem.

 
Best Response

He mentioned two main things.

1) The first thing is that tech consulting provides much more consistent revenue for a firm like Deloitte than S&O. Sure, S&O might be a higher margin business but Deloitte signs massive tech implementation projects that are multi million dollar engagements, which require dozens of employees. It's difficult to convince the firm to pull you off these types of engagements.

2) The second thing is that these organizations are extremely siloed. They have different recruiting, different partners, different everything. Only thing that's the same is the Deloitte.com at the end of your email address and, perhaps, the office that you work out of on Fridays. S&O teams are much leaner and recruiting is more structured around their target schools. If an opening comes up, why wouldn't they fill it with someone with more relevant experience?

The first thing you can't get rid of if you try to do an internal lateral. There's always going to be pushback from your manager for trying to leave a much more stable revenue stream. When you're applying externally, you only have one of these pressures, which is relevant experience.

 

TL;DR - your exit opps will be dependent upon the type of work you do, and you can do strategy work while being in technology. Two groups in Tech do lots of strat work (TS&A and DB&S), and switching to S&O is difficult.

As someone who works in Tech, primarily on "Strategy" engagements, I'm going to give you the classic response, "it depends."

It's already been said, but what you focus on is what matters. I know of people from technology who have gone into corporate strategy, VC, and PE, because their experiences allowed them to do so.

Typically, though, if you're in technology and stuck on longer-term "systems" projects, then yes: your exit opps are going to fall in there. But there is a growing trend of "tech people" doing more strategy work at Deloitte.

As far as the margins between the groups, TS&A and DB&S are probably the two closest areas to S&O / Monitor in terms of type of work and relative "ranking."

As far as transfers to S&O, they do happen but are rare. You need to have worked on plenty of projects that are led by S&O partners and Senior Managers, and these groups of people need to support you.

 

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