Big 4 Intern to Tier 2 Consulting
Hello everyone,
I posted a while back last year on going from Big 4 Internship to MBB. I have adjusted my expectations and now I want to do a follow up thread.
So a background: I am a Canadian at a non target, I worked a year at a top 20 energy company as an Intern then jumped over to a Big 4 for summer audit. The thing is, I find it very mind numbing of a job and I am no longer interested in pursuing this route. They will most likely provide me with a full time offer at the end.
I am quite interested now in doing Tier 2 consultancies (Deloitte,Accenture, OW, Big 4 advisory, IBM) but to go for recrutment at these firms; it will mean I have to reject my audit offer. I am very interested in doing something with financial transformation, data analytics or IT strategy - as I feel this is the future.
Do you folks think I should just accept the offer or risk it and go for recruitment.I have zero connections with consultancies and will be going in cold. Or should I just bite the bullet and get my CPA and go from there?
Thanks!
It sounds like you're assuming you'll get an offer at this point, and it hasn't officially been offered yet. Regardless, I think you will most likely have a deadline for acceptance that should allow you to interview elsewhere for full-time offers. I know my school has a job offer policy for companies that do on-campus recruiting, perhaps you should check out your career center website to see if there is something similar.
If this isn't the case, I'd suggest you politely ask the firm to give you an extension on the acceptance deadline. If they don't allow you to, screw 'em and go through fall recruiting. You're not interested in audit, so why not take a risk for something better? You can always re-interview with the firm for the same position, or an advisory role, and you could pursue job opportunities that you actually find interesting.
Are you sure you will have to accept or reject right away?
If you want to gun for consulting, start recruiting NOW. That way if you get an exploding/expiring offer from the internship, you'll already know if you're getting traction with the firms.
I don't think this is a clearcut rejection case. In your shoes, I'd be very tempted by the Big 4 offer. It's decent pay, looks good on a resume and you can clear your CPA pretty quickly then try to move on. You'll need to drum up some motivation for the role; nobody becomes a top performer who hates their job, and it's the top performers who will find good exits from the firm. But start pounding those phones in the meantime to see if the consultancies will talk to you.
Why not just accept the offer and apply to consulting places? You can always renege.
Big 4 S&O Internship --> MBB/Tier 2 (Originally Posted: 12/08/2017)
Hey everyone,
After a hectic recruiting season, I managed to pull interviews in at McKinsey, BCG, and a Big 4 firm in their S&O practice.
My first interview was with McKinsey, where I unfortunately didn't get past the first round (first case interview ever), and then I did BCG and got to their superday, and could not clinch the offer. Finally, after learning where my mistakes are in interviews, I was successful in obtaining an offer from a Big 4 in their strategy and ops group.
While I'm thrilled to have this offer, I would eventually like to move to a tier 2 company/MBB following my internship (i.e. Mckinsey, BCG, Bain, Atk, and OW).
While I hope to either maintain my GPA of 3.74 at a target in a quantitative program at worst, and improve it to a 3.8 at best, I would like to know of other ways to maximize my chances at getting interviews for full-time with these firms. Is it common for someone from the Big4 S&O internship programs to be given an interview with the more traditional consulting firms? Should I reach out to those who interviewed me over the summer and try to get my way into the accelerated process? I didn't receive any interviews from Monitor, Accenture, or OW (didn't apply to ATK given their deadline was after I received my offer), so clearly I am doing something wrong and can improve somewhere.
Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Thank you!
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