I'm looking to break into consulting from finance (burn out), and I'm wondering what you consider to be the "creme de la creme" of work/life balance consulting jobs & why?
Also, perhaps you can help me define the consulting service line that fits my preferences:
Client facing &
1) not so much insane excel work
2) not so much client report writing
3) not so stressful
4) not so many hours
5) not IT related
I figure, a line of work similar to those chilled out consulting gigs you hear about from bored consultants of reddit.
Thank you!
Creme de la Creme in consulting world is considered MBB. McKinsey, BCG, Bain are these firms, and they mostly do management (strategic) consulting. However, job involves excel with long stressful hours. Then comes, tier 2 magement consulting firms (Oliver Wymen, Strategy&, Roland Berger). About hours and stress I don't know but I guess they same or close to MBB. Then, there are tech consulting firms such as, Accenture and IBM. But you are not interested in IT. There are also Big 4 firms (KPMG, EY, PwC, Deloitte). They do a lot of things starting from implementation, audit, risk, IT, deals etc. They also have long hours. Additionally, there are strategy/business development arms within large corporations. I guess, the less stress and short hours are there. About small consulting firms and freelance consulting I don't know much.To conclude, consulting is in the professional services industry alongside with IB and Law. And professional services despite considered "prestigious", paying well, and havin good exit opts, are stressful and have long hours.
Thank you
welcome
Helpful, thank you!
I think CorpStrat will be hard to pull off because they often hire Ex-MBB and usually require an MBA upon entry (besides for their undergrad hires)...
But you think I'd perhaps enjoy working for a small consulting firm or a consulting arm of a small-medium accounting firm? Or maybe there's a specific group within one of the larger firms that delegates less intense projects/work...
Yeah, I'm hoping for a role in consulting that would be a close equivalent to commercial banking (hours 9-5, comp 85k all-in as an A1).
You can try to reach out for a people who work in the small consulting firms and ask them about work-life balance.
Really depends on the exit company. For example lots of non-MBB go into FAANG roles.
Very broad trend is that the more ex-MBB or consultants in general, the more consulting-like the work and lifestyle for better or worse
if you do strategy consulting, you're going to work toooooo fucking much
come join us in the world of big 4 MC/TC... less interesting work but way fewer hours
i'm a big 4 mc manager and make pretty good money while working 40-50 hours most weeks (yea every now and then i work 60 but i have literally never in my life worked 80)
Super informative! And does this apply to all Big 4 consulting firms and those Big 4 consulting branches (Strategy &, Parthenon)?
Definitely doesn't apply to Strategy& and EYP
"if you do strategy consulting, you're going to work toooooo fucking much"
this applies to S& and EYP
What types of MC projects do you typically engage in, and how have you enjoyed your time there?
i do process improvement and other operational projects
mostly assess & recommend, with a little bit of implement here and there
This. From what I've gathered in the consulting world, you can basically pick two of the following three:
-Interesting work
-Reasonable WLB
-Good comp
MBB/Tier 2 is likely interesting work and good comp (great comp realistically), but at the expense of WLB. Big 4 non-strategy + Analytics is probably more aligned to Reasonable WLB + Good comp, but you'll likely be working on more boring/non-value add work, which is why the WLB is better (if it isn't mission-critical or time-sensitive to the client, you're less likely to be on-call or working crazy hours to meet a deadline).
What are MBB hours like?
my work isn't mission critical but i wouldn't say it isn't value add
it's a lot of cost cutting / process optimization
Mind Sharing what "pretty good" comp range is?
i'm around 150 salary as a manager, roughly 20% bonus if you're top bucket
Things that haven't been mentioned yet: federal consulting is pretty boring from what I hear but wlb is great and you get paid decently.
If you're willing to branch out a bit the analytics space might be worth considering, pretty easy to learn and good pay + wlb.
Cool, I've never heard of federal before! What type of work is done is this space? Are the projects similar to MC work or something like Audit implementations?
Also, how long do you think it would take to learn enough analytics to secure an analytics consulting job?
Quite a few threads on federal consulting I'd take a look at them.
Really depends on the level / complexity of analytics you're talking about. Simple data analytics is doable with a few months of dedicated self study, but more data science roles are going to take longer and some might even require an advanced degree. Tbh I'd rather do analytics at an actual company instead of at a consulting firm.
Look into Deloitte GPS. I think base is 82k plus bonus. The make less than other Deloitte consultants but because you're working for the government you basically only work 40 hours a week. Heard it's a relatively chill job. You'd have to live in DC though
Sounds like you want a boring industry job. I don't know of any areas of consulting that don't involve Excel, research, writing reports (decks), even in tech or management consulting. Unless you count things that people here wouldn't traditionally lump into consulting... like being an "art consultant" or something
So far Gov Consulting sounds the best wlb-wise. I'm okay with slide decks and Excel, just not past 6pm latest.
I'll take a contrarian point of view.
Even though the service industry and consulting in general has been known for long hours, there is a good amount of variance in this aspect. For instance, if you worked at Bain and exclusively handled Private Equity Due Diligences, you're looking at 70-80 hour work weeks, however, if you focused more strategy and operations engagements, the hours would decline to 50-60 hours and at best, 40-50 hours for simple companies/clients.
I also know several consultants who have slowed their career progression in exchange for better work-life balance by asking for clients or groups known to have less stressful work (such as operations consulting clients with a large internal expertise existing) and turning down work or engagements that may have greatly accelerated their careers. I recall a mentor of mine saying that everyone will exploit you if you give them the chance to. He said that new hires and analysts rarely say no to assignments or engagements which leads to, to some extent, unnecessarily longer hours. These people work at 2nd tier consulting firms and work 40-45 hour work weeks 70% of the time. They accept the downside of slower progression/lower long-term salary. In exchange, they get to leave the office and enjoy their evenings. Obviously, there are unavoidable long hours and times where you can't say no, but there are ways to minimize the longer hours.
All this to say: it does exist, but it's not easy to achieve immediately.
Corp Dev: way more fun that IB and you work normal hours.
Why more fun? And what is comp like?
Far less excel work/modeling and much more strategic thinking and creativity (in my experience at least). Comp is generally about the same as most post-MBA corp finance
.
Very informative comment! Definitely looking into it!
econ consulting
- 40 hours work week
- cool data sciency work
- cool data sciency exit opps
- 80-105k tc starting out depending on firm
-work with economists who just want to read cool papers and don't take the job too seriously
see: AG, NERA, Cornerstone
- heard bad things about Brattle
W
also they like finance people (there are several burnt out bankers at my office)
What bad things did you hear?
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