Consulting Lateral Market
Hi,
To give you a brief background about myself, did an IB internship at a reputable MM bank this summer and really did not enjoy the work that I did so I am hoping to recruit for consulting for FT. Seems like a lot of the firms have either kicked off the process or by the time they do, I am not confident that I will be ready for the interviews as I am not prepared at all in terms of applications, resume, case prepping and etc. That said, do you guys think there is a possibility/lateral market will remain hot enough for any of the tier 1/2 consulting firms to hire later on mid-year and past the usual recruiting timeline?
After doing some research, really liked how consulting involves more strategic thinking of the company's operations and less of simply evaluating companies, so would love to start my career in consulting (although there are more reasons that I won't state for the sake of time). Been a stressful week just thinking about this, so I would really appreciate any insight from current industry professionals.
Thank you!
Lateral hiring is when you take somebody already working at another firm / industry and give them an offer at the same level they're at. What it sounds like you're describing is just ad hoc off-cycle full time recruitment for current students, which isn't really a thing at the major firms
Assuming you go to a target school for some firms, all you need to do is polish up your resume and practice casing, which isn't that hard to get good at for some people if you really hunker down and start cranking (there isn't a great deal of technical jargon you need to do well, like there is for banking technicals). Figure out which firms recruit from your school and get any event / application dates gathered
Lateral recruiting for consulting is already incredibly difficult, doing it with less than a year of work experience is very rare. This shifted a bit a few months ago when there was a major personnel shortage, but from what I can tell things are closer to baseline conditions now. If you’re talking about recruiting while still in school but after the normal timeline, no T1/T2 consulting firm will accommodate that.
You definitely absolutely have time to prepare for campus recruiting. It’s not like banking internship recruiting where there is a super long networking phase and offers are given out way in advance of the start date. Some people might network far in advance through clubs or through their junior year recruiting (if they got close to MBB but just missed the cut and kept in touch), but this is not necessary for consulting at all. If you have interest in consulting, you should definitely go for it now.
I only started preparing for consulting recruiting after my junior internship and did fine. Definitely start now if you want to go for it, though
Thank you so much for the response - it's somewhat relieving and also helpful. So unlike banking, where the market's super hot and have heard of stories about people landing offers during mid-year or even just months before the job starts, it is highly unlikely for such thing to happen with consulting?
There was a little bit of off-cycle recruiting last year / this current new class, but you have to keep in mind that was also because there was no FT recruiting for many firms in light of COVID causing uncertainty
It is highly unlikely that the major firms will do much off-cycle recruiting this year
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