Management/Strategic consulting ambition

Ever since I graduated from a public university with a business degree focused on IS, I've been working in the IT security realm going from IT auditing to IT consulting with Deloitte (under advisory). The work is far from challenging and I find myself, unfortunately, twiddling my thumbs and paper pushing counting down to 5. Aside from attending relevant training and pursuing certifications, I still have a lot of down time.

I recently had the opportunity to talk to some people from the strategy and operations service line and I was intrigued. I started reaching out to my network for opinions and doing my own research and ultimately ended up with the conclusion that management/strategic consulting (as opposed to implementation/operational, which Deloitte is more geared towards) was the direction I want to move my career towards. I want to solve problems, not do or oversee implementation.

Currently, I feel unchallenged and knowing myself, this will lead me to being complacent. I've done my due diligence and know the competitiveness of M/B/B. I've visited the M/B/B website and looked through the practice case interviews etc and I was actually somewhat disappointed at the end of the cases for 2 reasons:

1) I didn't know some of the answers and their explanation wasn't enough to satisfy my curiosity 2) It ended. It's once in a blue moon that I have the opportunity to engage my intellect and logic at a level I found compelling and rewarding.

I would appreciate any buy in from anyone with experience with the top tier consulting firms, or second tier for that matter. As insecure as it sounds, I want to be able to validate my ambition against the experiences of others and know if I'm just on a very time and money (M7 MBA) intensive goose chase going down this path.

2 Comments
 

Harvard Business Review usually has a case study at the end of each issue... I'm not sure if they are as intellectually stimulating as cases on a McKinsey interview, but its a start.

looking for that pick-me-up to power through an all-nighter?
 

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