Anybody know of any Management Consulting firms (or groups) that don't have a weekly travel model? Would love to be in Consulting, but cannot convince myself to do the Monday - Thursday weekly trip living out of a suitcase.
Jan 13, 2019
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Practically all management consultants travel to client sites; it's the nature of the job. What you're looking for is strategy consulting firms, the likes of LEK, CRA, and PEY. Here you tend to travel based on requirements e.g. if the project is big you may travel for the kick-off, interim alignment and delivery whilst on smaller projects you may just go for delivery
Any firms have offices in Chicago?
Firms that are heavy on commercial due diligence (LEK, S&, EY-P) will be minimal travel. MBB and other tier 2 strategy also probably travel less than other tech or management consulting focused firms. Economic consultants also don't travel a whole lot, but that's getting farther away from traditional consulting.
To determine whether these companies have Chicago offices, Google is your friend.
All 3 of the aforementioned do. If you google 'strategy consulting firms Chicago' you'll be balls deep in search results, very easy to find.
LEK, PEY, S& Deals Strategy, and OC&C are all, I think, low travel (30%) and with a good Chicago presence.. They all are oriented towards market diligence which you can often do from your home office. They're all in Chicago.
There are plenty of boutiques as well, but you'll have to dig a little deeper. Blue Ridge would be a Chicago example. Also The Cambridge Group.
S& Deals team stays in NYC
any Strategy groups you know of that are based out of Chicago that tend to stay local
S& Deals might also have people in Chicago, other than that no idea sorry
If you'd be down to have a heavy FS client focus, you could easily get through 80%+ of your year working out of New York with Oliver Wyman.
Can confirm know associates who haven't traveled in a year.
You can always do DD projects and stay local.
PM me
Slalom
Not a lot of people know about this, but you can actually end up not flying at MBB. It's somewhat uncommon, but I've got 6+ contacts between MBB firms that don't travel, or travel very light. If you talk with your staffing manager (or equivalent), and request home-office work (working for a Seattle-based client in Seattle) then you should be able to get it.
Granted, you have about 4 levers you can usually pull for staffing: Location, Team, Industry, and Practice. You're not likely to get all 4. For example, if you want to be in Los Angeles with your favorite manager doing M&A in healthcare, your firm just might not have it. That being said, if you really want to focus on retail cost reduction, and location and team don't matter, then it's great.
If you want to just do non-travel, though, then you'll want to hit up some tier 2s. LEK is the go-to example, of course, because they only do strategy work out of their home office. My buddy there still has days that go to 2am in the office but he's usually done by 6pm, and he can go home to his wife every night. Parthenon-EY doesn't travel that much from what I hear as well.
But yeah, just ask to be staffed on local work, give them a decent reason, and you'll be fine. You'll miss out to some degree on the "consulting experience," but that doesn't really matter if you have a wife and kids at home and you'd rather be with them each evening.
Yes but - firms are often willing to accommodate this for successful consultants who have a lifestyle change necessitating local work (i.e. children). It's not really something that you can negotiate in the hiring process unless you have huge leverage (i.e. an extremely desired skill set that can be utilized locally). The research teams at MBB might be a fit, but it's a different comp/business model.
It works for NY. If you are willing to only serve FIG clients or do DDs you can stay in town
Also works in big cities with an established client base/industry. For instance Houston/Oil, Chicago/consumer, Bay area/tech, etc. IF you are willing to take shitty projects it's a 100% doable in MBB
As others have mentioned, pre-deal diligence is generally a low-travel option. The timelines are shit and the work can be stressful, but the clients typically don't want you hanging around their office cluing their employees in to the fact something is going on.
Big 4 firms usually utilize a regional staffing model which means less travel, especially if you live in a major metro. I've heard Slalom uses a local staffing model and that West Monroe are low travel but cannot vouch for either.
PM me if you are interested in roles in NYC
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