Senior Manager with MC Boutique looking to lateral into Senior Manager role with MBB - appreciate your input

Hi y'all,

I've found this forum whilst searching for information on the experienced hire interview process for Tier 1 and 2 consultancies. So far, the content I came across seems sound - kudos to you for sharing your knowledge, folks.

I'm a senior manager with a respected EU-based management consulting boutique and I'm looking for any infos and assistance you can give me wrt lateraling into a senior management role with MBB or Strategy&. My preferences: I'm angling for a Principal position with Bain or Strategy&. The reason I'm looking for a change: I want more demanding projects with higher CIO exposure.

My questions: 1) What will the interview process be like?

2) How should I go about building my CV? As an experienced consultant and manager, I've helped many folks write good CVs for industry positions. But something tells me MBB and Tier 2 shops expect something different.

3) Is there anything else I should be aware of?

Let me give you some context on me: I'm mid-30s and have been in a senior manager role with a management consulting boutique for 4 years where I lead a business unit I've built from scratch. I'm responsible for revenue and revenue income, which I've tripled both since starting there.

Before my time in management consulting, I was an IT Manager with an IT Solution consultancy where I improved operational excellence and reduced waste, all the while coaching 30-ish software consultants as direct reports (2 years) and doing presales engineering. Before that, I was Technical Project Manager and Software Consultant for another IT Solution Consultancy (7 years). Prior to that that, I'd been part-time freelancing as a Software Developer in the eCommerce realm during my studies (6 years).

For my Master degree I had a 3.7 GPA (note: this is a conversion, I'm EU-based) and was in the top 10% of my class. My Bachelor's was only a 3.0 GPA. I don't have a MBA.

I'm responsible for winning new projects (mostly government, finance and logistics), staffing my consultants and staffing myself. I have final say in whom I recruit into my unit. The projects are set both in the strategy and operations realms: IT Strategy, big IT Transformations, Enterprise Architecture, redesigning and implementing IT orgs as well as planning and steering big implementation efforts, performing reviews as well as coaching managers and SMEs. My client network consists of CIOs, CDOs, IT Managers, Project Managers and SMEs: I'd say 20% upper management, 20% senior management and 40% middle management.

Outside of projects, I'm doing R&D and Knowledge Management in my area of expertise and I regularly publish to A-level trade journals. Sometimes, I give conference talks. I've also published 3 subject matter books, so far. My total comp is slightly below 200k EUR.

Thanks for reading - looking forward to your input!