F500 Corp Development vs Boutique Consulting

Hello everyone,

The WSO forums have been great and I am a first time poster so thanks in advance for responses. I currently am working in the Corp development dept of a F500 healthcare services company. I was with the company in one of their smaller offices doing business development/sales, worked on a transaction while I was there, and networked my way up to the HQ Development Group. I work primarily on M&A and other strategic relationships. Have been there about 6 months and with the company as a whole going on 2 years.

Issue: I am bored as hell. Painfully I get to work on a project here and there, most of them with high visibility, but frankly I would say that I am 20% utilized. I have panhandled around our dept for more work and am always at the ready, but like any corporate environment there are a lot of more senior hands in the cookie jar. I end up kind of "project manager" which is fine for a young guy like me, but I want to really get my hands dirty and "own" some things.

I have an offer from a well regarded boutique healthcare consulting firm. Not Big 4, but probably in the Top !0 by revenue and growing. Multiple offices, not any publicly listed clients but for healthcare, good names to be working with. Thing is I have very strong relationships with the very senior management where I am at. People I have told about this think I am crazy to blow these relationships just to move down to Senior Consultant "grunt" at a firm. I hear them, but again I am bordering on miserable bored.

As far as exits or future goes, a colleague of mine told me I should ride this out for a few years even if it does suck because if I want to do consulting later it is always there and if I want to continue in operations and ultimately do some PE operating partner type work, they would rather have someone who is in the trenches than a wonky consultant.

Ultimately my gut says the boutique firm will just offer a work environment I would excel in. Younger, competitive, consistent work - work hard play hard stuff. I am about 20 years younger than my colleagues in the corp development group and again its just very old school/bored environment.

Would love to hear your insights and again thanks.