I have 3 YOE in equity research and looking to pivot into corporate strategy. From what I’ve seen, it seems many people in these roles have consulting backgrounds.
Has anyone made this ER -> corp strat transition? I’d love to hear how long it took to land the role and any skills/experience to highlight during the interviews.
I made it to the interview stage for 2 different companies, but the furthest I went was to the second round.
Based on the most helpful WSO content, transitioning from Equity Research (ER) to Corporate Strategy is less common compared to the traditional consulting or investment banking backgrounds. However, it is possible with the right approach and preparation. Here are some insights and tips:
Highlight Transferable Skills:
Tailor Your Story:
Networking:
Interview Preparation:
Timeline and Persistence:
Alternative Pathways:
Your progress to the second round for two companies is a positive sign. Focus on refining your narrative, emphasizing your unique value proposition, and preparing thoroughly for interviews. Good luck!
Sources: Accenture Strategy Q&A, Q&A: Corporate Strategy, Q&A: Corporate Strategy Manager at F100 Entertainment Company (came from Non-MBB Management Consulting), Corporate Strategy vs Corporate Development, Exit opps for corporate strategy
I just made this transition this year. I had 6 years of sell-side equity research experience and 3 years of accounting experience prior to that. The company I was hired to work at is a conglomerate and one of their divisions has sector overlap with what I covered for 6 years in ER. They hired me for my sector expertise and acknowledged during the interview process that I'd have a steep learning to curve to climb. They were correct, because the learning curve has indeed been very steep. You don't use nearly as much PowerPoint as you think you do in ER and that is a huge component of the job. My entire team is comprised of ex-big 3 consultants and they run circles around me with their general PowerPoint skills and ability to creatively make slides that effectively tell a story. That said, crafting slides isn't rocket science and I've been learning it pretty quickly. I'd say it is probably easier to learn to craft well done slides than it is to learn to craft a well written research note, so as long as you're a quick learner there's nothing to fear there.
For interviews, I really only interviewed to do strategy at one company, the one that hired me. I was mainly targeting IR, but also applying to corp dev and strategy positions in the background. I got tons of IR interviews but only one interview for strategy and none for corp dev. The interviews were mainly focused on why I wanted to do strategy and my sector expertise. As I mentioned above, they were interested in me for my sector expertise, so they really grilled me on that. They also asked me some of the types of questions that you'd see in the consulting interview prep guides - i.e. build vs. buy vs. partner, what you look for when considering an M&A target, etc.
As far as the work itself, it is very interesting and high exposure work. I've already met the CEO (we are a $100bn+ market cap company) and I'm on a first name basis with the president of the division I primarily support (this is a dude who has thousands of people reporting to him and probably makes millions per year). My company is highly acquisitive and we work closely with the corp dev team. The job isn't really quantitative at all, it is more of a qualitative role - I haven't really touched Excel much since I've started and don't really dive too deep into the numbers. We have FP&A people that handle that for the day-to-day stuff and corp dev does all of the modeling for our M&A deals.
Final thing I'll say is, culturally it is amazing how vastly different it is working at a normal corporation vs. a bulge bracket bank. The culture at BBs is just plain toxic - people are jerks, high strung, highly stressed, and take out their frustration on the people who report to them. I've seen this across working in ER at two different banks. At my current job, everyone is super kind and friendly and people actually apologize to me when we work past 5-6pm. I recently emailed my boss my PTO plans for the rest of the year and he yelled at me for not taking enough. Contrast that with sell-side ER where my boss made my cut my honeymoon short by 3 days to get back for 3Q earnings season and would constantly put up a fight to any PTO request I put in. I work 45ish hours a week vs. 60ish in sellside ER and the difference has been massive.
This is good color, thanks for this!
Would you say the gap is primarily around PowerPoint skills or are there other day-to-day responsibilities/frameworks that were new to you as well that was tough to grasp? If it’s mostly PowerPoint skills (I know this is a huge difference from a strategy team internship way back when), would you say that the gap is increasingly narrowing due to AI becoming more proficient at those sort of outputs?
Also, it sounds like the other technical interview questions were things that can be learned from a consulting interview guide. Do you find that you are implementing these frameworks in your job or is it strictly for interview purposes?
I haven’t spent a second looking at those consulting guides. Admittedly, I didn’t immediately think of a good approach to the build vs buy vs partner question when you just mentioned it beyond trying to analyze the ROIs of the different paths while also considering the strategic growth priorities of the company but that’s extremely vague unless you do the actual analysis.
I would love to not spend every waking minute in excel, so this sounds like a cool role. Congrats on the move!
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