6 months after starting and still no client
I've been at my current firm for 6 months and am still on the bench. This is my first job out of college and I am beyond frustrated, feeling as though my career growth has been stunted. FWIW, I am on the public sector/federal consulting side of the business, where things admittedly move slower, and my stint on the bench is not even close to the longest my firm has kept new hires unstaffed. I have heard of people going over 12 months without a client. My career coach tells me I am doing everything right (networking like crazy, applying internally to projects, trainings, etc.) and that it's the admin team's responsibility to get new hires staffed.
At this point, I think I'm ready to move on and find another consulting firm (preferably on the commercial side). Does anyone have advice on how to make this transition given my circumstance of having no actual consulting experience?
That's hard. Network your ass off since you have no skills. Sorry man. Get out of there. I thought 1 week on the bench was bad at a T2. Jeez.
Yea man, it's pretty grim. Don't really know how soon is too soon to start looking around and how I would possibly frame this situation. I have found that this is beyond my control, but I'm not sure many people hiring would be sympathetic to my position.
Spend your time learning something useful like become an LBO master and send 10 cold emails a day to PEs and take every call and eventually you’ll get a job if you really become a pro. Or do this for whatever job/ industry you’re interested in.
I don't think you're going to have much luck making the transition. If it's been a year plus then you're story is probably a bit stronger. Instead, give this job an honest shot and keep hitting the pavement to sell yourself and get staffed.
The most important factor to getting staffed is your reputation. Starting out, you probably won't have one unless you were an experienced hire, had a cool previous experience, or even have a really charismatic personality (being honest).
To start cultivating your reputation, I wouldn't just 'network' with Managers+, but offer to help them with any PRD or unbilled client work - the key is to make sure you do a great job on whatever it is...don't want to build a bad rep.
Another thing you can do is to grab a coffee with the partner who hired you. Tell them everything you've been working on but mention you are really looking forward to client work. If it's a systematic problem where a lot of people are on the bench, partners may not even realize that you haven't been utilized - so call attention to it and look eager. They should feel a sense of accountability given they were the ones that brought you in under the pretense that you would be getting a great learning experience.
Yeah, I agree that under a year isn't really long enough, but even if I started with a client tomorrow, I don't want to be in the federal consulting space. There are very few projects that interest me, the pace of work is slow, and not having a security clearance basically pushes me out of any really cool work.
I have been doing a lot of internal work for my partner (BD, market research, etc.) and I have a good reputation and relationship with my manager. I have been told that if my partner finds open positions, it would be staffed to me or one of other unstaffed new hires. After 6 months on the bench, I find that to be a meaningless promise. Also, federal bidding takes so long that by helping my partner with this RFP work and assuming we win the bid, it would be 1-2 years until the contract actually starts.
Re: grabbing coffee with the partner who hired me. I am actually doing that this week, so hopefully this turns out to be helpful. I have talked with him more informally since joining (at our all hands and other events), but hopefully having his undivided attention for 30 minutes can prove a little bit more fruitful.
Sounds like my firm. What service line? Most people that were new hires in my service line took over six months just to get staffed and most went to commercial. Some are even still on the bench.
Honestly it blows because there's nothing you can really do since sometimes you were hired based on projects they thought they had in the pipeline and it didn't pan out.
Are you at Deloitte? If so, not the same firm. My firm aligns us by markets instead of service lines (probably makes it a dead give away). Recently met someone who is waiting for their clearance to go through and, in the meantime, has been told they will not be utilized until Feb-March. What the actual fuck...
Yeah the Big D. Honestly ready to leave. They're purging the bench since it's high and it ain't so pretty for the people rolling off at the wrong time.
I think I know what firm you're at. Are you in the DC area?
I worked at your firm or similar. Took me 1.5 months to find a project. Very very disheartening waiting on the bench. Networked like crazy especially for an introverted person like myself.
Are you networking with other BAs/BTAs as well? Sometimes they might know of openings or they can pass along your resume.
Just keep at it. You'll find something.
PS. Are you allowed to search for positions in other locations? That might help as well. Maybe even try other service lines/service areas.
Good luck!
Yup in the DC area. Probably not the firm you're thinking of though because we don't have BTAs and most of the work is federal. I have reached out to some folks at BA/BTA equivalent levels, but I'll start talking to more because I'm pretty desperate.
Most of the work outside of the DC area requires a clearance, an engineering background and is basically ass-in-seat augmentation. And yeah, I've been trying for any service line possible.
It's too bad WSO doesn't have too many threads about federal consulting, because these firms recruit like crazy from DMV schools, and quite a few T20 undergrad college too. Would have been nice to know that, no matter how hard they try to convince you you'll be doing consulting, at the end of the day, there are significant differences between contracting and consulting.
haha. I feel you, man. It's tough. I used to work at Deloitte Tech consulting, as BTA. It sucked.. the worst job on the planet. I didn't have any work to do first 5 months after I got hired, graduating from college. They didn't have enough projects. Then I barely got staffed for like 5 months, and then out on bench again for next 3 months. Although I 'worked' at the firm for more than a year, I did very little actual work, through no fault of my own, although the work itself sucked really bad, too. it was pure tech implementation work where using my brain to do any 'analysis' used to be frowned upon.
I just fluffed my resume and shot my resume everywhere. surprisingly, got some interviews and then bounced for 20% increase in pay.
From talking to some people I used to know at Deloitte S&O (mgmt consulting branch), they had a bad 'bench' problem in that division, too, last couple of years and they laid off many strategy consultants, especially ones that were fresh out of school and had low utilization rate.
I really think that only 'true' high-end consulting, in terms of quality of work (strategy), quality of project pipeline, and quality of skill set development are MBB, OW, LEK, and maybe some other high end boutiques. Most other consulting jobs out there imo are flames, and not worth it. I'd rather do IB or ER, or even business valuations at MM banks, over some of the choppy consulting branded as 'strategy mgmt consulting'.
sure, you can get lucky and still get some good experience at places like Accenture strategy, Deloitte S&O, S&, etc. but people's experience at these places aren't as uniformly positive compared to 'true' elite consulting jobs like MBB, OW, LEK, Roland Berger, etc.
at any rate, if I were you, I would look for other jobs NOW!!! apply to everything! F500 strategy, MM banks, finance mid office / back office, other consulting, etc. I really think you need to get out of there asap. Better to land on your feet and get some work experience, before you get fired for being on bench too long. Best of luck!!
Fully agree. Really do find it peculiar with the number of people going into ACN/Big4 "Strategy" MC from where I'm from, thinking that they are doing pure strategy work or getting good experience. Most of it is implementation. Got to experience both sides of the coin and I do see a huge difference in the work.
Most consulting gigs outside mbb, ow, lek, atk, and parthenon are bullshit. I'm heading to mba soon and I will prob recruit for both consulting and banking. If i get mbb+ ow+ lek offer -> i will become a consultant after mba. Otherwise id rather become a banker.
Accenture Strategy, Monitor (Deloitte), Parthenon (Parthenon is big 4 - they're owned by EY) and Strategy& (PwC) are all strategy shops and comparable if not better than OW, LEK, ATK; all of these groups (big 4 and pure play) tend to have industries or verticals that are relatively strong compared to each other, so it's not always an apples to apples comparison. For example, I'd take Parthenon for PE consulting over ATK, I'd take Accenture for tech strategy over any of the others, etc. Deloitte is probably the blurriest between implementation and strategy; the others are all pure play strategy within a larger organization (Accenture was pretty blurry two years ago, they have made a strong effort to fully segregate the strategy group). The compensation, advancement, exit ops etc of these groups are comparable to other T2 shops.
KPMG, to my knowledge, does not have a pure play strategy arm, they tend to be more specialized and thus more implementation/execution oriented. They also have lower bill rates, so the value proposition is different.
To reiterate, the big four companies aren't going to roll people from their strategy groups into implementation work, the value proposition isn't there for the firm - bill rates don't match up, strategy folks aren't specialized enough in a subject matter and the culture is different (9-5 vs MBB equivalent hours).
For any other group within those organizations, yes, the focus is on implementation vs strategy. These are behemoth organizations though, and it's not correct to state that they are flat across the board. If your offer is for a group in these organizations outside of those listed, do your research on what typical engagements look like (ask folks what their last 3 projects have been - if they say "we do some strategy work but my last couple projects have been supply chain integration" or something like that, they're not a strategy group).
Yeah, my original plan was to start at this firm and within the first year try to get into finance (preferably IBD). That said, if I somehow could "trade up" to a legitimate strat shop, I'd take it and go for the MBA down the line. Regardless of where I end up moving, an important factor to me is MBA business schools ">M7 admissions so I'm hesitant to go too boutique (whether its IBD or consulting).
Any advice on how to fluff up my resume?
You don't need to tell anyone that u are on bench. Employers that interview u and hand you offers will just check to see that you were employed at the firm you mention on your resume, and your job title. Which means, you can spin your resume / experience in your favor, as long as it doesn't sound like bull shit. Just be reasonable when you're fluffing your resume.
Also - I wouldn't worry too much about your mba chances in case you end up at a boutique. As long as you have like 4-5 yrs work experience, have one promotion, have 720+ gmat and good easays, you will crack top 15 no problem, if not top 10
I know dudes coming from non target undergrad + commisionable sales backgrounds at finance companies (these dudes used to work at my firm) that got into Duke, Columbia, Stern, Ross, Booth mba schools. They all had 700+ on gmat though
Honestly I've had the same experience as you. I honestly I have no idea how their Federal arm makes any money with all the companies undercutting each other in this space. Not to mention protests are part of the federal sales cycle now.......
Feel so bad for all those BTA's they sent to Atlanta to train them and align them in my Service Line even though there are no projects in my service line for federal. Some even said they specifically asked not to be in my service line and got hit with the bait and switch.
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