Big 4 Management Consulting to Tier 2
The thing with Big 4 Management Consulting is that it is possible to get into these 4 firms without the need for MBA. I personally graduated with a Masters in IS from a 3x ranked US News School and still made it into the CIO Advisory Program of a Big 4.
The problem with Big 4 MC is that about 80% of the work is Operations Related and only 20% if you are lucky is Strategy related.
Now the question is how do you jump from a Big 4 Strategy/Advisory/MC service line to a Tier 2 firm? I am assuming it's impossible to even think of MBB. But is it possible to get into Accenture/Deloitte S&O/ATK/OW etc., from a Big 4 MC Service Line without a MBA? I did hear a few smaller firms like Slalom preferring Big 4 folks but haven't seen anyone actually making the jump. Do you guys know of firms where the shot could be realistic?
What sort of advice would you give to carve the resume to fit the needs of a Tier 2?
Bharadwaj - Interesting post, I started in Big 4 Management Consulting albeit in a strategy group, but of our initial class, after the first two years 28 of 35 stayed. Of the other seven, one went to BCG though in Central Europe, one BAH, one to ADL, one to Deloitte, one to an elite boutique, one left to do strat at a tech company, and the seventh went back to get a PhD.
So it is possible, of these guys, the BCG, BAH, and boutique guy were all ranked in the top 5 in our class.
Interesting - What sort of background do you have if you don't mind me asking? As in - when you say Strategy in Big 4, are you talking about Finance, Business or IT or something else? To me, Deloitte S&O is Tier 2 whereas the rest of Big 4 is Tier 3 - PwC, Deloitte (non S&O), KPMG and EY.
I would actually agree with the above, except KPMG is still a step behind PwC and E&Y. Background-wise I graduated from a top 5 UK university and studied international relations. At my firm, we had a programme that nominally included all lanes (IT, Strat, finance, supply chain, etc) and you specialised from there. Our strategy speciality / area was always the most competitive and took primarily Oxbridge, LSE, Imperial, etc. graduates and some MBAs.
Is CIO Advisory even considered MC? (I thought it isn't.) I'd think the transition to Tier 2 is much harder than starting in Strategy groups (like PwC Strategy or Deloitte S&O).
Deloitte S&O also has tech related jobs - such as Technology Strategy. Same with PwC and KPMG.
For example - kpmg . com/ US/ en/services/Advisory/management-consulting/management-consulting-by-function/Pages/information-technology. aspx
But you are right, it would be tough to move from different service lines across tiers. My question is related to similar service lines. Thanks for your inputs.
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