Big 4 – Transaction Services or Strategy?
I have been working in the Consulting/Advisory arm at a Big 4 for almost 1 year. I have been mostly working on assisting banking and AM clients with regulatory compliance. The work I do does not align with my goal, which (at this point of my career) is doing corporate/business development at F500 or AM/PE firms.
Currently, I am looking at the following two options within the firm:
1. Transfer to Transaction Services
2. Stay in Advisory/Consulting and try to get staffed or strategy related engagement – difficult to get staffed as there is a limited number of such engagements
Which of these two alternatives would provide better learning experience and exit opportunities?
Is rebranding with an MBA out of the question? I would say TS is probably better suited to corpdev, but ultimately I imagine you will want to go back to school.
Thanks! Yes, I do plan on going back to school in Fall 2015.
Any thoughts?
MBA is definitely an option but also a huge commitment. At this point, the alternative of switching stream seems much easier and results are more immediate.
I would highly recommend you switch to the Transaction Services side only because that would be more aligned to your long term goal. One thing about the strategy projects at big 4 is that true strategy projects are hard to come by. Majority of the time it's operations/business consulting. If you are in a financial center then a lot of work will be FS which will most likely be more middle/back office engagments. If you are at Deloitte then Monitor Deloitte would definitely get a lot more proper strategy projects but it's still a huge mix of everything. Not sure what's happening at PwC but from what I heard from friends at Booz, it seems like strategy work will be reserved for the Booz ppl (at least for now) while the existing PwC consultants focus more on human capital, tech, and operations. Don't know too much about EY's strategy group but i know their TS is solid.
The benefits of TS is that you won't be stuck working on some tech or middle/back office efficiency enhancement projects that you might have to do in Big4 Strat Consulting. No Matter what the project is, it will be somewhat relevant to your long term goal. The M&A deals and due diligence they work on would definitely have merit when you are applying for Corp Dev and PE shops while you might not be exposed to those projects if you are in big 4 strat consulting. I know a few ppl at Deloitte TS that moved on to IB or MBB so they certainly can help open more doors.
hope that helps :)
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