Business consulting in a top economic consulting shop
What is the work like in the business/strategy consulting area in top econ consulting shops (Analysis Group, CRA, etc.)
Can you speak on the projects, clients, exit opps, compensation, prestige. anything and everything.
For the most part, the work will be more quantitative than the strategy work at MBB. You may be asked to do a real options valuation for a company that is interested in developing an oil field, for example, or sift through lots of data and apply econometrics.
It will likely involve less travel than MBB as well.
Also, I would be glad to answer any specific ec consulting questions over PM.
I understand it will be dependent on the firm, but can you comment on the general percentage of strategy consulting done at econ consulting compared to litigation-based cases?
Many of the business consulting practices at those firms will still do a significant amount of litigation work. As Hayek mentioned, even the strategy consulting is quant/data driven. Expect fairly complex modeling, Monte Carlo simulation, conjoint analysis, etc. applied to business issues -- kind of cool in that regard... but "qual" strategy could be improved. I've noticed decent-but at times shallow-industry knowledge -- leadership even within business practices are typically economists by technical training.
"Expert-model" culture pervasive even in business consulting practices. What this means is that junior staff stick around for 2-4 years and go back to school. As such, not a lot of focus on developing the junior staff to be managers or partners. I noticed low client interaction, little presentation of deliverables, very little travel to client site. Very collegial and fun culture within the junior-levels, though.
Compensation (base and bonus) is on par with the lower end of industry.
Prestige, high amongst econ consulting shops, low recognition outside of that circle, and virtually non-existent with laypersons. All feed into top schools (multiple HSW/Top 10 per year).
PM me with more specifics if you have other questions.
I am very interested in the econ consulting field. Ironically, my issue with management consulting type of work is their lack of quantitative analysis. Their proposals are more often concept-based (aka good on paper) than not.
Where have these guys ended up after B school to your knowledge? MBA Associate in IBD somewhere?
It's impossible to generalize this, of the econ consulting firms that do business consulting, it will vary widely based on office. Pretty small % overall though, but it's really on an office by office basis.
From what I've seen mostly the bigger firms (NERA, Cornerstone and such) that handle the strategy cases if at all. Smaller firms tend to just focus on litigation cases. Would you agree?
Probably. But again, it's really firm by firm.
Say 20% is strategy work. Over your 2 year tenure, you will have ~8 projects (averaging 10-12 weeks per project w/ holidays and such). So expect only 1 or 2 strategy/business cases and 6-7 litigation cases during your time at the firm. Really depends on what you are looking for/ interest.
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