Consulting exit opps?
For firms that have a strict up or out policy, what do people do after they get asked to leave? What are some exit opportunities? I would assume any exit opportunity would be considerably worse than staying at the firm.
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lol... yeah, what he said. if you can't find info on your own and expect it all to land on your lap, you're in for a tough life (tho you might not be aware of it).
Yeah search around. But no, not all exit opportunities are worse. PE, F500, another consulting firm, MBA are all very good ops.
Linkedin.com -> advanced search -> company = target, current or past = "past". Replace target with "McKinsey", "BCG" or whatever you want.
what exactly is up or out policy? never heard of it.
more details please. are you expected to move from business analyst to next level in a particular time period or what? Is this policy the same as forcing people to do an MBA?
From what I understand, when you first start you sign a contract for a couple of years, depending on the firm. After that contract is up, they either promote you from an associate consultant to actual consultant, or just let you go. The concept is either you keep getting promoted and move up the corporate ladder, or you go find work somewhere else because you just...weren't good enough. It's different from asking them to do an MBA, it's pretty much a "you get promoted or you get fired" type of deal.
Correct me if I'm wrong, though.
You'll quickly learn that this is not how people feel once they've spent much time in consulting.
In my firm, you are expected to stay at a certain level for a certain number of years. If you don't get promoted by then, you are counseled out. As you move up the ladder, it gets much more competitive (e.g. less spots and people moving up are more talented).
This isn't necessarily true. The majority of people that go into consulting at the junior levels (post-undergrad and post-MBA) don't want to stay in the industry on a long-term basis. They usually don't want to maintain the brutal lifestyle that arguably gets worse as you move up the ladder, they often want to work in a specific industry, or they may want a level of ownership over their work that consulting doesn't allow. For these people, consulting is like maintaining an undecided major into their first couple of years out in the working world as they try to decide what industries, functions, and locations they're most interested in. The most talented people in consulting more often than not leave for other things.
The people that do get promoted are part of a self-selecting group that wants to stay in the business. Among this subset, the most talented people are generally the ones that get promoted. But this isn't always the case...
First, there's a significant amount of randomness in who's evaluated to be "the best" when it comes to consulting. Because people in the same start-class can have vastly different experiences -- from the standpoint of the type of projects, quality of clients, and personality of managers and partners -- there are few apples-to-apples comparisons when performances are evaluated against one another. Yes, there are some people that will excel on virtually all types of projects, but the truth is that people are generally going to be suited particularly well for different types of experiences, and if you don't get staffed on projects that play to your strengths, you won't perform as well. Unfortunately, junior consultants have little control over this.
Second, the skill-set that makes for good manager or a good partner is not the same as the skill-set that makes for a good junior consultant. While good managers are intelligent and good at taking a structured approach to problem solving (characteristics that are pre-requisites for anybody in consulting), A manager's job is to manage the team, the client, and the process. They will review work and provide high-level direction for a project, but they're not driving the process of research and analysis. Partners are even further removed, as their job is mostly one of client development, with actual casework consisting of mentally processing the work their team has done and communicating the conclusions to clients (while framing it in a way to position the firm for additional casework).
The skill-set a junior consultant needs to be successful are centered more on being efficient in research and analysis.
If you work at McKinsey as a BA, at the end of your two years you get a visit to Area 51, Nevada and they show you different exit ops your life could have and you get to choose one. i don't know how it works but i heard the exit ops are good.
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