Private Equity to Consulting Switch

All,

Hope everyone is doing well. I currently work at a Private Equity fund and have prior experience in Investment Banking. I am thinking about making the switch to consulting for a few reasons (opportunities with business school, additional operational experience, potential to exit to a corporate later on in my career). Understand there aren't many data points but wanted to pose the question and see how difficult this switch may be.

Thanks for the help in advance!

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Hi! I made this switch myself, though post business school (IB -> PE -> MBA -> MBB). This switch is not at all far-fetched and there are many people in MBB with prior IB and PE experience. What you will need is a referral to get the interview, and if you have 2 years + of experience you should be able to shoot for a post-MBA role at an MBB. Once you have the interview it is all up to your case performance, but I definitely felt in my interviews that they liked the fact that I had this background

 

Absolutely, totally fair. To be 100% honest a big part of it was lifestyle. Seeing my bosses work just as hard as me turned me off working in PE longer-term, whereas MBB allows me to pivot towards something more sustainable longer term (Corp Strat, Corp Dev, Corp Ventures).

PE is interesting, prestigious, and pays amazingly, but it can be pretty terrible lifestyle-wise (often same hours as banking, more stressful).

There was also an element of wanting to work with more exciting products. At the end of the day most companies PEs invest in (generalizing a bit here) are fairly boring cash-generating businesses, and I would love to work on some more cutting-edge stuff at some point

 

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