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Never heard of them. Your best bet is to look for people on LinkedIn who have worked at those firms, and then filter by business schools. Add the top 15, or your target schools, adjust years of experience and see how many results filter through. Then take a look where they are now, Search for a few well known firms for comparison but make sure to adjust mentally for size too.
That being said, I know of very few people at Booth who come from lesser known consulting firms i.e. not the top 10-15. Really, only one comes to mind, though I'm sure there are more. It's not common at the M7. Might be moreso in the top 15.
Gonna go ahead and disagree a bit here - I go to Kellogg and know quite a few folks who came in from lesser-known firms. Most that I know came from firms that I've never heard of that focus in a particular industry, Finance and Healthcare jump to mind. Its hard to gauge relative admissions chances because I don't have solid #s but my guess is that it is definitely harder to get in vs. having an MBB or a Deloitte name on your resume but quite doable.
As a further datapoint - I interned at a ~100 person boutique during undergrad that focused on Aerospace/Defense and in looking at Linkedin I can see that a decent handful of people from that firm have gone on to M7 schools (including HBS/Wharton) with others in Top 15 schools and a few at top law schools. Ultimately, firm brand name matters but it can be overcome with some combination of a stellar GMAT, great recs and strong application execution (e.g., essays, interviews).
2nd Tier Consulting (Originally Posted: 12/28/2010)
Hoping for some advice......I'm a 2010 graduate of top ten MBA program who slightly swept up the hiring downturn in consulting. Wound up accepting an offer with Capgemini. This puts me on a completely different track than those at the top tier firms (both in terms of career options post-consulting and compensation). Is there any way for me to jump to either a top firm, or improve my career prospects? It doesn't like there's much opportunity for lateral hires at other consulting firms.
I think most people would argue that capgemini isn't 2nd tier, but considerably lower in reputation and prestige. From what I hear, lateralling to MBB is near impossible given your situation, but depending on your focus and area of expertise, you might still have some good options. I don't know anything about your situation other than what you've posted, so it's difficult to say anything constructive given the lack of information. The only thing I can suggest is to network like crazy, and hope for the best.
I'm thinking of applying to some lower-tier consulting firms as well. I'm under the impression that there's still exit opps from client firms. Is that true? Aside from that, what kind of exit ops exist? (By the way, in case it matters, I'd be getting in pre-MBA.)
You didn't really say what your career goals are (I'm guessing, given your age, that you're not sure yet). In this case, the simplest option is to try to kick ass at capgemini and get into a top business school, from which point you will have more options.
Lateralling to an MBB is probably not realistic pre-MBA. You could possibly get a really interesting job from one of your clients, but without knowing more about your career goals it's hard to give further advice there.
Ultimately, the important thing is to enjoy your job and do well about it. People get really hung up on MBB but frankly you will do really interesting work at Cap Gemini too, so have fun, learn a lot and do your best. Where you start is not where you end up.
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What exactly is a 1st tier vs. a 2nd tier firm?
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