Based on my current professional profile and age of 37, what are my realistic chances of breaking into operations consulting, and is this a viable career path for me at all?

Question

am seeking a brutally honest assessment of my chances of entering operations consulting as a career. My profile: 37 years old, 15+ years of self-employed experience in jewellery retail operations and garments manufacturing . Hands-on exposure to vendor management, supply chain coordination, GST compliance, ERP tools (Busy, Tally, MyBillBook), product costing, and demand planning. I hold a B.Com from IGNOU, Six Sigma Yellow Belt, and am enrolled in NMIMS Online MBA in Operations & Data Science (July 2026 batch). Currently pursuing Odoo Functional Consultant certification. Zero prior experience at any consulting firm, Big 4, or MNC corporate setup. No formal salaried employment history. Please assess: (1) whether operations consulting is realistically accessible at age 37 with this profile, (2) what type of consulting roles or firms are within reach versus completely out of reach, (3) the hard disqualifiers in my profile, and (4) whether I should pursue this path or redirect my energy elsewhere entirely.

Answer 1

I’ll be very direct with you.

For a large structured multinational consulting firm (MBB, Big 4 strategy teams, Tier-2 consulting firms), I think it would be very difficult given:

your age relative to entry level hiring pipelines;
the lack of exposure to the corporate world;
no prior consulting experience;

Those firms usually hire either younger candidates they can train from scratch or experienced hires who already spent years in corporate, consulting, or large-scale transformation environments.

Where I think you may have a shot is:

specialized operations consulting boutiques that serve SME (e.g. in jewellery retail, garments/textiles or retail operations)
Independent consulting leveraging your industry expertise

Hopw this helps
Best,
Franco