I noticed that some roles at Tier 2 advisory firms require a few years of experience in top tier strategy consulting (reading off job ads).
Is it really true? I would think that it should be the other way round, I mean why would someone with MBB experience move laterally to Big 4 advisory, when the remuneration and growth opportunities are better at MBB. Seems counterintuitive to me… Can someone shed some light?
Hi there,
If you noticed it, then it's true :)
But yes, a lot of roles do require existing experience. Some roles require fewer years or don't specify the company tier, however, MBB experience opens up the most doors.
You might move from MBB to Big 4 Advisory because of changes to compensation, title, region, culture preferences or specialization.
Well, every year there are a lot of consultants that are pushed out of MBB. They are not necessarily bad, but the “up-or-out” policy is there, and sometimes one is unlucky (had one bad project), needed more time to develop, or is simply the innocent victim of office politics (yes, this is a reality).
These are not bad consultants. You woudn't believe the ammount of consultants that get pushed out of MBB. And even partners get pushed out. This is Peter's Law on steroids. You can be great but if you didn't make the cut on time to be promoted… you are out.
MBB will often try to outplace these consultants to clients, but some of them want to remain in consulting, so they take offers from the competition.
So Tier 2 firms will frequently interview these great people getting out of MBB.
In other instances, the consultants just weren't happy where they were, or wanted a different lifestyle (less travelling) or to focus on a different industry where the Tier2 is actually stronger. Or the Tier2 is paying them more. Or has a better project (in my case, I left MBB to become EY's #1 strategy employee in my country to setup the new strategy practice, pretty cool, right?)
Or they decided they wanted to quit MBB and go to the industry, just to find out they actually prefer consulting and to return they have to apply to Tier2.
