Hi there,

If you're able to ask this question in English you'll get a higher response rate :)

1. Forget the tiers. When you are discussing in-house consulting, what matters is the company (local or global, one or multiple businesses) and the industry.

I have worked for a in-house consultancy. It was great. The quality of the people was very good. They had a global business. They were supporting the C-Board and BU Leaders. The businesses were interesting and quite diverse as it was a B2B business and they touched upon many end-user industries. It was an engineering company so technology was a key component of the strategy work. It was a long development cycle technology, so strategy would often look 5-10 years ahead, and not just to next year.

I don't think this would be the same if I was working for a niche industrial company, or a national bank, or a tech company, or a multi-business corporate.

2. Also consider the type of consulting. Is it Business Strategy? Corporate Strategy? Operations? Supply chain? Implementation support? Does it include Corporate Development / M&A work or not? There are many options out there.

3. And finally, what is the career path? Are you supposed to do a career in that internal consulting arm? Or after 3 years they move you to the business? Or something else? Is it an accelerator within the company or not? How is it perceived by the rest of the business?

Hi there,

First of all, congratulations on the offers!

This is indeed an interesting question which is probably relevant for quite a lot of users, so I am happy to provide my perspective on it:

• First of all, from my point of view, the whole “tier” discussion is not very meaningful, whether in strategy consulting and other industries alike for the simple reason: They are mostly based on size (i.e. revenues). While there might be other benefits associated with it, in the end it merely helps the individual.
• From my perspective, I would advise you to think about the following three aspects to understand where you want to be in the long run:
  • Industry knowledge: What is the industry that fascinates you and you think you might want to stay in for longer than just a couple of years?
  • Methodological knowledge: What are the topics that fascinate you and you want to become an expert in (this might be slightly correlated to industry knowledge yet not entirely)?
  • Culture: What is the work environment you thrive best?

In case you want a more detailed discussion on how to best decide on your career entry into inhouse consulting, please feel free to contact me directly.

I hope this helps,

Hagen