Appreciate the detailed, logical answer. Thanks!
Hi,
I spent a few years at a T2 before making the switch to MBB. I can share a couple of my observations on the differences:
Hope this helps to shed light on this topic for anyone who is interested!
Hi,
having worked at 2nd tier firm (ATKearney) and largely discussed with friends at MBB, you'll find below my personal opinion:
- you'll still learn a lot at 2nd tier firms, and will evolve in very demanding and challenging environment
- nature of jobs are similar, even tought sometime MBB get more prestigious engagement, in the end all this firms are mostly competing for the clients and jobs
- difference in people working there are not as big as we could think. A key point to consider is that most partners are transfering from firm to firm depending on their personal interest. And sometime they transfer with their full team (principal, manager, associates).
- MBB will for sure offer more structure in daily work (larger internal expert network, more methodology develop) vs. more entrepreneurial / self driven engagement methodology in 2nd tier firm
- MBB will for sur offer better personal development perspectives beyon the job itself : higher global exposure, better training programs, exit opportunities
Best
Benjamin
Hi,
I have experience in working in both 2nd and 1st tier consultancies. According to my experience:
A slightly different perspective here, having worked at Strategy& in London briefly and having many friends who work there full time: Everything at MBB is very organised, well planned. You have loads of resources to help with analytics, research, slide design, etc. Managers are generally all super good at running the project. Of course some projects still "go wrong" due to demanding clients or the occassional manager dropping the ball, but you can expect overall that you'll have a pretty smooth experience (of course, with long hrs etc.)
The experience at Strategy& was very different - much less resources, cases less organised, overall lower quality managers. Projects are more often misscoped or sold with too few resources (as a way to compete with MBB) and partners often over-promise.
What does this mean? The experience can be very tough, often you have to do stuff yourself that you probably will think "a first year associate should not be doing this job". It's very sink or swim. However, those that did well, have been set up very well by a) being given sometimes very tough responsibilities and b) being set up for the harsh realities of the world outside of consulting, where you don't have a research team to email with any request for statistics or reports.
Therefore, arguably, the experience can almost be better at a second tier in terms of professional development. This perspective is also shared by some colleagues that left Strategy& for MBB, and found that while everything generally was managed better in MBB, they often felt less "stretched".
I think even "2nd Tier" is not a very standardized group. In general, I think I agree with all of Ben's points. One more thing that would be true for at least some of the Tier 2: to reduce prices, they will be more likely to create a cookie-cutter approach + standard framework that future projects will just reproduce. As a consultant there, you may therefore find yourself doing the same thing over and over.
At MBB and the more prestigious of Tier 2, every engagement will basically be a brand new problem. Sure you'll be able to leverage prior knowledge, but you can't come with a ready-made answer and fit you client's needs within that framework.
Beyond this - yes, the people aren't that dissimilar, the post-consulting opportunities are also very much the same, and even the pay is comparable. Just the prestige and ego boost I guess :)
I think most has been said by the others, I just want to stress Guennael's point: Not all tier-2 firms are the same.
There are at least three distinct groups:
especially the third group can be extremely interesting and rewarding if you're ok with the more limited scope of topics.
Cheers
Elias
Appreciate the detailed, logical answer. Thanks!