A colleage of mine was asked to leave by the firm (tier 2), but she got into a really good corp role

Hi there,

Failure at something is not correlated with success in life. Quite the opposite.

If you look at the richest and most successful people in the world, you will find most of them failed (sometimes in a huge way) before becoming successful.

Walt Disney, Stephen King, Oprah Winfrey, JK Rowling, Michael Jordan, Colonel Sanders all failed before achieving huge success.

It is totally fine to fail at something and I would be very suspicious if someone told me they never failed at anything. It doesn’t have a correlation with your future success. I would say the correlation is actually inverted. It is a painful but very effective way to learn and create the basis for your next success if you are willing to work hard and learn from your experience.

Can your friend become successful – even more successful than if she stuck to consulting? Absolutely. Remember that most people decide to leave consulting sooner or later (average time is 2-3 years) for better opportunities / work-life balance.

Best,

Francesco

Hey, this happens and its totally fine. I know some people from my personal network who have exited and are thriving elsewhere. Consulting is not for everyone and if one doesnt succeed in it, doesnt mean they cant succeed elsewhere. Its super important to find a role/job that FITs with your career aspirations, values and expectations. 

Consulting does give you a lot of hard skills- problem solving, communications, story telling, structured thinking, relationship building etc. But it does require hard work, commitment, long hours, fast paced environment, hit the ground running very quickly etc. Some people cant adjust to the pace , performance expectations & long hours. Some people also get into Consulting for the wrong reasons- peer pressure, money, following the crowd etc.

This reminds me of something an ex-McK CEO told me when I worked with him; "your largest achivement at McKinsey will be that you managed to join". Most people outside don't really care about your specific performance in consulting where there is limited correlation with your post-consulting success.

What you're describing is the part of the business model of the large consulting firms. Churn through a large amount of people, maintain a strong network and stay in tough until they are decision makers for buying consulting services.

This is common practice and a very typical career trajectory. Getting asked to leave a consulting firm does by no means imply that you can't be super successful in a corporate role.

This happens a lot, is desired, and also required. Much rather see it as a top-school in itself, where you get accelerated experience. If the firm likes you and you like the firm, you tend to stay, if not, not. Typically, in my experience at least, the best and the worst leave at some point.

Absolutely possible!

I have met many successful corporate leaders who would make terrible consultants and excellent consultants who would struggle as corporate leaders.

1) If your colleague has developed business accumen, works hard and is intellegent and a reasonable people manager (as majority of people who get into consulting), these are the key skills to succeed at a corporate role.

2) Then, to climbe the consulting lader, you add to that the client skills i.e.being the trusted advisor, learning how to spin messages and having a client friendly way of communicating. 

From my experience at an MBB, most counseled-out people where less concerned about #1 and more about #2.

Cheers 

Hi there,

This is totally fine and completely expected by many! This is exactly where "Up or Out" comes from.

Who do you think hires MBB/Tier 2s? Ex-MBBers/Tier 2s :)

It's basically a model of train people up, spit them out, see them rise up in other corporate roles, then hire their old colleagues. 

She's done perfectly well for herself!

Hi, I confirm it is totally fine and there are many successful cases to prove it

Best
Antonello

Hi there, 

first of all, you shouldn't take consulting as the gold standard of a person. Consulting might be hard for many reasons - which doesn't mean you won't succeed anywhere else in life! Not everybody goes through consulting in the first place to then become successful in something. 

Cheers, 

GB