Hi there,

Congratulations on securing already the  Simon-Kucher offer. In terms of your question:

Q: Has anyone got some insight if it would be stupid to pass on this opportunity? Is the monitor brand less strong than it was and may that impact my exit opportunities?

Ideally you have to decide considering your “opportunity cost”, which seems to be the offer from Simon-Kucher at this stage.

You can find some answers to a similar question below:

▶ SK vs Monitor Deloitte

This is what I would recommend to take into account (seems you have already started to do so, which is good):

• Where do you want to be in 5-10 years? Look at the company that can help you to achieve that goal faster. You can check LinkedIn for that.
• If you consider the average consultant/partner you talked to in each company, which one would you rather be? You will spend a lot of time with your colleagues in the next years - be sure you choose a company where the people are close to the person you want to become.
• What is your gut feeling telling you? Our gut feeling is able to catch elements we cannot initially rationalize. You may “feel” a company is better, but don’t know exactly why. Try to find out why you feel that way, do some research on that and try to understand if that point is valid.

In terms of exits (for most people they are a very important factor to join a consulting company), you can check them as follows:

1. Look for alumni of the two companies on LinkedIn
2. Check how many moved to your preferred exits in your target region
3. Normalize for the size of the companies in the region

If you want to do extra due diligence, contact Alumni of your university (not current consultants) that worked in your target office (bonus if they worked for both companies). You will learn more in a 30min call with them than with any online research you may do.

Good luck!

Francesco