Welcome to Management Consulted. I'm Jenny Rae, the Managing Director, and
today our focus is on bringing you another part of a three-part series on
Consulting Firms 101. The three segments of the consulting firms are of the top three,
the big four, and tier two firms. Today our focus is on the big four firms.
Big four firms get their name from the big four of the accounting industry:
Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, and Ernst & Young, and for all of them, their accounting or
audit practices dwarfed the consulting practices but they are very well
respected for consulting services in many places in the world. In fact these
firms generally will have the most international offices for consulting anywhere.
There are six key factors that we're comparing all the different types
of firms and I'm going to run through those six with you today. So the first is
the branding/ the prestige of clients. Now the consulting firms have excellent
access to all the top clients in the world however after 2001 when
Sarbanes-Oxley in the US and the ethical wall was really established between
consulting and auditing, where an audit firm could not offer other services like
consulting, the firm's, although they have access to CEOs and top managers at
many of the major firms, are left to actually compete with other strategy
consulting firms as well as their own competitors for work - so if they're doing
an audit job they're actually automatically disqualified from doing a
consulting job. However because of their international
and global reputation on the accounting and audit side, their brand often
gets them in the door. So they do have access to really good clients both at
the chief executive level and also at the operational level. Because of this,
their price points are pretty significant and they've got good
salaries and also very strong perks, maybe not
Four Seasons perks, maybe not limousines like you see at the top three level, but
you definitely would have access to great rental car perks,
good hotels, and also great meal perks when you're traveling and on the road.
Oftentimes the travel schedule can be four to five days a week
for these firms, which is more rigorous than even at the top three consulting
firms. However, that's made up for by the access to point number three, which is training.
Now these four firms have probably the best global standards for
training in the world, and Deloitte in particular with the establishment of
Deloitte University in Texas this last year is really leading the way. They have
an established facility - it's pure dedication and focus for the entire year
is on training, again on both sides of the firm not just consulting, but
consultants certainly reap the benefit. Not only do you have this off-site
training that happens, we also have again access to insight and on-site training
as well as training that happens by video or webinar - so lots of internal
training that happens within the firms. The fourth area is culture. Now because
the firms are so large globally and so often distributed internationally
there's not the same one firm culture that you'll see at a place like Bain or
BCG. However the firm's are generally very cordial and respectful of one
another as well as of their counterparts in other firms. So you'll see a lot of
mutual respect that operates within the big four band. In addition because of
this, you have lots of exit opportunities. There are consultants from each one of
these firms that are populating the globe, so there's a general respect for
the type of experience that you would have had when you were doing the work. However,
the exit opportunities were as for McKinsey, Bain, and BCG the focus was not
only on your industry but also on the toolkit that you developed. Here, the
focus is really on the project work that you did. So it's really important if you
decide to go into a consulting job with one of any of these firms that you
really focus on what types of industries and types of projects you're
working on, because not everything is created equal for the big four firms
especially when it comes to exit opportunities. In addition, we have access
to a large global alumni network, but because it's not as cohesive when you're
at the firm, you also don't see the same cohesiveness for networking when you
leave the firm. And then finally the interviews of these firms are very
rigorous. They're actually focused about 50% on fit, your
cultural fit with the firm, your willingness to be trained, your ability
to learn new things. They're also focused on math, but whereas the math is very
complicated at the top three firms often the math is very straightforward, in
the cases for these firms, and the cases are very business situation focused,
they're conversational, people are looking for you to have a good dialogue about
business and a general understanding about it. So again we'll cover that later
in a future series on case and fit interviews. For now if you have questions
about any of these firms, we have firm profiles on the website and we also have
plenty of content at managementconsulted.com.