Am I crazy? I had 7 years of strategy consulting (Monitor Deloitte) in my home country. Immigrated to new country 3 years ago. Started with grad school. Took a “tech strategy” job at ACN in the new country after school (At ACN, tech strat has same pay band with biz strat). Now, everywhere I’m interviewing, people keep saying i’m not an ‘actual’ strategist. Like, wtf? Tech strat is only a very small fraction of my career. How do I tell my story so that people don’t discount my foreign experience?
This is a common challenge/scenario.
When someone pauses their career to become a full time student then reentered the workforce, they typically had a "reset" of sorts. For this reason, many companies look at experience differently since it is not a linear and necessarily progressive career journey.
Bias is also common when experience came from different countries and/or lesser known companies (not to say Monitor is not a strong brand).
Lastly, the market is weak right now. Even if a company appreciates all of your experience they are likely getting many other qualified candidates and this can make nuance more meaningful.
How can you address this? Work on your story, network with people who had a similar path, and try to find opportunities where you have a distinct competitive advantage.
Honestly - just drop the word Tech from your title and focus on the biz impacts of your tech projects.
Also remove the words architecture, configure, implementation, system, process, ERP, Oracle, SAP, sprint, or agile from your vocabulary + resume.
You need to whitewash the technology out of your story.
Exactly this! Like make your resume tell the story of the job you want not what you’ve done. And pro tip, recruiters don’t got checking with your project leads on if you actually did the strategising you claim you did. When you get asked what you did tell ‘em you did all the bus strat…
I think you may be failing to accurately define terms. All strategy is not created equal. When I think of ACN or Monitor I make assumptions about the experience you [likely] have based on knowing the kind of consulting they do / don't do and the companies they do/don't work with. Unless you tell me otherwise, that assumption stands.
While all consultants think they are strategists and tend to use that word interchangeably to mean "problem solver", industry is more nuanced, and we have many types of strategy roles and strategist’s with very different areas of expertise.
This isn’t likely (entirely) about your experience being outside the US. But if people ARE only focusing on the last 2 years, consider these possibilities:
1) You have failed to make that prior experience relevant and meaningful to THEM-2)Probably bc you’ve failed to understand what flavor of strategist THEY need. OR 3)you’re applying for jobs where frankly your flavor of Strategy is not relevant to what they need and no amount of story telling is goin to make you the most qualified candidate.
Let’s say I have a job for a brain surgeon. Should in hire a dermatologist? Why not? They are both MD’s right?
My team ONLY wants corporate strategist’s that have created THE corporate strategy - multiyear initiatives for multinational companies. Someone who’s determined the tech strategy for a department and over saw the implementation is not a “real strategist” in their eyes.
In my world a dermatologist is not a “real doctor” because we only need brain surgeons.
Bad analogies but hopefully you get the idea.
May you give us more flavours about the types of strategy?
Is it not on your resume? Not sure how this is a problem unless you’re not communicating it. The term strategy itself is pretty diluted at this point too tbh
If you are in the US and looking at consulting DM me
Hi OP,
That’s an old dispute. Just don’t blame yourself and market yourself a a biz and tech strategist.
Be also aware that those that say to you that you’re not should give you a case to crack.
Management consulting includes tech strategy.
Ask them what they know of the market, and show them that they actually don’t know it that much factually.
Enthusiast
Mind you, judging from his accent and pronunciation, the hiring manager seems to also be an immigrant from india. Like, if you are also an immigrant, you should know not to discount another immigrant. Like, wtf???? Sigh, i’m just really upset as you can tell.
Enthusiast
This is a good question. I don’t know.
Fellow immigrant here. It sucks, but regardless of field, emerging market work experience is HEAVILY discounted in the US and Canada. For a lot of people, if they hear you worked for an American consulting firm or bank in India, they’ll assume you were part of the offshore / back office team supporting the “real” bankers/consultants here
OP - you come off very defensive here. Oftentimes, overseas experience (esp. emerging markets like India, Philippines, etc) are discounted because 1) way of working is different and 2) these are the countries North America outsourced to, which causes the assumption of back office / grunt work.
When a recruiter brings up your YOE being 2, clarify that you also worked at XXX country as a strategy consultant with a primary focus on <insert type of work/function>. MBA is most often a pivot, thus years of RELEVANT experience might start post-MBA
What countries?
Coach
RBC1
1. You’re delusional and in denial if you think so
2. I never said it’s less valid, but it is indeed less relevant. Wanna prove me wrong? Show me the faang, jpm, Goldman equivalent of those countries?
3. I never said talents are worse off there, as I came from a third world corrupted country. However there are way fewer development chances and learning opportunities. That’s the fact.
Enthusiast
I think what I need mentorship/support/recommendation is HOW TO TELL MY STORY BETTER? (On resume n during interviews) ☹️ if you are open to help me, comment below. I will DM you to seek help. Thank you in advance 🙏🏻
OP, if you’re interested in EYP, feel free to DM me. Happy to take a look at your resume as well
Try remove country reference from your resume, drop use of tech in strategy context, and spill some of your prior strategy experience bullets under Accenture section. It’s not like you have not done that stuff, or can’t intelligently talk to your impact
Enthusiast
Just had an interview with a hiring manager who literally said, to quote him, “so you are in consulting but not strategy consulting”. Like, wtf does that mean???
I think he is speaking of your current experience, not previous one.
Also, you can challenge it by explaining what kind of strategy work are you working on
Which country are you at? Canada?
Heard this a lot from friends who work in Canada - don’t accept it. It’s not right. Keep pushing. The right opportunity will come to you. You’ll probably have to work harder to communicate your skillset due to this bias for “Canadian experience”
Community Builder
I see that experience from emerging markets are often discounted. I have seen in software development, 15 years can be discounted as 2, and in consulting 8 discounted as 4.
Monitor deloitte in india serving as USI? Or independently for indian strategy clients?
Enthusiast
I’m not from India, so I don’t know. I’m from southeast asia.
What I would do in your stead is not split the experience between your home country and Canada. Just merge experiences together and filter out (generalize) any experiences that clearly indicate it was elsewhere. For the location of the role, write something like Canada/United States/South Asia
Just like R1 said, unless you outright lie they will discredit you for being an immigrant. They will always think that people from their country are better.
A lot of people don’t know who monitor is and what they do. They just think you’re a generic big4 consultant
ACN f**kd up
It worries me that you say that tech strategists are not considered as true strategists! I wonder what my exit opps would be…