Folks , I’m considering kicking off the job application process again. I feel like I can’t reach my potential as a PM at a consulting firm. For one, we have no access to user data, usually our users are clients, and we rarely get to interface with them. As a result, I don’t have any experience in A/B testing, or proper user experience research. Is this an extremely important skill? Should I look to jump sooner than later ? There are other skills I get to aggressively build here, however
If you want PE, are you pre-MBA? Post-MBA is almost impossible to go from consulting to PE.
Leverage your finance background to do financial due diligence for M&A as a start. If you’ve been doing big company work, get on some post merger integrations first, then network with The M&A guys that do PE or DD work.
At PwC the group was called Deals Strategy until recently.
Thanks for the advice! I am pre-MBA. I think doing a tour in Deals then jumping to PE makes perfect sense. I’ll try to get in touch with some folks in Deals.
Coach
You’re not going to get the quality and depth of information/guidance needed to break into pe from fish bowl. You need to find a sponsor, go do some targeted networking
Happy to help refer to Deloitte!
would love to take you up on that after my 1-2 yrs at fdd before i move
What sort of M&A consulting are you interested in? In PwC terms, DDV, PEVC, Deals Strategy, etc.? I think the answer to that helps shape the feedback.
Does taking up a Masters in finance degree from Georgetown help with transition into PE? I have 19 plus experience in business consulting.
We go over this again and again. Outside of a specific 1 in a million intersection of need and skill set match, there is no way to transition to “PE” from consulting mid-career, if you mean investment side at the fund level. It’s like being 30 and wanting to learn basketball with a goal of entering the NBA.
If you go to industry and become a F500 CXO, then you can come in as a senior advisor or operating partner in your mid 50’s.
However, if your consulting work was with a lot of PE portfolio companies doing DD work as well as portfolio company improvement work, growth strategy & execution work, then you can definitely transition to a PE portfolio company.
I went from Advisory FE practice direct into a PE firm’s ops. It’s totally possible to lateral into M&a, just choose a coach from that side.