Related Posts
Anyone get GSAP then pivot to MBB post-MBA?
Anyone make a move to MBB LS arm?
Cross offer win rate between mbb in the us?
More Posts
Additional Posts in Federal, Government, and Public Sector
Has anyone moved from Accenture Federal to CGI Federal at Manager/Senior Manager level? Looking at Strategy/Organizational Change Management roles, and curious to know if you feel that compensation and benefits were worth it when measured against your actual experience once you started working with CGI. (I understand that some of it depends on the account you're on, the team you have, etc., just trying to decide if it's worth considering.) Thanks!
CGI
PwC PS - how’s the transition going?
Are M7 MBAs valued in the Federal space?
New to Fishbowl?
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
Subject Expert
Echoing the above - at DoD, Booz wins by a mile (nobody comes close inside the building in terms of brand recognition and client respect), BUT the particular contract you are on will heavily influence your experience. Also, Booz traffics in moral arbitrage - by being the most ethical company with the best corporate governance, they are able to pay significantly below market rate for what is generally top-tier talent in the industry.
Mentor
Fair enough, I apologize for being too hair trigger. Booz was head and shoulders above in my experience but that's just me. I did mean it as a backhanded compliment though - they use that to pay their people (at least non-technical) significantly less than the competition. ETA - I'm no longer at Booz, left for a federal job.
If DOD, Booz
For strategy, I’ve seen MITRE and Gartner brought in for a lot of strategy docs in civilian—I’m sure they have other boring work as we all do though.
For reference, I do modernization, governance, compliance so this is based off my experience reading the high level docs that say OMB would request/review and then issue policy to agencies
This is certainly what I’ve been assumed here...curious, how does mbb play in this space? Or is their work much less interesting for the time being?
I’ve see us (BCG), McKinsey, and Kearney a fair amount in the DOD space. A lot of the work is similar to what we do in big corporate transformations. These projects are typically focused on things that save several hundred million to billions of $ - that’s the only way to justify the fees. There’s also some classified stuff that can be pretty interesting. There are also some projects closer to pure strategy work (internally focused NOT geopolitical strategy). If you do some research you can find out about some of the bigger projects we’ve done.
Edited to add: at least for the projects in this area I’ve been on (not sure if this is the norm) we had very very high level visibility and sponsorship. For example regular 4-star SteerCos, MDP frequently texting with some of the top 2-3 people in the department, regular updates to SECDEFs direct reports. I worked at BAH many years ago and while they and firms like Deloitte are definitely respected in the federal space what I’m talking about is on a totally different level.
Subject Expert
BAH has a huge presence in IC and DOD, so I'd give them the nod in those two areas, though I have no idea what their foreign policy practice looks like.
To be fair, that large presence involves everything from staff aug, to policy, to front line mission support, to IT implementations, and everything in between, so it's not like BAH is laser focused on mission driven work there.
Mentor
BAH2, I think I was on a uniquely good contract because we constantly had tons of people trying to join us from across the firm. We were definitely working directly on development and execution of foreign policy and national security strategy. Lots of PhDs and folks with very impressive backgrounds. It was tough to keep them though cause they had so many other options.
Curious about the non-DOD answers to this question. I know Booz has a strong national security presence, but I don’t think they’re doing much at USAID or State and places like that—which is still part of OP’s question. I don’t know if anybody has a clear lead in that wide of a swathe of the federal government. Different agencies are often competing against each other strategically, so at some point you have to just choose where to dive in deeper.
Subject Expert
I remmeber Booz had what seemed to be a small USAID presence when I was there. Certainly, others are far better known.