Is it difficult to switch from tax to management consulting at PwC?

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I can't speak specifically for pwc, and probably not even for management consulting, but in my exp, going from tax to any kind of consulting can get some weird vibes/obstacles. There are differences in what attitudes are preferred.

I've had several of my consulting colleagues talk poorly about tax folks, saying that tax people are too by the numbers, can't deal with ambiguity, etc., (They generally don't realize I am a former tax guy in the room).

To their credit, I think there's something to be said about it. I did struggle a lot with how nebulous some of the projects were. But I would frame it differently - I think consulting often lacks rigor. It's often more about storytelling and the numbers are not as important. But imo, If everything can be simplified or abstracted through "ranges" and "estimates" and "models" and caveated to hell and back with assumptions, and no one is actually tying things to see if they actually work with reality, then I think there's something missing in that.

It will help if you already have experience with tax consulting engagements (not just provision and compliance.) I mean, I wouldn't say tax consulting is quite like regular consulting, because there still is a guardrail of what the tax code and regs actually say, but in concept.

Additionally, the more you can show you have expertise outside of tax. I was originally asked on consulting projects because I knew how to pull stuff from SAP, could build models in Excel, and had experience interviewing engineers.

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It’s difficult to switch from tax to anything apparently.

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