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From associate to VP - what specially to learn
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Received an offer as Engagement Director from Salesforce (CSG, pre sales, L9). Great benefits package, 40% increase in total comp and better WLB.
I do love the people in my practice and current client, but career trajectory has stalled after taking parental leave earlier this year and (yet another) change in leadership.
Realistically, making to Director is 2-3 years away and will require sacrificing time with my family that I am not prepared to give up.
Should I stay or should I go?
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I had interviewed with Deloitte UK consulting in June/July and was called by the HR team by the end of July that the interviews were positive and they're sending for approval for an offer to be rolled out. I was called back later in September and told that the role is on hold due to a hiring freeze. Is anyone else in this situation and have you'll heard back from the HR team post that
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Work culture: depends mostly on your industry alignment (health, tmt, consumer products, financial services), less so on your competency alignment (Corp and bus strategy, ops strategy, deals strategy, tech strategy, org/people strategy), and even less so on the specific client. You see variation across coworkers when you look at these variables, though I think with my own experience/hearing from others I’d say overall it’s a pretty high demand but not unreasonable working culture. There are tough projects and tough people who can make some engagements a nightmare, but it’s not the norm. Strong mentorship model and generally supportive people with good ops for development/growth. Some negative changes from pwc to our op model and incentives at the partner level that have made people a bit more territorial and less collaborative in the sales process, but it wasn’t perfect as Booz either.
Types of projects: strategic planning, growth strategy (market expansion, product/service growth, revenue growth), cost reduction, operating model re-org’s, technology or data & analytics strategy (never tech. Implementations), corporate due diligences but mostly in deals, project/program management, sourcing. That probably covers 90% of it and then the other 10% is random, uncategorizable work that ranges from very cool to very lame...I’ve personally had some very cool projects that don’t fall cleanly into those buckets I listed.
Exit ops: 3 main exit points I’ll cover, assuming you start out of undergrad - 1 year (leave as an associate), 2-3 years (leave as a senior associate, 4-5 years (leave as a mgr). Others exist but I know less about them. Leave after a year and you can do pretty much anything but you definitely start back at entry level. If you’re in deals or had due diligence project experience or just networked effectively, you could go into PE/VC. Otherwise any corporate strategy, chief of staff, variety of start up roles, maybe pivot to MBB as it still makes sense for some. Have seen strong exits and some people who I think made the wrong decision. After 2-3 years at post mba level, your options increase in terms of being able to join at the level above entry. Depending on the role maybe even as a manager (typically can negotiate leaving for a role above where you are in consulting if going to industry). Similar options exist but PE is probably less likely (at least after 3 years) without hard networking or being in deals practice, and if you didn’t get MBB after year 1 you give up on that since it wouldn’t be worth starting over. Some go to MBA at this point but that choice has been less popular lately. If you wait until manager (4-5 years), your exit ops peak imo. Director roles are possible so it’s a big cut ahead of someone who had to start out in industry from undergrad - maybe saves you 3-4 years.
Private equity, McKinsey/BCG/Bain
Thanks, this is very helpful.