Hey, peoples. I hope you all had a nice and relaxing weekend. I’d also like to send a Happy Father’s Day shout-out to all of the dads out there. Ever since hearing President Obama’s comments about fatherhood on Friday, I’ve been thinking a lot about the topic, particularly as it relates to pursuing a high-flying career. I won’t dive too much into my thoughts on it because I’ve written a LOT about work-life balance over the past few weeks. But, I do hope that all of you hard-charging career-focused dads out there are setting aside time to spend with your kids. I know it’s important to have a great career and you’ve all worked hard for that, but there’s no more important job out there than being a father, especially if the kid(s) is(are) really young…but y’all already know that, right?
Now, lemme step off of my soapbox and into this entry…The message below is from a recent college graduate who will soon be starting a job as an IT consultant with Accenture. He was looking for advice on how to transition from this sort of position to a strategy role. In the current economy, making any sort of transition is going to be tough, but it would be possible if he’s looking at a longer runway for the change. I put together a few ideas for him below, so I hope he finds them helpful.
—–
T wrote:
“Hi Marquis,
I dig the blog! I’m cool with you posting this on the blog so that it might help others – just anonymize it, of course
I found you from Management Consulted. I was hoping you could offer your perspective on what a fresh undergrad going into Accenture should do to best position themselves for an MBB-type position in the next couple of years? My resume is pretty typical of a consulting-geared type; strong GPA, internships, and extracurriculars.
I’ve read a lot about Accenture pigeon-holing you into an IT consultant. And while I do really like IT, I think strategy is where I want to be. I don’t know if it’ll help, but some added info is that I did interview at two of MBB for full-time this past fall; but recruiting numbers were just really tough. I’m based in Canada, and from what I’ve heard, each of the 2 MBB firms that I interviewed with took on only about 2-3 full-time undergrads this past fall. And that was for all of Canada.
I’ve looked around and took away that I should be networking with alums (friends, school’s career centre). What are your thoughts other than that? Is an MBA a necessity?
Cheers! Thanks for all the advice.
T”
—–
My response:
T,
Thanks for checking out my blog and seeing me as a resource to answer your questions. I’m sorry that it’s taken me a while to respond, but I’m sure you can understand the volume of emails that I receive. Before diving into your question, I’d like to congratulate you on finishing up your college journey and for winning a job with a great organization like Accenture coming out of school. I deliberately used the term “winning” because it has really been a huge competition to graduate college with a job this year. You’ve won big and I hope you’re proud of this accomplishment. That said, it’s good that you’re thinking ahead to the next step in your career and I hope my words can be helpful to you.
Your primary question was about how you could best position yourself for a gig at an MBB firm in the next few years. My first recommendation would have been to network with current staff from those firms to get an in, but you’ve already been given that advice before. Aside from this, you could try to gear your staffing assignments toward a particular industry/function to build a strong understanding of IT systems and associated issues in that area. This could give you an industry/functional expertise angle if you were to apply as an experienced hire candidate. Also, you could try to get involved in some research efforts within ACN to get your name listed on whitepapers or other research pieces. This is another approach to the industry expertise angle and it may be a bit of a longshot at the early-career level, but I’ve heard stories of it working for people at more senior levels. In addition to these actions, you could also try to make an internal transition from the IT consulting group into the Strategy group. I did my summer MBA internship in ACN’s Strategy Practice and found the business-focused strategy work to be a great challenge. This sort of internal transfer could be a much more straightforward way to start doing strategy work than trying to move over to a different firm…you might want to look into this more once you start your job in the Fall.
Your last question was about whether an MBA is a necessity to make this sort of move. I’ve heard of some folks making the transition over to your target firms as experienced hires without an MBA, so, technically, the answer to your question is “no”. But, I don’t know how often this sort of transition happens and I believe that earning an MBA would make it MUCH easier to move into the type of role/firm that you seek. As I’ve mentioned in past blog entries, B-school is basically a big two-year long “RESTART” button for one’s career, but it can also serve as a “career power-booster”, as well. In your case, the MBA would play the latter role. You’d be going into business school with IT consulting experience, which, while not a direct match to strategy consulting, shows that you have experience with the clients, working in teams, and handling the lifestyle of the job. Also, I’ve found that folks with backgrounds like the one you’ll develop before business did well during consulting case interviews and were fantastic at the fit interviews. Plus, I’m a big fan of B-school as a place to build one’s self into a well-rounded business professional, which is never a bad thing. So, in short, you don’t NEED an MBA, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt for you to have one.
Take care and congratulations on your college graduation. This is a huge step and the start of what could become a limitless career. Just focus on doing well at Accenture and everything else should fall into place for you.
Marquis
Now, lemme step off of my soapbox and into this entry…The message below is from a recent college graduate who will soon be starting a job as an IT consultant with Accenture. He was looking for advice on how to transition from this sort of position to a strategy role. In the current economy, making any sort of transition is going to be tough, but it would be possible if he’s looking at a longer runway for the change. I put together a few ideas for him below, so I hope he finds them helpful.
—–
T wrote:
“Hi Marquis,
I dig the blog! I’m cool with you posting this on the blog so that it might help others – just anonymize it, of course
I found you from Management Consulted. I was hoping you could offer your perspective on what a fresh undergrad going into Accenture should do to best position themselves for an MBB-type position in the next couple of years? My resume is pretty typical of a consulting-geared type; strong GPA, internships, and extracurriculars.
I’ve read a lot about Accenture pigeon-holing you into an IT consultant. And while I do really like IT, I think strategy is where I want to be. I don’t know if it’ll help, but some added info is that I did interview at two of MBB for full-time this past fall; but recruiting numbers were just really tough. I’m based in Canada, and from what I’ve heard, each of the 2 MBB firms that I interviewed with took on only about 2-3 full-time undergrads this past fall. And that was for all of Canada.
I’ve looked around and took away that I should be networking with alums (friends, school’s career centre). What are your thoughts other than that? Is an MBA a necessity?
Cheers! Thanks for all the advice.
T”
—–
My response:
T,
Thanks for checking out my blog and seeing me as a resource to answer your questions. I’m sorry that it’s taken me a while to respond, but I’m sure you can understand the volume of emails that I receive. Before diving into your question, I’d like to congratulate you on finishing up your college journey and for winning a job with a great organization like Accenture coming out of school. I deliberately used the term “winning” because it has really been a huge competition to graduate college with a job this year. You’ve won big and I hope you’re proud of this accomplishment. That said, it’s good that you’re thinking ahead to the next step in your career and I hope my words can be helpful to you.
Your primary question was about how you could best position yourself for a gig at an MBB firm in the next few years. My first recommendation would have been to network with current staff from those firms to get an in, but you’ve already been given that advice before. Aside from this, you could try to gear your staffing assignments toward a particular industry/function to build a strong understanding of IT systems and associated issues in that area. This could give you an industry/functional expertise angle if you were to apply as an experienced hire candidate. Also, you could try to get involved in some research efforts within ACN to get your name listed on whitepapers or other research pieces. This is another approach to the industry expertise angle and it may be a bit of a longshot at the early-career level, but I’ve heard stories of it working for people at more senior levels. In addition to these actions, you could also try to make an internal transition from the IT consulting group into the Strategy group. I did my summer MBA internship in ACN’s Strategy Practice and found the business-focused strategy work to be a great challenge. This sort of internal transfer could be a much more straightforward way to start doing strategy work than trying to move over to a different firm…you might want to look into this more once you start your job in the Fall.
Your last question was about whether an MBA is a necessity to make this sort of move. I’ve heard of some folks making the transition over to your target firms as experienced hires without an MBA, so, technically, the answer to your question is “no”. But, I don’t know how often this sort of transition happens and I believe that earning an MBA would make it MUCH easier to move into the type of role/firm that you seek. As I’ve mentioned in past blog entries, B-school is basically a big two-year long “RESTART” button for one’s career, but it can also serve as a “career power-booster”, as well. In your case, the MBA would play the latter role. You’d be going into business school with IT consulting experience, which, while not a direct match to strategy consulting, shows that you have experience with the clients, working in teams, and handling the lifestyle of the job. Also, I’ve found that folks with backgrounds like the one you’ll develop before business did well during consulting case interviews and were fantastic at the fit interviews. Plus, I’m a big fan of B-school as a place to build one’s self into a well-rounded business professional, which is never a bad thing. So, in short, you don’t NEED an MBA, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt for you to have one.
Take care and congratulations on your college graduation. This is a huge step and the start of what could become a limitless career. Just focus on doing well at Accenture and everything else should fall into place for you.
Marquis
