I don’t specialize in this area, so I can’t make concrete suggestions. But if you’re currently an engineer, you will likely need a top MBA to make the switch because most consulting recruiting takes place at universities and business schools.

I don’t know much about this area personally (a guest author wrote it), but yes, it’s probably reasonable to transition from operational consulting to TS at a Big 4 firm or to move into a top 20 MBA program (though top 3 might be tough unless you have something great outside of work).

Thanks for this article, it answered a lot of my questions. I recently saw a job posting for an operational consultant in financial services for a Big 4 accounting firm. I worked in regional public accounting and have my CPA. I got drawn away from public accounting because I just didn’t feel the tangible affect of working in auditing. I learned a lot but felt I wasn’t realizing my full potential. This article seems to touch upon that where you can go in and make a strong and tangible difference with your clients.

Would it be pretty reasonable to do consulting for 18-24 months, maybe look to transition to the transaction services team within the Big 4 or maybe leave consulting and go top 20 MBA? Just wanted to understand if that is a reasonable path, the question on exit opportunities def helped answer that question.

I’m not sure there is a full list, but I would assume the top 20-30 MBA programs are targets.

Yes, but I’m not sure you need an MBA for any of that. An MBA is helpful for moving into investment banking or management consulting, but not as necessary for the others.

Also, any recommendations for operational consulting firms target schools would be great.

I am a current undergrad finance major graduating in a few months. I received a job offer in pricing analytics at a f500 financial services firm. I plan to stay in pricing for at least a year and hopefully move into an FP&A or Treasury role. After 3-4 years of operations and finance experience I want to get an MBA at a top tier school (Ross, Kellogg, Fuqua, Darden). Would this path help set me up to enter an operations consulting or biz dev/ corp dev. type of role? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks

We don’t specialize in this field, but you can probably get in with enough networking and some outreach to headhunters.