[tidepod12]

My experience with consulting jobs is that while the interviews themselves are still difficult, they do not require nearly as much of this "devote your life to studying and taking practice tests" that the tech industry is enamored with. Consulting interviews are almost all behavioral, and sometimes require a short case presentation, but even the case rarely requires days and days worth of preparation. Yes, there are some who do prepare endlessly (like "Cracking the Case Interview"), but I know far fewer people who go that route and even those that do still spend only a fraction of the time on it compared to leetcoders.

The mindset during consulting recruiting seems to be more of "we want to make sure you have a decent base level of knowledge and problem solving skills, but if you don't know how to code/make a PPT/whatever, that's fine, because we can teach you that stuff". Big tech recruiting seems to be the opposite: even when big tech companies claim "you don't need to know everything, because we'll teach you", they still require you to jump through these leetcode-style hoops to prove your skills.

And this is echoed beyond the hiring process too, in my experience. Consulting companies hire smart people and want to keep them for a long time, so they invest a lot of money into training those people and attempting to keep attrition down. FAANG on the other hand seems to care less about attrition (sometimes even embracing it, eg Amazon) and wants to hire people that require minimal training, and thus wants people that have immediately demonstrable knowledge so they can be immediately productive.

[candybar]

Top management consulting firms (McKinsey, BCG, ec) are insanely competitive and won't consider anyone without elite credentials, i.e. top grads from elite undergraduate programs, MBAs from top schools, Ph.Ds from good research programs, etc. These opportunities are far more scarce and require more effort overall as well. I suspect that some of these firms could hire more or less randomly from those who make it to the interview stage and do nearly as well, since their resume filtering is extremely rigorous, while their skill requirements for most roles aren't that high outside of being smart, analytical and willing to travel and work insane hours. Big Tech is substantially more egalitarian in terms of who they let through to the interview stage, while the actual job demands somewhat esoteric skills that go beyond just being a smart, analytical hard-working person, which necessitates a more meaningful filter.

I suppose Big Tech could do something similar (skip leetcode stuff for people who have credentials such as prior experience at top tech firms and/or tangible research experience at top research institutions) but I suspect that would not go over well with most people that have issues with the current hiring processes.

[ResearchCode]

I keep hearing this but in my country iẗ́s just not true. Yes you needed to go to the right school (most difficult part but not difficult) an maintain a 3.5 (what they advertised) or even a 3.0 GPA (what they ended up accepting) and join a few student clubs (which nobody really cared about).

Maybe the bar is higher in the US.

[candybar]

Are you talking about US-based top global management consulting firms and actual strategy/management consultant roles (since top consulting firms often do other things like technology, tax/accounting, etc)? I guess that's possible but I suspect that in that case, it's largely because roles in these offices aren't quite desirable from a comp or a career track perspective. The reason why management consulting is hard to get into is because it pays well and it promises a career track where you can get to a 7-figure income and potentially go directly into the upper management of F500 companies afterwards without working your way from the bottom. If that's not a realistic path from a satellite office (I have no idea if it is or not), then it wouldn't have the same draw. If it is though, I mean it has to be competitive, right?

[ResearchCode]

Yes, management consulting at the local offices of the "big 4". Starting comp in MC something like 60k/yr (whereas IB is double).

More high end opportunities than other career paths certainly, but it's much less top heavy. 7 figure income, a few CEOs make it but not common.

Kind of make sense though if local offices adopt some of the same rhetoric and marketing (elite selectivity etc) as the US head offices but with really different market conditions.

[franklampard]

> Top management consulting firms (McKinsey, BCG, ec) are insanely competitive and won't consider anyone without elite credentials

That’s why they are failing. Broken hiring processes. Big Tech is eating their fruits.

[spaced-out]

>My experience with consulting jobs is that while the interviews themselves are still difficult, they do not require nearly as much of this "devote your life to studying and taking practice tests" that the tech industry is enamored with.

What type of consulting are you talking about, and are these jobs really paying >$250k? What would someone have to do to get a shot at one of these jobs?