Strategy Consulting: Large vs Small Firms
If you are interested in applying to Strategy Consulting, one question you might ask yourself is whether the right company for you is a large, generalist firm or a smaller, boutique consultancy. While no two firms are exactly the same, each end of the spectrum has its advantages and disadvantages which are important to consider when starting your career. Having worked in both a large and a small Strategy Consulting environment, I wanted to share from my own experience the biggest differences that might help you decide what kind of firm is best for you.
Culture
By ‘culture’ here, I’m specifically referring to factors such as the firm’s overall philosophy of consulting work, the personal and professional traits valued by the firm, and the atmosphere in the office.
1. Philosophy of work: of course, every company website has its own language around the firm’s philosophy. And, of course, they all sound very impressive (though they can also all end up sounding the same). If there is a common and useful insight to tease out, it’s that larger strategy firms – as you would expect – tend to focus on promising orthodox strategy approaches, done to a high standard, whereas smaller firms tend to promise to do things differently. This becomes important because it can affect why clients choose particular consultancies for work, and hence the kind of work that comes through the door for you as a consultant. For instance, project for a client who has employed your firm specifically to shake up the status quo approach is likely to feel different from one for a client who is looking for tested strategic methods, executed expertly. (Though keep reading to find out if this makes a material difference to the work you’ll do!)
2. Valued traits: most big, generalist strategy firms are fundamentally looking for the same qualities in prospective graduate joiners (problem-solving, communication, teamwork, etc.). Smaller boutique firms are typically after these qualities, plus some other traits that match how that particular firm is aiming to be unique. For example, some smaller firms have a big focus on entrepreneurship, and therefore want their people to be especially creative, driven and think outside the box. Often there is even a focus on being ‘different’ from traditional consultants. For newer and growing strategy firms, there can also be an emphasis (which, naturally, feels less pronounced at bigger, more established companies) on new joiners being invested in the company’s growth and proactively impacting that trajectory.
3. Office atmosphere: highly dependent on the particular firm, the geographical location of the office, and how new the premises are. Some smaller firms will consciously aim for a startup-style vibe (trendy design, ping-pong tables, etc.) – although there is also a trend among bigger firms to replicate this fresher, more modern atmosphere. One important point: small strategy firms will usually share office space or floors with other companies in one building, whereas the larger counterparts will fill one or maybe several whole blocks by themselves. This is neither good nor bad in itself, but I found it does make a difference to the day-to-day feel of working there!
Training
One of the biggest differences between larger and smaller firms (again, not good or bad in itself, but a matter of your preferences and priorities) is the degree of training. By this I mean time and resources spent by the firm on helping you learn business methods, tools, and skills outside of client work.
Larger firms typically have the scale of people and resources to offer what feels like a much wider, lengthier and more structured programme of training – both at the very start during graduate onboarding, and also (equally important) throughout your time at the company. This can include extensive, weeks-long graduate induction programmes, recognised management qualifications, internal skills-focused training run by experts within the company, and learning how to understand and apply any strategy “frameworks” owned and developed by the firm (which large top-tier places usually have).
By contrast, while a lot of smaller firms will of course offer some form of training to graduates, it is likely to feel less all-encompassing. Instead, you should expect a more proactive, ‘learn-on-the-job’ approach at the beginning, rolling up your sleeves and building your own knowledge base.
Which one is better? It entirely depends on what you respond well to, and what your goals are at the start of your career. If you are looking for a highly formalised, structured and comprehensive “education” on the methods and tools of strategy consulting, a “foundation” on which to build your career and client experiences, then a larger firm may be good. However, if you respond well to learning from experiences as you go, and getting stuck in from day 1, then you may find the training style of a smaller firm more rewarding. Whichever sounds like you, just bear in mind that, beyond your initial onboarding, you will never stop learning as you get more and different projects under your belt – and that’s true wherever you join!
Work
One of the most enjoyable aspects of strategy consulting is just how different one project can be from the next – whether it’s the industry, the client, or the specific objective of the engagement. Therefore, it’s difficult to make big, comprehensive judgments about the sort of work you might end up doing at different consultancies. However, a couple of differences that you might notice between larger and smaller firms:
1. Types of project: strategy consulting projects can range from 3-week bursts through to 6-month deep investigations, and they can range from big, central transformations of giant companies through to innovative or more localised (but equally interesting!) strategic challenges for you to solve. Speaking very generally, those big, longer “transformation” projects are more likely to be done by the larger, more mainstream consulting firms. That means that, as a graduate at a large firm, you are more likely to work on those types of projects than you would be at a smaller firm, whose work is likely to lean more towards whatever they specialise in.
2. Team size: driven in part by “type of project” above, you may find that you are part of bigger project teams at a larger firm than you are at a smaller firm. Of course, there’s huge variance within this: there are certain projects at big strategy consultancies where you might be in a team of only 3 people! But, averaging everything out, at a typical big strategy house you are likely to spend most of your time in a team of 4-10 people, and sometimes even in teams of 20-30 for those particularly big transformational projects; whereas at a small, boutique consultancy you may well be in teams of 5 people or fewer, a lot of the time.
Prestige
Naturally, the best known and most widely reputed firms are big, generalist players – MBB, the Strategy arms of the Big 4, and so on. Prestige obviously has its attractions. But, it’s very important for you to think about:
(i) If you care about prestige – not just because other people tell you to, or because you think you should.
(ii) Why you might care about prestige – is it because you think it correlates with more enjoyable work? (Often, it doesn’t) Is it because you think it might open up better opportunities when you leave the firm? (In general there may be truth here, although your traits as an individual will ultimately decide whether you secure what’s on offer.) Is it because you think you, or others around you, will think more highly of yourself? (In all seriousness, this is not necessarily a bad thing, and you are not a bad person if you do happen to think this – and you’re certainly not alone! On a brief “life coach” tangent, you need to decide what to do with your life based on what will actually make you happiest and most fulfilled in the long run – not what based on what you want to be the kind of thing that makes you so. If that means you shoot for a high-prestige career or company because you want to be a high-prestige person, then fine – so long as you’re true to yourself about why it matters to you.)
(iii) How much you care about prestige vs other factors. Prestige can (but not always will) influence exit opportunities, and more people you talk to will be immediately impressed by the name of the firm you work at. It’s up to you to decide how much you care about those and other benefits of prestige, compared to how much you enjoy the job, how much you learn, and all the other great things about consulting.
People
Strategy consultancies are fond of saying that they are businesses “built on people”, so let’s unpack that a bit. There are differing degrees at which you will interact with people in a strategy consultancy – at one extreme, there are the people you work with most closely on your projects, within your specific sub-team or community, and within your geographical location; at the other extreme, you will automatically have access to a more nebulous, digital network of contacts and knowledge accumulated by the global business, which is yours to use as you wish. Some observations from experience on those two:
1. Your day-to-day interactions with colleagues: by definition, larger strategy consulting firms contain more people. This has a big effect on the feel of the company when you join. With more people, there are more avenues in which to build relationships, and more chance to ‘shop around’ until you find the right group or sponsors as you begin to find preferred areas of work and rise through the ranks. On the other hand, there is more chance of getting lost in what can feel like the “big machine” – some of the biggest strategy firms have upwards of 20,000 employees globally, and sometimes thousands in a core office like London. Without being proactive, you can easily get lost in that kind of crowd. At smaller firms, there is nowhere to hide – you will tend to work with the same people more often.
2. The wider network of skills and knowledge: the size and range of people and skills that you have access to can actually be a key part of your experience and enjoyment of consulting work. At larger strategy firms, the network of people you have access to is astounding – it’s almost certain that someone, somewhere, knows what you need to know, or has done the same piece of work as you need to do on a particular project. (Of course, navigating and leveraging that network is another task in itself, and not always so easy!) Without doubt, smaller firms by definition do not have these networks. Instead, they may rely on the accumulated expertise of their senior partners and employees (many of whom will have spent time at other consultancies or in industry), or they will rely on a network of people and skills that makes up for in depth on a particular niche what it lacks in breadth. Again, neither is better in itself, but it does trickle down to have an effect on your life as a graduate strategist – your challenge will either be too many moving parts and pools of knowledge to navigate and interact efficiently with, or potentially too few!
Conclusion
Inevitably, I cannot tell you conclusively whether a larger or smaller strategy firm is best for you – so much depends on the relative values you place on different career objectives and different quirks of the actual work and environment you’ll be part of in strategy.
Nonetheless, what I hope to help you with is shedding light on what exactly those career objectives and workplace quirks are, and what they look like in a bigger firm compared to in a smaller, boutique firm. What I’ve described above are the most striking differences that I have felt or observed in my experience within both a large and a small strategy consultancy environment. Now that you know what those differences are, you can have a much more informed conversation with yourself about which ends of the spectra you feel more excited by, how much you care about each dimension compared to the others, and so what kind of environment you might enjoy being a part of most!
Strategy Consultant
I work as a Strategy Consultant at Monitor Deloitte, a top-tier strategy firm with a global presence. I have received offers from numerous strategy consultancies, and have knowledge of the case interview processes across many of the top companies personally leading Monitor Deloitte’s recruitment process at Oxford University.
