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Strategy & consulting

Business & Economics

Helping organisations solve hard problems and make big decisions.

This suits you if…

You think fast and structure well, you are comfortable saying something clear while the data is still incomplete, and constant novelty appeals to you more than becoming deeply expert in one industry.

Look elsewhere if…

You want to see your recommendation through. You advise, others decide, and you often leave before finding out whether it worked. And if heavy travel and an up-or-out structure read as draining rather than bracing, this is the wrong shape of career for you.

What the work actually is

What the work is actually like

Interviews, analysis and slides. You are dropped into an industry you knew nothing about a fortnight ago, interview the people who do know it, build the analysis that structures the problem, and present a recommendation to people far more senior than you. The craft being trained is structured thinking under time pressure, and the ability to say something clear when the data is incomplete.

The catch

Travel and hours, and a peculiar kind of distance: you recommend, others decide, and you often leave before finding out whether it worked. It's also famously an 'up or out' career structure in the large firms, which is bracing rather than secure, and the constant novelty means you rarely become deeply expert in anything.

What people get wrong about it

That consultants are hired because they know the answer. They're usually hired for capacity, an outside view, or political cover for a decision already half-made. Understanding that is what separates people who are effective in the job from people who are frustrated by it.

The jobs inside this area

  • Management consultant
  • Business analyst
  • Strategy analyst
  • Supply-chain / operations analyst

A list, not a recommendation. You narrow it, we don’t.

What this kind of work usually offers

Earning well · Working with peopleA generalisation about the sphere, not a promise about a salary. Pay and security vary enormously by country and employer.

How you get there

The one-line version

Business, economics or a strong analytical degree. Case competitions mirror the actual work.

Stage by stage

  1. While you are still at school

    Debate, case competitions and any position where you had to persuade a room. Learn to structure an argument in three points and defend it. That is the entire selection criterion later.

  2. What you study

    Business, economics, engineering, law: the large firms recruit broadly from strong analytical degrees. What they screen for is the case interview, which is a learnable skill you should start practising a year before you apply.

  3. How the first years actually go

    Analyst on one workstream of a larger project: research, models, and the slides that carry them. Feedback is fast and blunt, which is the main reason people find the first two years steep and valuable.

Where this work lives, and how you reach it

What you would study for it

Each says what the first year is really made of, and who should study something else instead.

17 countries · 29 cities · 33 institutions named for this field. Each one states its catch as well as its appeal.

Without leaving home

2 of the routes that need no visa and no move lead into this field.

Test it this month

Free, and finishable in a few evenings

Take a real local business, spend an hour working out how it actually makes money, and write three slides on the one change you would make. Force yourself to defend it against the strongest objection you can think of.

Do the job for an afternoon, before you pick a degree

Employers build these to recruit, which is why they are honest about what the work is. You do the real tasks, unpaid and ungraded, and find out whether you can stand it. Free, no deadline, nothing to win.

  • BCGabout 5 hours

    Take a client problem apart the way a consultant is expected to: work out what question is actually being asked, size it, and write the one slide that answers it.

  • Deloitteabout 2 hours

    Read a spreadsheet a client actually sent, find the thing in it that is wrong, and turn it into a chart somebody can make a decision from.

  • PwCabout 3 hours

    Build the dashboard a client asked for, discover the question they meant was a different one, and rebuild it. That is most of what analytics work is.

These are on Forage. Search it by the employer’s name — what each one is called changes, and who built it does not.

Open Forage from the catalog

These are ways to try Strategy & consulting before committing to it.