The Consulting Firms, and How They Differ

The categories

The strategy firms

The three large strategy firms hire in small numbers, pay the most at entry, and sell the least tangible product: a view on a decision that only senior management can take. Engagements are short, teams are small, and a graduate reaches client exposure quickly.

What you get is the strongest brand in the industry and a training in structured problem solving that transfers everywhere. What you give up is depth: you will be a generalist for several years by design, and if you want to become an expert in something specific, that is not what these firms are optimised to produce.

The Big Four

The consulting arms of the large accounting firms are, by headcount, most of the industry. They contain everything from genuine strategy practices to enormous technology delivery businesses, and the variance inside a single firm is larger than the variance between firms.

That variance is the crucial point for an applicant. Joining a deals practice at a Big Four firm is a different career from joining a public sector technology programme at the same firm, and both are advertised through the same graduate scheme. Find out which practice you would be joining and what it actually works on, because the answer matters far more than the logo. Entry is also less binary: these firms hire in volume, run structured graduate programmes and sponsor professional qualifications.

Boutiques and specialists

Below the large firms sit specialists that are frequently the best in the world at one thing: pricing, healthcare, energy, organisational design, procurement, competition economics. They hire a handful of graduates, often pay comparably to the strategy firms, and offer depth immediately.

They are under-applied to and worth the effort for exactly that reason. The trade is brand recognition outside the specialism and a narrower exit set, which is only a problem if you are certain you want out of the domain later.

Economic consulting, which is a separate profession

Economic consultancies advise on competition cases, regulatory pricing, damages in litigation and merger clearance. The work is genuinely technical, involving econometrics and formal economic analysis, and the client is often a regulator or a court rather than a management team.

It hires economists specifically, interviews on economics rather than on cases, and suits people who liked the subject rather than the strategy vocabulary around it. Candidates with a strong economics degree frequently overlook it and should not.

How to choose, and how to answer "why this firm"

The generic answer, praising the culture and the people, is what every candidate says and is therefore worth nothing. A real answer comes from one of four places.

• The practice. Name the specific team, what it works on and why that interests you. This is the strongest available answer and the least used.
• The client set. Public sector, private equity, financial services and consumer businesses are genuinely different worlds to spend a year in.
• Geography. Some firms are dominant in one market and marginal in another, and being in the office that matters changes the work you get.
• A conversation you actually had. One specific thing a consultant at that firm told you, and what it made you think. Nothing else is as credible.

Applying across the market

Apply widely, and not identically. The strategy firms, the Big Four, the technology firms, one or two boutiques in a field you care about, and an economic consultancy if your background fits. That is a portfolio rather than a scattergun, because each application can honestly answer why that firm.

The timelines overlap but do not align, and the Big Four typically open earlier and recruit in larger numbers, which makes them a sensible early application rather than a fallback.