Can you make the move from strategy consulting to private equity or finance? You may be thinking that you want to go into private equity after consulting. The short answer is "yes!" We brought someone on the podcast to answer the question in more detail. Yusuf Shaikh is a former strategy consultant that leveraged his time at BCG as a launching pad for his future career in private equity. We asked him to share advice for folks wanting to make the transition from strategy consulting to private equity / finance and how they can set themselves up for success. Listen to the full conversation here.
Strategy Consulting to Private Equity
Yusuf Shaikh
There's a reason why if you look at most roles that involve anything around corporate strategy, M&A, or investment banking, when you look at the job specs, they usually have two requirements: former consulting or former investment banking. Why is that?
Well, it's actually because of the training that you get in those environments. So my advice is, apart from your network, you really need to make the most of what you're being trained to do.
What it really comes down to is being able to apply a very structured and logical process when you're trying to address a problem. This involves frameworks around Pyramid Principle communication, communicating for results, and being MECE.
Now, when you think about the world of finance, it comes down to resource allocation. Where should I be allocating limited financial resources to be able to maximize shareholder or stakeholder return? Sometimes it comes in the form of:
- Should we be acquiring something?
- Should we be merging?
- Should we be raising additional capital?
But the cap that you have on isn't necessarily focused on a single domain. So it's not necessarily just focused on digging through data. It isn't just packaging that data and presenting it in front of people. It isn't just getting buy-in from different stakeholders.
It's actually all of the above, and a career in consulting - and sometimes investment banking - exercises the part of your brain that helps you do all of those things: collecting data, synthesizing it, packaging it, presenting it and getting the buy-in of people.
That's a very unique skill set, that for good or bad is only really taught and developed in consulting firms or in investment banks. And because it's such a unique place, because you're not just doing it for anyone, you're doing it for the biggest companies in the world, for some of the most successful CEOs in the world.
Those are the people you're advising. Those are the people you're presenting to, which is why consultants have to be so meticulous and detail oriented and MECE, because you're preparing these things for people who have really important jobs and have to make really important decisions.
It's for that reason that they trust that advice, and it's that skill set that becomes very important to develop if you want to go from strategy consulting into the world of finance or investing.
Conclusion
If you need some tactical help with a transition from strategy consulting to private equity, we can help. We'll optimize your application materials (resume/cover letter) for finance roles and help you develop a networking strategy in a 30min Zoom call. You can book that session with Yusuf or any member of our all-MBB team.