Experienced hire recruitment can be a puzzling, confusing environment. Compared to on-campus recruits (undergraduates and MBA students), experienced hires confront much more irregular processes, prolonged timelines, and unclear standards.
As the number of experienced hires have increased during the pandemic and I personally made this transition twice during my career, below I’ll share my thoughts on how to think about this route to help you make sense of this process and plan your approach. In particular, we will look at:
- Experienced hire context
- Evaluation criteria for experienced hires
- Finding the right opportunity
- Applying to opportunities
- Interview process and preparation
1. Experienced hire context
1.1 Definition of experienced hire
Experienced hires are anyone in the recruitment pipeline that are already in the workforce. In other words, they are not campus recruits.
Typically, experienced hires have 2+ years of experience working in an industry job or at another consulting firm, but they could also have over a decade of relevant experience if hired into the top level of a firm.
The demand from top consulting firms for experienced hires has been growing and it has reached a peak during the pandemic for three reasons:
- There is a limited pool of MBA candidates, which means firms do not meet their recruitment targets by simply fishing in the MBA pond.
- Some firms decided to let consultants go during the early phase of the pandemic. As a result, they are suffering understaffed projects since business has returned to normal.
- The industry in general has seen a high attrition rate, now being referred to as the “Great Resignation”.
1.2 Why firms hire experienced hires
Experienced hires play a variety of roles at firms, but this can be broadly broken down into generalist and niche/specialized roles.
An experienced hire recruited as a generalist fits into a consulting team just like a homegrown campus recruit. They play a variety of roles in a team and are staffed flexibly on projects that tackle different industries and functions.
In some cases, especially for firms with emerging practice areas, experienced hires are used to fill expertise gaps that strengthen their offering. You might have 4+ years of pension strategy experience and, thus, fit perfectly into the financial services team that tackles those sorts of projects. You might have an investment banking or private equity background and be a subject matter expert (SME) on mergers & acquisitions, and thus provide a due-diligence consultancy with some muscle in their proposals and work.
In the larger consulting firms, core consulting staff might be limited in their functional skills that come directly from industry experience. These firms acquire this expertise through acquisitions and recruiting experienced industry hires with relevant experience. As a result, it is very likely for your first project to be related to your prior industry experience, and as you successfully prove yourself you will get the flexibility to specialize in this domain or try out other areas that you are interested in. The truth is that focusing on a specific domain can accelerate your promotion within a firm, but some consultants will deliberately decide to try out different things before they do so. It’s a tradeoff you have to make, and one approach is not necessarily better than the other.
1.3 How experienced hires fit into the firm
Depending on the level of experience and expertise, experienced hires can fall anywhere in a consulting firm’s org chart. Seasoned industry professionals could be brought in as Managers or above but this is uncommon and would normally require previous consulting experience.
More commonly, experienced hires with 2 to 4 years of experience usually enter at the second level of the firm’s hierarchy (titled ”Senior Consultant/Senior Associate”), giving them the chance to build their consulting tool kit and more effectively prepare for management positions.
Professionals hired at the Analyst level (the title will vary by firm, but is the equivalent of an entry level position) usually have less than 2 years of experience and are treated almost identically to campus hires once at the firm. These recruits typically either missed the chance to take part in consulting recruitment in their undergrad, are unsatisfied with their current role, or are looking for a new challenge.
2. Evaluation criteria for experienced hires
One of the most common myths about consulting is that you need to be an expert in all aspects of business to join a consultancy. This is simply not true.
The biggest delta from campus recruitment is that firms are typically looking for meaningful work experience or specific expertise, whether that be technical or otherwise. Besides that, most of the evaluation criteria are very similar. They want impressive, accomplished, and ambitious people.
Generally, firms are looking for the following three attributes:
- Academic excellence: Recruiting teams want to see that you’ve attended top schools and had good grades (yes, GPA is still asked in strategy houses). While this becomes less important the farther removed you are from your graduation year, it’s still an easy indicator of talent for recruiting teams.
- Strong work experience: Firms want to see that you have thrived in your current role, ideally at a top company, and can demonstrate that you’ve made a significant impact while you’ve been there. Great indicators of this are strong performance reviews, early promotions, and specific examples of significant impact like leading a team or achieving a key milestone.
- Specific domain expertise: As previously mentioned, firms are usually looking for people who can supplement an existing practice area or fill expertise gaps that they’re looking to bulk up on.
3. Finding opportunities
Finding a campus recruiting opportunity is extremely easy as “on-cycle” recruitment is extremely standardized, happening at the same time every year with little to no variation.
Experienced hire opportunities are more erratic. While certain firms have ‘rolling recruitment’ that you can apply to, Tier 1 (McKinsey, BCG, Bain) and Tier 2 (Oliver Wyman, Strategy&, EY-Parthenon, Kearney, LEK) usually don’t. Practice varies wildly between firms and offices, so you have to be on the lookout for local recruitment demand at growing offices or open positions in specialized roles and be diligent with your networking.
Using LinkedIn to connect with current employees and build awareness of your interest is also valuable and can help you figure out what type of role would be good for you.
The bottom line here is that finding a role is a mix of casting a wide net, being diligent about networking, and taking advantage of a firm’s outreach efforts. You can’t shine in an interview without first finding an open position.
4. Tailoring your application
When submitting an application, experienced hires need to take a slightly different angle than the usual campus recruit. Your story isn’t just about “Why consulting?” It’s “Why consulting after doing X job?”
Your resume should be crafted to describe your impact at your current company, highlight your significant accomplishments, and showcase how your skill set fits in well with the needs of your target firm. Take time to make sure you’ve crafted a compelling story and use the insights from your networking as the basis of your discussion.
Additionally, getting a referral is a crucial step that can be a huge advantage in terms of getting your foot in the door for an interview. It’s basically someone within the firm “going to bat for you” to highlight your profile and get your application in front of decision-makers. Firms usually have either an informal or formal process for referrals:
- Informal process: An informal process usually involves someone within the firm forwarding your resume to the recruiting team while endorsing your qualifications for the open position.
- Formal process: A formal process usually involves an internal form submission where someone highlights your name, or something like a special link sent to you to resubmit your application to a preferred pool of applications.
Whatever the process is at your target firm, getting a referral should be a high priority, especially for experienced hires. Leverage the network you created when finding opportunities and attending firm open houses to find people who would be willing to take this step for you. People are always on the lookout to add talented individuals to the team and they also have financial incentives for a successful referral.
5. Interview process
Most experienced hires experience a similar process to campus recruits but during a much different time of the year. Experienced hire recruiting can happen at any time of the year, not just during the fall.
Because these interview processes occur “off cycle” they can sometimes last longer than what you typically expect given the length of the on-campus process. I personally experienced processes taking anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months.
The interview structure is not significantly different from a campus hire but may involve a few more rounds and is measured by a higher standard. For my current firm, Strategy&, I had a first round interview with two fit and case portions, and a final round of the same format but with Partners. For another firm I simultaneously interviewed with, the first round interview structure was the same but the second round was much more extensive, consisting of 4 interviews (2 typical cases, 1 presentation case, 1 take-home case).
Nowadays there are tons of free resources out there to get you up to speed and ready to tackle cases. I highly recommend the 3-step approach:
- Watch high quality example cases (e.g. YouTube) and get your hands on great sample cases directly from your target firms or MBA casebooks (e.g. Kellogg, Darden, etc.)
- Drill into refining the core skillsets: problem structure, mental math, charts, data analysis, and communication
- Practice live mock interviews for both cases and fit questions, whether it be with a paid expert, a current or former consultant, or a peer.
Conclusion
Applying and preparing as an experienced hire candidate is a long and challenging process because you’ll need to learn about the firm, the consulting industry, and how to do well in a case interview. Plus, you must juggle preparation around a full-time job. It’s not something to dive into without a great deal of thought, but it can provide a gateway to an exciting new career.
Jason Oh is a Senior Associate at Strategy&. Previously, he was part of the Global Wealth & Asset Management Strategy team of a large financial institution and also served EY and Novantas in their strategy consulting business with industry focus in the financial services sector.
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