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The River Partnership Executive Search, 67-68 Long Acre, London. WC2E 9JD 1

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Author:

Anthony Allodi, Head of Strategy – Consumer & Retail Practice, River Partnership

[email protected]

The Transition to Industry

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.riverpartnership.com/




Contents

Introduction.............................................................................................................................................................. 3

Participants Overview .............................................................................................................................................. 3

Part One: Deciding to transition............................................................................................................................... 4

Part Two: Making the transition ............................................................................................................................... 6

Part Three: Post-transition shock syndrome............................................................................................................ 9

Recommendations ................................................................................................................................................ 12

River Partnership – Strategy Consumer & Retail Practice .................................................................................... 13

About River Partnership ........................................................................................................................................ 14





Introduction

River Partnership’s search division has combined expertise of over 35 years in the Strategy market, having

managed hundreds of placements from Consulting into Industry.

This report analyses the motivations, decision-making and post-transition perspectives behind this

particular career trajectory.

We surveyed nearly 250 Strategy professionals from the top-tier firms who have transitioned out of

Consulting, to ask about their experiences.

We hope the results provide valuable insights for Consultants considering a transition, Hiring Managers

who seek this sort of talent, and Human Resources teams who want to ensure they can attract and retain

the best people for their organisations.

Participants Overview

Firstly, some words on our demographic. All survey participants were interviewed in confidence, and we do

not expose their current companies here due to the sensitivity of the data and the opinions they provided.

100% of our participants worked with McKinsey & Company, The Boston Consulting Group, Bain &

Company, Oliver Wyman, Roland Berger or Booz & Company (now Strategy&) and transitioned directly

from those firms. We focused on global responses,

with all 5 continents represented in our data across

the majority of the largest commercial and financial

centres.

In total we interviewed 249 participants, out of

which:

• 126 transitioned into Corporates

• 88 transitioned into Start-ups / SMEs

• 30 transitioned into Private Equity

• 5 became self-employed / other

“Finding the ‘perfect’ opportunity post-Consulting is a myth”

CCO, Apparel; ex-Bain & Company

Figure 1: Where the 249 interviewed participants transitioned to





In addition, 35% had industry experience prior to joining Consulting, which is the approximate average

across the six Consulting firms we had taken participants from.

In terms of commercial experience overall, we

aimed deliberately for a fairly equal split.

19% had between 1 – 3 years, 27% had between

4 – 6 years, 22% had between 5 – 8 years, 20%

had between 9 – 12 years and 12% had 13+

years.

My thanks to the ex-Consultants in my network

who took the time to take part.

Part One: Deciding to transition

Motivations for leaving Consulting almost exclusively fit into one of five

categories: Salary, Working Hours, Travel Demands, Personal

Circumstances and Professional Challenge (i.e. wanting a different role). Of

course, there are plenty of individual situations which prioritise these factors

differently, and personal developments which can change all the time and

influence this (relationships, buying property, etc…), but these will always be

the base “ingredients”.

Within this, there are trends worth noticing. For example, individuals with between 1-3 years’ Consulting

experience were 72% less likely to be

turned off by travel demands. This makes

sense; the demands made by business

travel become more tiresome over time.

Airport lounges are less exciting after the

10th weekly visit. Families start to grow,

and the desire to spend more time at

home increases.

Of the 35% of the participants in our

survey who had industry experience prior

to joining Consulting, 83% considered

Leaving

the party

Figure 3: How important were the following factors for you when making the decision to leave Consulting?

Figure 2: Years of commercial experence from the 249 interviewed participants





working hours at least “fairly important” when deciding to leave (compared to 45% of the rest of the group),

highlighting a significant difference in priorities. This is because line roles in industry typically demand fewer

working hours than Consulting. These individuals will likely receive a shock if they expect a Strategy team

in industry to make less demands on their time – barely 20% found much difference after transitioning (see

Part Three). This will inevitably impact job satisfaction, so whether you are a job-seeker or an employer, be

honest about your expectations, and apply them to the hiring process.

Wanting a new professional challenge may seem like an obvious reason to look for another job, but the

Strategy talent market is unusual because many job-seekers within it are not only looking for a different

short-term challenge, but in most cases would seek a different role altogether, at least in the mid-term. The

strongest motivations for leaving Consulting are to be able to execute and implement initiatives, and to take

ownership of a functional area, P&L or team. None of these responsibilities are easy to get in Strategy

Consulting, and in any case most individuals approaching Partner are disinterested in the addition of

revenue-generation to their job description. As one ex-McKinsey Associate Principal mentioned, “if you

want to be well-paid, stay in Consulting; if you want to be well-rounded, leave.”

By extension, we can advise Consultants to start considering their transition before they tire of the nature

of the work they are doing; applying their project experience to a single “client” should be an exciting

prospect. Spending a couple of years in a central Strategy team to build important internal relationships

with key stakeholders and develop an understanding of how to execute an initiative or how to implement a

solution operationally should sound

challenging and exciting.

There is also pressure on employers.

Trends suggest that Consultants are

increasingly interested in Start-up or SME

environments, believing that they are

more capable of making a substantial impact there. This generalisation is not accurate (of the 88 individuals

we surveyed who transitioned to Start-ups or SMEs, 76% said that they felt they made an impact, compared

with 72% of the 126 participants who joined a Corporate), but that perception causes issues in attracting

talent in some cases.

Smaller companies also need to be competitive. Whilst they are lucky to appeal (at least on paper) to the

“entrepreneurial spirit” of many Strategy professionals, the scope of their strategic drive, and the resources

available to deliver it, are usually more limited.

It is therefore clear that all companies need to consider how to be convincing as a potential employer to the

Strategy marketplace.

“I was beginning to get bored of external project

work, which was a surprise after several years of

being nothing but excited by it.”

Head of Product Development, Consumer Goods,

ex-McKinsey





Money talks (or rather, whispers…)

This paper does not seek to exhaustively review Consultant salaries, but of course it’s a topic we are very

familiar with. These results expose salary as the least important factor in deciding to transition to industry

(5.2 overall), which is unsurprising given the generous packages offered at the top firms. We noticed a

trend that the package matters more to individuals with between 4 – 8 years’ experience (69% more than

the other demographics), so if you are looking to hire within this bracket, be prepared to pay accordingly.

The data in Part Three of this report shows that salary was the second-least impacted factor in the transition

to industry, following working hours. The fact is that industry salaries remain largely competitive (particularly

in Central Strategy functions) and most employers know what they need to offer. For Consultants, we offer

the simple advice to be open to how your new package is structured.

*River Partnership has over 7 years’ of collected salary data for its core markets and regularly conducts

surveys to measure market trends on this topic. We have also been retained by clients who have asked us

to produce reports on salary data as part of wider Competitor Analyses.

Part Two: Making the transition

In this part we will analyse the job search itself.

Strategy professionals are paid to be inquisitive, to look at a situation from

every perceivable angle and to provide analysis on the information they

gather. Yet strangely, applying this intense level of scrutiny to their job

search was not represented in the findings of our survey. Less than 30% of

participants looked at 3 or more options, and this figure is biased towards more senior individuals. 37%

only looked at a single opportunity before deciding. These figures seem surprising in a traditionally busy

job marketplace.

The reason for this is mostly due

to time pressure. The first years in

Consulting are arguably the most

intense, where the workload is

new and the challenge of

managing the pressure is at its

steepest. Few people reading this

Making

sense of

the market

Figure 4: How many options did you look at before accepting your initial

industry role after Consulting (by % of participants)?





will be unfamiliar with 70-hour weeks and 80% travel. The fact is, Strategy Consultants rarely have the time

to consider their next career step, let alone manage an extensive job search directly.

It is then not surprising that search specialists account for 64% of the transitions represented in our survey,

with professional referrals and introductions from the alumni community jointly accounting for a further 26%.

These are the best channels for hiring Strategy professionals, and this remains a talent market where third-

party partners can add significant value.

What is interesting is the correlation between participants who applied directly and who also looked at more

than 3 opportunities (92%). There is a lesson here for Hiring Managers and HR (and recruiters): posting an

advertisement and relying on

applications will harvest you “active

candidates”, and it will be more

competitive to secure them. Utilising a

specialist search agent or direct

networks provides more exclusivity, and

you have a better chance of completing

the placement. Job-seekers, in tandem,

should build relationships with a small handful of recruitment professionals who they trust, can offer good

market insights and are deeply-rooted in this space, alongside some alumni or Partners who can provide

further perspective. Start this dialogue early to maximise your chance of receiving levelled, unbiased career

advice. The reward will be a more efficient job search.

We saw strong and logical correlations in our collected data between levels of Consulting experience and

certain factors which motivate the acceptance of specific job offers.

Figure 6: How important were the following factors for you when making the decision to accept a job offer post-Consulting?

Figure 5: How did you find your initial role in industry post-consulting?





Whilst in all cases the role offered was deemed highly important, when pushed for further detail certain

differences were exposed. Participants with fewer than 5 years’ experience were 78% more likely to be

attracted by a position in a central Strategy / Corporate Development team than the rest of the group. This

figure rises to 86% if we remove the 5 – 7 year participants. Why? Simply, Strategy professionals with more

experience feel more readiness to adopt

the responsibilities outlined in Part One.

Added to this the emotional factors of

leaving an employer after a longer tenure,

and the message to Hiring Managers

becomes clear – it will be more difficult to

attract senior Strategy talent if your job opportunity looks like the role of an external Consultant.

They may be more open to the type of job role, but participants with less than 5 years’ experience were

certainly more selective about their potential colleagues, placing heavier emphasis (68% overall) on the

team they would be joining – worth considering if you are Hiring Manager looking to recruit in this bracket.

83% of Strategy job-seekers will perform some due

diligence on the culture of a potential employer using their

professional networks. Culture counts.

Conversely, some factors harvested similar responses

regardless of the number of previous years in Consulting.

Understanding and seeing evidence of the potential for

career development is critical in capturing the interest of prospective hires, whatever their level of

experience.

We talked before about the importance of “Professional Challenge” as a factor for leaving Consulting,

therefore the speed at which someone can start to adopt additional commercial responsibilities is a critical

part of the decision-making process when choosing a new employer.

Larger Strategy teams in industry often cause alarm bells to ring for the applicant for this precise reason

(the perception is that it will be more difficult to

progress with multiple people wanting the same

development). If your business requires a sizeable

Strategy team, consider splitting it by function so that

individuals can gain more access to specific business

areas, or provide a job title with a less generalist

overtone (e.g. Strategy Manager – IT

“I was certain that I wanted operational

responsibility immediately. I had advised dozens of

clients on the same topic.”

Pricing Expert, Telco; ex-McKinsey

“I looked at every alumni from the team I

was interviewing with to see where they

were in the business today.”

Corporate Development Manager,

FMCG; ex-McKinsey





Transformation). We have seen this implemented in a few clients and the message it sends to the talent

market is a positive one.

In all cases, hiring companies need to work hard to demonstrate that a career path for a Consultant can be

timely and achievable. Strategy Consultants work in environments where the next step on the career ladder

is highly visible, and the expectations to get there it are clear. Transitioning to industry most often removes

this clarity, since career paths are more

varied, and companies are not as obviously

hierarchical outside of Professional

Services. Ironically, of course, this variation

is one key factor for Consultants looking to

leave, so any reading this should equally be

prepared to have their expectations

challenged, and keep an open mind.

The good news for companies based in the middle of nowhere? Location was deemed only “fairly

important”, scoring an average of 5.2. It will certainly be more challenging to find a top Strategy talent in

Zanzibar than Zurich, but you can be sure to attract people if the opportunity offers a high degree of the

other factors discussed here. Lower emphasis still was placed on companies with a questionable market

reputation (3.6 average). Why? “When a company is facing difficulties in the marketplace, and there is still

an appetite to hire Strategy professionals, this means there are changes to affect and results to own”, was

one comment from an ex-Project Leader from BCG. “This should be seen as a positive opportunity”.

Part Three: Post-transition shock syndrome

In many ways this is the most difficult part of our report to analyse. Our survey

represents 249 employees with different personalities from an equal number

of working environments. Some environments will suit certain characters

more than others. What is clear, however, is that most of our participants

benefitted from having some parallels between their new job and the one they

just left.

Joining the

“Real

world”

“I am in my current job not because of what I did

in Consulting, but because of what I did

afterwards. It is critical to have this view,

otherwise you are not preparing yourself for a

successful transition.”

Global Head of Strategy & Transformation,

Travel & Tourism; ex-BCG

‘“I thought Project Management was something I had done.”

Global Head of Business Development, Apparel, ex-BCG





Interestingly, it seems more important for Consultants to have good senior leadership once they are in the

job compared to how much they prioritised management during their job searches (nearly 2 points higher

overall). The reality for

most Consultants is that

industry - whether

Corporate, SME or

Start-up - demands

very different soft-skills

and relationship-

building capabilities.

Most need help to

adjust culturally, and in

some cases some

become frustrated with

the slower pace

associated with longer-term “internal” projects. This explains why so many placed high importance on

having a clearly-defined role; this is what they have been used to in their project work. And, for all the

intention of moving into Line Management, some regretted pushing this too quickly. An ex-Bain & Co.

Manager, now managing a sizeable salesforce, put it this way: “I became very bored very quickly when I

joined a functional team directly after Consulting. I missed the diversity of project work. My brain was not

used to thinking about the same problem all the time.”

When our survey asked how different certain elements of their working life were in comparison to

Consulting, quite clearly there are significant adjustments the average Consultant needs to make.

Figure 7: In your own experience, how important were the following factors in determining a successful transition to industry?

Figure 8: In industry, how did you find the following when compared to Consulting?





But to consider the full picture – the answers above are in reference to only the initial transition, and actually

only a handful of these differences were perceived negatively (decision-making and available resources).

For others, these differences are a critical, and largely positive, part of the learning process. Several

participants told us they were pleased to find that they learnt a lot from new colleagues with longer tenures

in the organisation, who could provide insight and advice on process, share thoughts on previous external

Consulting impact, how to position yourself as an influencer, and what the best day of the week was to eat

in the staff canteen. More surprising was that having less clarity over tasks and career progression had less

of a negative perception – the reality many ex-Consultants found, was that whilst these were indeed

different post-transition, they also had the

opportunity to influence them over time.

This represents a learning curve many felt

had disappeared during their later years in

Consulting. Developing new skills and ways

of working, no matter how difficult, is clearly

a core motivator for this type of career

move. Employers should nurture a culture which allows for this, and Strategy Consultants should remember

that this is more achievable with a “softer landing”, so seeking an initial role entirely different from Strategy

Consulting could turn out to be counter-intuitive to their wider career objectives.

The transition to Industry is a major consideration for most Consultants – arguably one of the most important

moves in their career, regardless of seniority, and usually a significant investment (financial and political)

for employers. Having greater awareness of what to look for and expect on the part of the job-seeker, and

how to help the transition be rewarding on the part of the employer, should benefit all sides in this high-

impact, highly-competitive recruitment market.

“I joined Consulting to be around smart,

motivated people. I appreciated having the same

culture immediately around me as I moved

towards operational management.”

Head of Group Retail Excellence, Retail, ex-

Oliver Wyman





Recommendations Further to the suggestions outlined throughout this report, I would highlight the following.

• If you are interviewing Strategy professionals for a role in Central Strategy, consider including one

or two meetings with senior stakeholders / Line Managers into the assessment process.

Understanding the relationship between a Strategy team and the business is clearly a critical

consideration and providing visibility of it will strengthen your opportunity in the eyes of your

applicants

• When hiring talent into central Strategy functions, incorporate a formal (possibly even contractual),

bi-annual HR review to discuss internal career progression. This sends a strong message to

potential employees that their development is important

• Job-seekers in this market should know how to ask questions relating to their mid-term goals during

the recruitment process. Focusing on direct comparisons between external Consulting and industry

will cloud the picture, and our data tells us that other criteria were more important in determining a

successful transition

• As a company, if you are struggling to attract the best Strategy talent, think about how you can

change what you can offer them. The findings in this paper suggest that Strategy professionals

would more likely take a position with personnel or P&L responsibility with a lesser-known company

in a second-tier city, than they would a standard Strategy role in a more “conventional” company

• From an HR perspective, consider having junior team members in your Strategy team (perhaps

high-potentials from within the organisation) who can be directly managed by mid-level

Consultants. Moving high-potential talent around is never a bad idea in any organisation; giving

direct management responsibility to Strategy hires will develop their soft-skills more quickly

• As a Hiring Manager, be fully alert to succession-planning. A quick transition into Line Management

by someone in your team will become a big problem if there is a headcount gap as a result. The

recruitment of Strategy professionals can take time; be prepared for it

• Having regular touch-points to the wider job market is a good way for Strategy Consultants to

develop a stronger awareness of what skills industry demands, and how career development looks

post-Consulting. Take time to form relationships with search firms and alumni, and be in touch with

them every few months, even if you are not looking to change yet





River Partnership – Strategy Consumer &

Retail Practice

Anthony oversees mandates across multiple categories within the Consumer / Retail landscape into the

following pillars:

• Placements into industry Start-ups, SMEs and Corporates in central global Strategy teams

(Corporate Development, Business Development, In-House Consulting, etc…)

• Senior Management / Director-level search projects for clients seeking a Strategy skillset with added

industry or functional expertise (Business Operations, Sales & Marketing, Regional Leadership,

Managing Directors, etc…)

• Assignments for specialist Private Equity / Venture Capital firms needing Acting C-Level or

commercial support within the portfolio or Operating Partners in a central Value Creation function

• Senior-level searches for leading Management Consulting firms within the Practice areas of

Consumer & Retail

Anthony Allodi

Head of Strategy – Consumer & Retail

T: +44 (0) 20 3096 8869

M: +44 (0) 7508 407 875

[email protected]

Recently completed mandates:

• Senior Manager, Sales & Marketing, UK (Food &

Beverage)

• Manager, Strategy & Organisation, Paris (Luxury

Goods)

• Director, Corporate Strategy, Basel (Consumer

Healthcare)

• Regional Director, Sales, Hong Kong (Retail)

• Market Development Director, Dubai (FMCG)

• International Director, Business Operations &

Excellence, Amsterdam (Consumer Electronics)






About River Partnership

A multi-disciplinary human capital firm headquartered in London specialising in executive search,

competitor insight, succession planning and market mapping across the Financial Services,

Professional Services, Technology and Energy sectors.

We work on global mandates with the aim of being the search and staffing partner of choice to a small

group of industry-leading companies across Europe, Asia and the Americas.

In short, River Partnership helps you build winning teams.

We know that is only possible if our own team is equally talented. That is why the River Partnership

line-up is a roll call of experts who are, to a person, passionate about delivering excellence and

enjoying their work. Our consultants are specialists with decades of combined experience in our chosen

fields and functions.

All regularly handle high-profile mandates from one-below-public-board level, through heads of

department and function, to specialists or subject matter experts. By combining deep knowledge of the

key issues and drivers in your sector and by employing a clear methodology, utilising extensive

personal networks, good judgement and a passionate approach, we help you to swiftly identify,

benchmark and acquire top talent.



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