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Consulting Firms 101: Big 4 Firms (Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, Ernst & Young) - YouTube
Channel: Management Consulted
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Welcome to Management Consulted. I'm
Jenny Rae, the Managing Director, and
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today our focus is on bringing you
another part of a three-part series on
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Consulting Firms 101. The three segments
of the consulting firms are of the top three,
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the big four, and tier two firms.
Today our focus is on the big four firms.
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Big four firms get their name from the
big four of the accounting industry:
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Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, and Ernst & Young, and
for all of them, their accounting or
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audit practices dwarfed the consulting
practices but they are very well
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respected for consulting services in
many places in the world. In fact these
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firms generally will have the most
international offices for consulting anywhere.
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There are six key factors that
we're comparing all the different types
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of firms and I'm going to run through
those six with you today. So the first is
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the branding/ the prestige of clients. Now
the consulting firms have excellent
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access to all the top clients in the
world however after 2001 when
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Sarbanes-Oxley in the US and the ethical
wall was really established between
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consulting and auditing, where an audit
firm could not offer other services like
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consulting, the firm's, although they have
access to CEOs and top managers at
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many of the major firms, are left to
actually compete with other strategy
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consulting firms as well as their own
competitors for work - so if they're doing
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an audit job they're actually
automatically disqualified from doing a
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consulting job.
However because of their international
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and global reputation on the accounting
and audit side, their brand often
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gets them in the door. So they do have
access to really good clients both at
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the chief executive level and also at
the operational level. Because of this,
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their price points are pretty
significant and they've got good
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salaries and also very strong perks,
maybe not
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Four Seasons perks, maybe not limousines
like you see at the top three level, but
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you definitely would have access to
great rental car perks,
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good hotels, and also great meal perks
when you're traveling and on the road.
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Oftentimes the travel
schedule can be four to five days a week
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for these firms, which is more rigorous
than even at the top three consulting
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firms. However, that's made up for by the
access to point number three, which is training.
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Now these four firms have
probably the best global standards for
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training in the world, and Deloitte in
particular with the establishment of
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Deloitte University in Texas this last
year is really leading the way. They have
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an established facility - it's pure
dedication and focus for the entire year
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is on training, again on both sides of
the firm not just consulting, but
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consultants certainly reap the benefit.
Not only do you have this off-site
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training that happens, we also have again
access to insight and on-site training
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as well as training that happens by
video or webinar - so lots of internal
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training that happens within the firms.
The fourth area is culture. Now because
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the firms are so large globally and so
often distributed internationally
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there's not the same one firm culture
that you'll see at a place like Bain or
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BCG. However the firm's are generally
very cordial and respectful of one
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another as well as of their counterparts
in other firms. So you'll see a lot of
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mutual respect that operates within the
big four band. In addition because of
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this, you have lots of exit opportunities.
There are consultants from each one of
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these firms that are populating the
globe, so there's a general respect for
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the type of experience that you would
have had when you were doing the work. However,
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the exit opportunities were as for
McKinsey, Bain, and BCG the focus was not
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only on your industry but also on the
toolkit that you developed. Here, the
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focus is really on the project work that
you did. So it's really important if you
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decide to go into a consulting job with
one of any of these firms that you
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really focus on what types of
industries and types of projects you're
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working on, because not everything is
created equal for the big four firms
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especially when it comes to exit
opportunities. In addition, we have access
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to a large global alumni network, but
because it's not as cohesive when you're
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at the firm, you also don't see the same
cohesiveness for networking when you
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leave the firm. And then finally the
interviews of these firms are very
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rigorous. They're actually focused about
50% on fit, your
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cultural fit with the firm, your
willingness to be trained, your ability
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to learn new things. They're also focused
on math, but whereas the math is very
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complicated at the top three firms often the math is very straightforward, in
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the cases for these firms, and the cases
are very business situation focused,
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they're conversational, people are looking
for you to have a good dialogue about
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business and a general understanding
about it. So again we'll cover that later
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in a future series on case and fit
interviews. For now if you have questions
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about any of these firms, we have firm
profiles on the website and we also have
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plenty of content at managementconsulted.com.
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