Are Big Consulting Firms Better? | Pros of Boutique Consulting vs. MBB/Big 4 - YouTube

Hi, I'm kchoi. Welcome back to my channel, or if this is your first time

here, welcome! I'm a change management consultant and I make videos about

career, education, a little bit of travel mixed in...and today I'm going to talk

about the benefits of working at a boutique consulting firm versus a larger

consulting firm. Before we jump in, if you want to see more videos about consulting,

then please take a few seconds to hit the subscribe button and also the

notification bell while you're there. When I talk about large consulting firms,

I'm generally referring to the Top 3 as well as the Big 4 so the top three

consisting of McKinsey, BCG (or Boston Consulting Group), and Bain. Together,

they're also known as MBB. Big 4 being PwC, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and KPMG.

There are some differences between those two groups of large firms.

The Top 3 focus a bit more on strategy, while the Big 4 focus a bit more on implementation,

and they also provide services like tax and assurance.

Size-wise, they both have a lot of employees, the Top 3 having more in the ten thousands range,

and the big four having more in the hundred thousands range.

In terms of boutique consultancies, there isn't really a set definition of what

makes a consultancy boutique, but they have way fewer people and are often a

bit more specialized in the solutions and services they provide. Personally, I

work at a firm with less than 200 people, and while we provide a wide range of

solutions, they're all focused on engaging people in change. If you

want to know a bit more about what change management is, I have a video all

about that, so I will link that in the description box if you want to know more.

So while I've never worked at any of the large consulting firms that I listed

earlier, I have a lot of friends who do work there or have worked there in the

past, so I've learned and observed a lot over the years

and now I am able to compare it to my experience. I'm going to share six

benefits of working at a boutique consulting firm, and of course there are

benefits of working at a large consulting firm, too, but that's a different video.

- Number one: More visibility in the company.

Wth a smaller consultancy there's way more of a chance that everybody from the CEO down and

back up again knows each other and knows each other well. This gives you a really

unique opportunity to establish a personal brand that's really well known

throughout the entire business, not just within your team or your geographic office.

Where I work, it's not weird or intimidating at all to put time on the

CEOs calendar, or the VP's calendar, if there's something that you want to

discuss with them. Being at a smaller company allows you to actually

get to know everyone that you work with, which just opens up more opportunities

for you in the future. - Number two: More responsibilities as an entry-level consultant.

Smaller firms tend to have a flatter organizational structure, or at least

not quite so hierarchical. That means, regardless of your title, you

really have the opportunity to do as much work as you're capable of doing.

It's not really about your title or how long you've been at the company, but

really what your unique strengths and abilities are, which gives you more

opportunities to stretch and challenge yourself. I can draw from some of my

experience working at a large public relations firm, where it was very

hierarchical. One person at the bottom would create a report (or whatever it was), and

it would go to the next person for a review, go back down for changes, go back up

to review, go to the next person to review, and it was very, like - you gotta

go up the ladder. On the flip side, where I work today, I'm on projects with people

of multiple levels, up and down in leadership, but we really work together.

We're obviously still clearly defining what our roles and responsibilities are on

the particular project, but it's much less of a handoff up the ranks.

-Number three: Opportunity to build strong client relationships. Because you can have more

responsibility earlier on in your career at a smaller firm, and you're probably on

a smaller project team to begin with, you get a lot more visibility with the client. This means that you have anadvantage to build a relationship with

that client and be able to add to your network, and I actually have a video that

I just did about networking, so I will link that in the description box as well.

Another benefit I've experienced related to this is not just having that

visibility with the client, but also having visibility with C-suite or

executive-level clients. I think it's pretty rare for an entry-level

consultant to be in a meeting with the CEO of a company,

and I've been able to experience that because of working on a smaller team

and at a smaller company. - Number four: Opportunity to grow the business

Building those client relationships that I just mentioned gives you the chance to

grow your business with that client, as in sell and do more work with them. It

can be really exciting to do a project with the client and get to learn more

about things that they need, and how you might be able to help them, and to then

contribute to your business's growth in doing so. And having that opportunity to

delve into business development and contribute to your company's growth is a

bit harder to come by at a larger consulting firm.

- Number five: more ability to shape your specialty or focus At a larger firm, you probably have a general

focus, whether that's tech implementation, mergers and acquisitions, or even social impact,

but that's usually because there's already this established arm of

the business that you joined, or were recruited into. At a smaller firm, because

you have more visibility within the company, and can share your strengths and

interests, and because your role is not strictly defined by your title and your

tenure, you have more of a chance to shape your own path. There are people at

my company who know a lot about design thinking, or about engaging people

through positivity, and lots of other topics, and because we're at a smaller

firm, we have the flexibility to establish ourselves as experts in those

different niche areas. - And number six is: Better work/life balance

As with everything else on this list, this of course depends on the company and the

particular situation, but in general, people at larger firms tend to travel a

lot more and have a little bit less of that work-life balance. When you think of

a typical consultant at a large consulting firm, they're usually staffed

on a several-month project and travel every week to the client site, so they're

on the road Monday to Thursday going to that client site, and then are home over

the weekend. I know that there are some consultants at those firms who work on

local projects and don't travel as much, but I'm just generalizing for now. Now, while

all of that travel can make it difficult to have a good work-life balance, those

consultants often have a lot of perks: lots of miles on their flights, they get

upgraded, they've got good status, they have lots of points for

hotels - so you get a lot of perks out of it. In my particular role, I also travel,

but it's just on a much lower scale. I usually, on average, have a couple of days

of travel a week -- usually not up to four days of travel, but it kind of averages

out because some weeks I may have more travel, while other weeks I might not

have any travel. The reason for that is the way we do our projects, we don't go

to the client site every single week and work from there, but we just travel for

certain milestones in the project timeline. Then, because I'm on multiple

projects at the same time rather than one project for several months at a time,

I have travel going on for those different projects. Sometimes they end up

having trips on the same week, sometimes there are weeks with no trips at all.

Now, that makes it a little bit more inconsistent and unpredictable for me,

which makes great work-life balance still a little bit of a challenge to

achieve. On the whole, I have a lot less travel, but I still have a significant

amount and still I'm able to take advantage of the travel perks that come

along with it. I know that travel is not the only element that impacts work-life

balance, but it is one of the bigger topics that come up when talking about

consulting, so just wanted to share my perspective on that front.

Again, there are obviously lots of benefits to working at a large consulting firm, as

well as drawbacks to working at a boutique or smaller consulting firm, but

I hope this video gave you a little bit of insight into how they differ, and

maybe opened up your mind to different opportunities if you're looking to get

into consulting. As I said at the beginning of this video, I have a lot of

friends who worked at or have worked at MBB or Big 4 consultancies, so give

this video a like and leave a comment if you'd like to see them on my channel to

share about their experiences. Now if you made it this far, thank you so much for

watching -- I really appreciate the support and I will see you in the next one. Bye!