I am currently working as a strategy analyst at a financial bank and I just received an offer with IBM to join their Business Strategy Consulting group within Strategy and Change.Does anyone here know what type of work they do here? In particular, how much strategy work do they actually do and what sort of projects are they involved with?Please help, as I don't want to make the wrong move in switching jobs.Rachel

they are heavily IT and SI in S&C. S&C is more like a pre-sales to the follow-up IT and SI solutions. And depending on which part of the world you are in, I know of quite a lot of S&C leaders who comes ERP or SI background all their life running S&C. If you are really keen to get into strategy consulting, and yes, it's difficult to get into mbb, you might want to try other consulting firms first. check out vault's consulting ranking. If you are happy with IT, then IBM, Accenture or CapGemini could be the options.

I spent some time in S&C as a strategy consultant. I suggest you read the comments on Vault. Most of these are spot on.I could rant on about IBM as the worst employer ever. However I you might think I just have a chip on my shoulder. Instead I suggest you do some due diligence......Ask to meet with some people of your grade informally. Ask them to talk thru the projects they have worked on, what their utilisation target is, what their bonus was last year, what they like best and least.

Interesting, i didnt even know ibm had a strategy consulting division... which goes to show you their presence in strategy consulting...

Preface: I don't know them at all, this is from my own research/reading Vault/this forum.What does the phrase "Strategy Consulting - with an analytical twist" say to people? (It's how IBM advertise their S&C division in their graduate brochure.) Surely most/all entry level strategy jobs involve a fair bit of Excel/number crunching - maybe it means that IBM entry level involves even more number crunching and less client involvement than most? Possibly because the job is being a "strategy adviser" within an IBM project team, rather than a member of a "proper" consultancy team. Just my reading of it, perhaps the cynicism on this forum is starting to get to me!The hours seem to be relatively low for a consultancy job. The pay does seem to be noticeably lower to go with it though (£32k + £3k sign-on bonus - not sure about other bonuses) rather than more like £40k(ish) + £10k(ish) bonus at Tier 1 or 2 strategy houses.The S&C team is quite small, think it's about 50 people. Might be smaller, friendlier, less cut-throat than something like MBB but at the expense of less interesting work/lower pay??Just a guess :)

The IBM S&C practice is described as particularly analytical because it has a strong OR focus and you'll use more "management science" (in the classical sense) than most other consultancies.