Hi All,I have been with a Big 4 accounting firm for 2 years and have a CPA. I am interested in possibly shifting careers to management consulting.... is this background looked favorably or negatively by consulting firms?Thank you all for your help in advance.MW

No, not really. I'll be honest - you will be thought of as an accountant. And we know how inflexible and narrow-minded they can be! It doesn't fit well with the essential consultancy skill-set of being able to think out of the box and operate efficiently in uncertain environments.

mate, it doesn't matter what background you have, there will be some twit on this forum telling you that consultants are better than you and you wouldn't be considered. If you have a sound academic background and can write a decent cover letter, there will be firms that will interview you, and from there its all about the case. You may not always get mckinseys, but there are lots of firms out there with lower entry requirements.

re: qwerty's comments, I think he may have some kind of personal axe to grind.My advice however was coming as someone who has worked as an MC for 17 years and has seen literally thousands of accountants trying to move into MC over the years. Of course it's doable, but there's a true risk that you'll be labelled an accountant and you'll certainly have to make sure you don't pack your CV with accountancy insider jargon. To put this into context, probably 99% of consultants wouldn't have a clue what a CPA is, so talking about how you EBITDA'd your internal audit's ROI with a leveraged SOX approach to the FRS 25 (IAS32) disclosure regulations for smaller companies will fall on deaf ears. It also begs the question, "why are you bailing out of accountancy so soon?"

You need to adopt anon's skill set: spend an afternoon reading PowerPoint for Dummies and you'll be there.Consultants trade off a very shallow set of skills, you're already better than all of them.