I have recently left the NHS and want a career change, post my MSc in strategic leadership. Will any of the consultancys take me seriously or am i doomed? I would like to go into either operational or strategic consultancy. Any ideas that may help my CV?

There are a fair number of consultancies with health/NHS-specific or government practices that might be interested in you (and vice versa of course). As you probably know public sector consulting has been the big thing lately. Although it's died back a bit I think there is still demand for experienced hires. It's difficult to say without knowing your background, but I wouldn't say it's a lost case at all.

Thanks for advice - other than 13 years clinical work in specialist areas in UK and abroad, i have 5 years in service improvement.Though i would like to get away from public health and get wider experience in business management/strategy etcShall try a few agencies

Have you considered whether you want to radically change your career or progress your career in a slightly different direction?The first option might be most appealing to you, I don't know, but the second route might mean you can offer more experience to a future employer. Even with strategic and operational consultancy you would need to fit this with sector(s) specialisation. So you might be able to get hired with your heath exerience and then develop your career in other sectors, when you can combine your academic knowledge with more consulting experience.To avoid a potential catch 22 you might be best looking at consultancies with government/health practises, as sjd points out. It's not my sector, but you should ask around and research, to find the serious professionals versus those that are simply on the gravy-train for the quick new-labour buck.Hedra for example appear to be very competent professionals and have expertise in this area. If you approached them, they might be very interested to hear from someone with your experience, but you might need to approach several.

I'd suggest a staged approach.Tailor your CV initially highlighting relevant experience.Secondly take the first step into an arena where you have competence that you can build on, i.e. your experience and industry knowledge. Then expand your competency in the consultancy arena so that you can eventually make the step away from your 'historical' industry specific competency and become more generalist.Keep an eye on not becoming too generalist though so that your exit strategy is not compromised.

We hear a fair bit about how much you should specialise in a career, or not. There are top consultants who are very specialised by sector, and others who are more focussed on the service that they provide to sectors. There are certainly also examples of consultants at the top that take a less extreme view.It is interesting to consider that both in terms of leadership, and in terms of an exit strategy, unless you want to retire straight away after consulting. The picture doesn't get much simpler though.There are hundreds of top boards with specialist skills, generalist skills, and directors with both. Indeed health professionals have seen the need for specialist and general practioners for years. At least it looks that way from the outside! It is good that some of those making recruitment decisions are not always oblivious to this. Those taking a staged approach should be allowed to adjust a career strategy to some extent at various stages in a career, and a well managed recruitment process would be more understanding about these matters.

A radical change is whats needed to get the brain drain from the NHS out of my system. Thanks for the advice