I am an associate in a leading strat firm and after five years or so want to work in industry for a period of time, partly to gain some exposure and also to regain some balance to my workload when I'll have young kids. My question is simply what roles are available in industry (i.e non-professional service firms) for strat consultants who have no real sector expertise per se, but exposure to literally every sector going addressing pretty much all business functions?Thanks in advance

I've recently come the other way and I think it may be easier...obviously the likes of McK alumni have a great track record but you may well encounter some cynicism. "Industry" (hate the term, unless they are actually making shoes or ships) will tend to want those with knowledge of the product or service, or deep functional knowledge. They may consider that you know a lot about a little and that may not be what they want.

How about investment banking? would it be possible to join an i-bank after a few yrs of strategy/ops consulting experience?

RG, That's exactly my point-not having a functional or sectoral specialism must make you pretty useless from an employers perspective. Especially when you comand a decent salary having been in consulting for a while. Does anyone have any suggestions of transition routes/examples of collegues that have made the jump?Thanks

How about some sort of internal consulting / business analysis type role?I'm not really too well placed to advise. I appreciate the concern over salary though - do you ever see the jobs section of the Sunday Times? There are any number of quite senior and responsible sounding jobs on what from many of our perspectives are perhaps slightly depressing salaries, that do not seem commensurate. On the other hand consider the potentially shorter hours and evenings at home...As a thought, what about looking into the types of jobs done by those leaving decent business schools? By no means all go into consulting or IB; many go into "industry". Perhaps a similar level role could be just the ticket for you?

I'd say it is not at all unusual for someone only a few years into their consulting career to still be a generalist. Some roles in industry will clearly be looking for deep industry expertise, but others will value a broad skillset and appreciate the fact that you could be "parachuted in" to deal with problems / challenges anywhere in their business.Thinking of my old colleagues from Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, they've moved to the likes of American Express, Deutsche Bank, Tesco.com, Standard & Poors, Lufthansa, Barclays Capital - all after 4-8 years of consulting. In most instances they were hired not for the deep expertise they could bring to the businesses, but for their strategic skills / internal consulting / MBA toolkit type abilities. So I would certainly not be glum about your lack of deep expertise Con.As a suggestion, I would look up the recruitment firm Holker Watkin. They do a lot of placements of ex-strat consultants into industry. They may be able to help you directly or at least give you a good steer on the options open to you.Hope that helps and good luck. Tony Restell

Thanks for your input, I really appreciate your experience.Its good to hear the range of firms/sectors/industries your collegues started working for on leaving strat Tony; the theory behind entering consulting was to gain as much experience as possible in my early twenties after an economics degree to try find the best avenue for a more specialist career. I'm planning on doing an MBA in the near future so will look for the move afterwards.Thanks for your adviceCon