I am 28 years old and recently completed an MBA. I would love to get into strategy consulting but firms won't seem to touch me because I don't have an MBA from one of the big schools and my background is in IT. As part of my MBA I spent a year strategically analysing a local company and advising on options for strategic growth. This increased my desire to get into the strategy consulting arena but no firm seems to want to know about me. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

So, you only have a couple of years pre-MBA experience, it&apos;s in a non-relevant field, and your MBA&apos;s from an off-brand school... to be honest, I wouldn&apos;t touch you either.My advice, assuming your MBA was full-time:1) <i>Stop ham-fistedly shoving the word "strategy" or its derivatives into every sentence.</i> There are five sentences in your post and the word "strategy" is used four times. It does not give the impression that you know what the word means, let alone that you possess the skills claimed. This is not a unique problem - I see it in many CVs from people with a similar profile. 2) <i>Expand your vocabulary.</i> Don&apos;t tell me that you are "a strategic thinker" - show me through your experiences and achievements that you understand the strategies of a particular industry, function, type of transaction, etc.3) <i>Play to your strengths.</i> You have a background in IT, and you only have a few years experience so - regardless how grandiosely you play up your CV - readers will assume you didn&apos;t have time to reach and succeed in a senior position. So, focus on applying to firms that consult in IT; demand for generalist consultants has fallen dramatically and even "generic" MBA hires are expected to bring relevant expertise. Use your lack of experience as evidence that you&apos;ll tear into grunt work enthusiastically, seeing it as a "learning opportunity".4) <i>Consider post-MBA "acceleration" not just "transformation".</i> As you know, people go into the MBA with different career objectives. Two of these, broadly speaking, are "acceleration" (using the MBA to be promoted more quickly in an existing career path) and "transformation" (emerging from the MBA into a completely different field). It sounds like you have been focussing on transformation, but that is very difficult to pull off these days, especially with the profile described. Your best option may be to go back into a position similar to the one you left and use the MBA to fast-track your career into more "strategic" roles within the firm, or to a level where you can re-apply to consultancies as an experienced hire.

Awesome feedback!

How are you? That was a Mars A Day or Mr Cool-esque post for its sheer quality, candour, incisiveness and objectivity. Heed the advice...the word &apos;strategy&apos; along with its many sucessors and antecedents is one of the most abused and misunderstood words in the business lexicon.ZB

John - I hate to shatter anyone&apos;s dreams but I&apos;m having to side with dcon on this one.When selling strategy consulting teams at top-end day rates, consulting firms have to satisfy clients that their team will be comprised of the very top talent. What do clients look at to satisfy themselves of this?... each consultant&apos;s academic background and the relevant sector expertise they have built up.So taking on MBA hires who can&apos;t tick both boxes is a risk and taking on someone who doesn&apos;t tick either box is almost unthinkable.I&apos;d suggest a quick search of LinkedIn for people working at the firms you&apos;re aspiring to join will show they simply don&apos;t hire people from outside the very top business schools and that generally those people will have highly relevant prior work experience too. Or flip that and search the Linkedin group for alumni of your business school and again I suspect you&apos;ll find hardly any having broken into the types of firms you are targetting.dcon&apos;s advice on where to go from here is spot on, so if you can move beyond the aspiration of getting into strategy consulting I&apos;m sure there will be lots of career options open to you - and ones that longer term could lead to you having a strategic role in business.Good luckTony RestellTop-Consultant.com<a href=http://www.theconsultancycareersfair.com>24th September 2010 - the Consultancy Careers Fair - Barbican, Central London</a>

Good posts from all. Tony one of the aspects which I&apos;d like to discuss and explore with the wider community is the following:What value to generalist consultants bring to the table for senior management? I am specifically talking about say someone with 5-7 years experience in say project management, or corporate strategy, or lean six sigma if they have not had experience in the industry the client is in. Let me rephrase: can someone whom has corporate strategy experience consulting in a number of industries say pharma, automobiles, chemicals turn their dab hand at advising the senior management of an oil company on corporate strategy? I think the answer is no, but I constantly get amazed then business gurus out there like Micheal Porter, the late CK Prahalad and the rest claim to have the CEOs ear from a number of different industries. How could those business gurus know so much and provide counsel to senior businessmen. I&apos;m not saying the generalist model does not work: I&apos;ve known people carve out successful careers specialising in PMO, testing, delivery management, procurement, supply chain stuff over a number of years across a range of industries, but the key thing was that they were in the early parts of thier careers there horsepower and willingness to learn were the important selling points. Once you go beyond the 5 year experience mark, if you don&apos;t specialise (or at least become expert) in a certain area, how do you firstly sell yourself to cleints and secondly carve out a niche for yourself within the firm you work in.If I&apos;m someone, in these straitened times approaching this juncture I would certainly give pause for thought and decide where I&apos;m going in my professional life cos befroe you know it when you decide to leave consulting and go to a industry job, you&apos;ll have difficulties securing positions and salary commensurate to what you were getting in consulting which sometime means people stay in consulting longer than they want which initaties a dangerous feedback loop.Neter

dcon - thanks very much for your feedback. You make some extremely valid points and I like it when people say it like it is, even if you did make some incorrect assumptions about me (based on my age no doubt). A dose of realism is in order for me I think and I&apos;m going to have to look at a new course of action. Thanks again foir taking the time.