Greetings all - Would anyone be able to offer some insights to the better long term prospects of internal consulting vs traditional MC? Pending offers from a Big4 Strategy job (100% travel) vs internal (80hrs a week in house). Both companies are very similar with regard to prestige and brand name. My assumptions if both offers are made is that the MC role should have a higher salary to compensate for travel lifestyle. Internal is appealing for being home and very high exposure to senior mgmt including CEO. Thanks for any input on the matter. I'm a recent MBA from a second tier with 5 yrs of finance/consulting experience.

Let me give you some really good advice.If the internal role really expects you to do 80 hours/week and pays less than say half a million quid a year, reject it. Assuming you 'only' work Monday-Friday, that would mean hours of 8am-midnight every day. Oh man. Have you ever been in an office at midnight on a Friday night?? Seriously - do you really think you could do that? Or even if you work say 7 hours over the weekend (just enough that you no longer really have any weekend left), then it will mean 8.00am-10.30pm on the weekdays (including Friday again). Unless you're a robot, it's surely not sustainable?Regarding the strategy job... well, judge that one on its individual merits. 100% travel sounds pretty grim too though.

80 hour weeks? Permanently? Impossible. You'll burn out in no time at all. 100% travel? Interesting - so you'll never actually meet a client, and I assume you'll be doing all you work on a blackberry? Again unlikely.I suspect these are simply indications that you need to be available to travel, and occasionally might pull long hours on the internal job when things get hectic.As you already have 5 years exp and now the MBA, I would probably choose the internal role as a logical step to round out your experience. Big 4 is likely to get you re-treading old ground at this point.

Thanks very much for the quick feedback. I apologize for exaggerating. I didn't get any direct feedback on hours I would be expected to put in but the implication was that it would be less person time taken up vs. traveling Mon-Thurs and being in home office Friday on a MC role. I'm hoping pay is within 5k to stay internal vs taking a Mon - Thurs travel job. I felt the internal job may have more exposure than the traveling one. My biggest concern is 5 years from now which looks better on a resume depending on where I am looking.Thanks again