All,I am currently doing a lot of internal consulting ( consulting from my dept to other corporate customer and stakeholders). I believe this role carries the same tasks and skill requirements as external consulting.My question is if internal consulting is seen as a substitute to external consulting ( if i want to get a new job in the future into ecternal consulting)? Will recruiters/hiring mgrs consider my internal consulting as highly as someone who has had external consulting experience?

The big difference between internal and external consulting is business development. To get into external consulting, you'll need to show you can proactively sell professional services (at a profit), create demand, etc.Typically, in internal consulting you deliver the work you are given and the scope/tasks are defined for you. In external consulting, you do all this delivery, but that's only half the job. The other half of your time is spent in identifying these needs, selling the work, scoping and structuring the project, etc.So, in short, most recruiters and hiring managers will not consider the experience as highly unless they are hiring to a junior/associate position where only straight delivery is expected. Similar to most recruitment situations, recruiters are looking for evidence of having "done it before", in the same industry/function, etc.

thanks for the response X.You mentioned that the big diff between the two is BD. I think this is true in some respects, but not in most. For instance, the armies of 'consultants' ( i.e. software implementers) at a firm like IBM wont have nothing to do with BD. They will only do their jobs, which is in this case implement a large scale software, and not do any sort of BD. However, these people are considered 'external' consultants.On the other hand, however, i have seen internal consultants tasked with 'proactively improving business unit operations'...this to me is identifying opportunities for betterment and making a case to those business units. I see this as BD.

No matter how you spin it, internal consulting does not involve any business development. Marketing, product development, time recording, invoicing, chasing debtors, maximising daily rates etc is completely different in an external consulting environment.

Does internal consulting pay as well?I've been approach by an IB for an internal strategy role and concerned about salary progression compared with the consulting firm I'm at.

Depending on the organisation, it may even pay a bit better than external consulting, and may allow you to move into operational roles at a later stage in your career within the company. The problem is that it will be difficult to get back into an external consulting role for many of the reasons identified above. You will effectively have no sales experience, thought leadership or business line development. On the plus side, you won’t have to deal with timesheets, bid risk analysis stuff, potentially litigious clients, or a whole lot of the other cr*p that comes with consulting.Long way of saying that if you want to move out of consulting then this role sounds good, if you ever want to move back to consulting then that bird might have flown unless you are still at a very junior level.

The other consideration is the relative lack of training that you will get in an internal role.While you will get to know your employer intimately, you may struggle to keep up with emerging technologies or best practice. This is easier to do in a large consultancy, with a good internal training program.I would be wary of making the move, unless you do it so that you can work fewer hours

When you say operational role what would that mean in an IB if you've been working in Strategy? Front office or do you mean something else?