today our focus is on bringing you another part of a three-part series on

Consulting Firms 101. The three segments of the consulting firms are of the top three,

the big four, and tier two firms. Today our focus is on the big four firms.

Big four firms get their name from the big four of the accounting industry:

Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, and Ernst & Young, and for all of them, their accounting or

audit practices dwarfed the consulting practices but they are very well

respected for consulting services in many places in the world. In fact these

firms generally will have the most international offices for consulting anywhere.

There are six key factors that we're comparing all the different types

of firms and I'm going to run through those six with you today. So the first is

the branding/ the prestige of clients. Now the consulting firms have excellent

access to all the top clients in the world however after 2001 when

Sarbanes-Oxley in the US and the ethical wall was really established between

consulting and auditing, where an audit firm could not offer other services like

consulting, the firm's, although they have access to CEOs and top managers at

many of the major firms, are left to actually compete with other strategy

consulting firms as well as their own competitors for work - so if they're doing

an audit job they're actually automatically disqualified from doing a

consulting job. However because of their international

and global reputation on the accounting and audit side, their brand often

gets them in the door. So they do have access to really good clients both at

the chief executive level and also at the operational level. Because of this,

their price points are pretty significant and they've got good

salaries and also very strong perks, maybe not

Four Seasons perks, maybe not limousines like you see at the top three level, but

you definitely would have access to great rental car perks,

good hotels, and also great meal perks when you're traveling and on the road.

Oftentimes the travel schedule can be four to five days a week

for these firms, which is more rigorous than even at the top three consulting

firms. However, that's made up for by the access to point number three, which is training.

Now these four firms have probably the best global standards for

training in the world, and Deloitte in particular with the establishment of

Deloitte University in Texas this last year is really leading the way. They have

an established facility - it's pure dedication and focus for the entire year

is on training, again on both sides of the firm not just consulting, but

consultants certainly reap the benefit. Not only do you have this off-site

training that happens, we also have again access to insight and on-site training

as well as training that happens by video or webinar - so lots of internal

training that happens within the firms. The fourth area is culture. Now because

the firms are so large globally and so often distributed internationally

there's not the same one firm culture that you'll see at a place like Bain or

BCG. However the firm's are generally very cordial and respectful of one

another as well as of their counterparts in other firms. So you'll see a lot of

mutual respect that operates within the big four band. In addition because of

this, you have lots of exit opportunities. There are consultants from each one of

these firms that are populating the globe, so there's a general respect for

the type of experience that you would have had when you were doing the work. However,

the exit opportunities were as for McKinsey, Bain, and BCG the focus was not

only on your industry but also on the toolkit that you developed. Here, the

focus is really on the project work that you did. So it's really important if you

decide to go into a consulting job with one of any of these firms that you

really focus on what types of industries and types of projects you're

working on, because not everything is created equal for the big four firms

especially when it comes to exit opportunities. In addition, we have access

to a large global alumni network, but because it's not as cohesive when you're

at the firm, you also don't see the same cohesiveness for networking when you

leave the firm. And then finally the interviews of these firms are very

rigorous. They're actually focused about 50% on fit, your

cultural fit with the firm, your willingness to be trained, your ability

to learn new things. They're also focused on math, but whereas the math is very

complicated at the top three firms often the math is very straightforward, in

the cases for these firms, and the cases are very business situation focused,

they're conversational, people are looking for you to have a good dialogue about

business and a general understanding about it. So again we'll cover that later

in a future series on case and fit interviews. For now if you have questions

about any of these firms, we have firm profiles on the website and we also have

plenty of content at managementconsulted.com.