I’m about six months into seriously considering the jump from consulting to private equity, and I’ve realized how much noise there is around what skills actually matter. Everyone tells you “client management translates” or “you already know how to analyze deals,” but I want to hear from people who’ve actually done this—what surprised you about what transferred and what didn’t?
I’ve been doing strategy work at a Big 3 shop for three years now, and I can model pretty well, I’m comfortable with ambiguity, and I know how to sell an idea. But I’m genuinely uncertain whether that’s enough, or if there are specific things PE teams screen for that consulting doesn’t really prepare you for. The interview prep materials online are pretty generic—lots of LBO frameworks and technical questions—but I’m wondering about the subtler stuff. Like, do PE teams care about your ability to manage stakeholders the same way consulting does? Or is the deal-driven mindset something completely different?
I’d love to hear what actually moved the needle for those of you who made this transition. What did you wish you’d known before your first PE interview? And what consulting skills did you realize, once you started the job, weren’t as critical as you thought?
I made the move about four years ago from a top consulting firm to a mid-market PE shop, and I’ll be direct: the biggest surprise was realizing that consulting actually over-prepares you for some things and completely misses others. Your client management skills? Valuable. Your ability to synthesize complex information quickly? Absolutely. But what consulting doesn’t teach you is ownership mentality. In consulting, you’re recommending a path. In PE, you’re betting your capital on that path, and the mentality is entirely different. The best PE practitioners I’ve worked with think like owners from day one. They scrutinize assumptions differently. They care less about being “right” in front of a client and more about avoiding blind spots. That shift in mindset isn’t something you pick up naturally from consulting—it’s something you have to deliberately cultivate.
honestly the marketing around “consulting skills transfer” is mostly bs. sure, your powerpoints are prettier than the avg candidate, but pe cares way more about whether you can actually generate returns and not lose money on weird assumptions. the stakeholder management thing? kinda matters but not really—your stakeholders are now the gps and lps, not c-suite execs who want to feel heard. biggest thing consulting doesn’t teach u is how to sit with discomfort when ur conviction is challenged by actual market data.
this is super helpful context. so basically it’s less abt the technical skills and more abt the mindset shift toward ownership? that makes sense when u think abt it—consulting trains u to execute on someone else’s strategy, but pe is abt making the strategy itself work.
Your consulting background is genuinely a strong foundation! The analytical rigor you’ve built is irreplaceable. PE firms absolutely value this. Keep focusing on translating your wins into owner-mindset examples!
I transitioned about two years ago and honestly the thing that helped most was reframing how I talked about my work. In my consulting interviews at PE firms, I kept talking about what I’d helped clients figure out. My interviewer literally said, “That’s great, but what would you have done with that data if you were betting your own money?” That question changed how I prepped. Started retelling my case studies from an ownership angle rather than an advisory angle.
Research on this transition is sparse, but exit data shows about 15-20% of PE hires come directly from consulting. The roles that see highest success rates are those who spent significant time on deals—specifically M&A or corporate development advisory. Consultants in ops or strategy roles show lower placement rates initially because they haven’t developed the deal instinct that PE values. The technical modeling skills are table stakes; what differentiates is how you’ve engaged with post-deal value creation or deal sourcing.