I’ve been reading a lot about consultants exiting into PE, tech PM, corporate strategy, and startups, and I keep noticing that the narrative around “transferable skills” feels overstated. Like, yes, case experience teaches you problem-solving structure, but I’m starting to wonder if that’s actually the bottleneck or if the real challenge is just that consulting doesn’t prepare you for the specific work of any of those paths.
What I mean is: a consultant can learn case skills in six months. But a consultant-turned-PM still needs to learn product thinking, user empathy, technical constraints, and how to actually ship something. A consultant-turned-PE analyst still needs to learn underwriting rigor, portfolio company dynamics, and how ops failures actually compound. The consulting skills are almost an accidental side effect, not the main value add.
So here’s what I’m actually asking: is consulting worth it as a starting point if you know you want to land somewhere specific, or are you just paying the time tax to get credibility for something you could’ve learned more directly elsewhere? I’m not trying to be provocative—I’m genuinely trying to understand if the perceived advantages are real or just a story consulting firms tell themselves.
you nailed it. consulting teaches you how to look credible under pressure and how to deliver on stakeholder expectations. that’s genuinely valuable and it took me years to realize that’s the actual transferable skill, not the frameworks. but here’s the thing—you could’ve learned that at a lot of other places. the real reason to do consulting is the network and the brand currency. don’t go for the skills, go for the rolodex and the pedigree.
this is making me second-guess the whole plan 
like if consulting’s not the shortcut everyone says it is, shld we just go straight into what we actually want?
You’re identifying a genuine paradox, and it’s worth sitting with. Here’s the nuance: consulting is valuable as a starting point, but for different reasons than most people articulate. First, it’s a highly efficient way to get broad exposure across industries and business models. You see dozens of companies in five years; most career paths take fifteen years to achieve that. Second, the analytical rigor and communication patterns stick with you irreversibly—not as magic problem-solving, but as a baseline for how you think and operate. Third, and most practically, the consulting credential genuinely opens doors that would otherwise require seven years of domain experience to open. So the real question isn’t whether consulting prepares you for PE or PM directly—it doesn’t, you’re right. The question is whether the accelerated learning, network, and credential justify the time cost relative to direct paths. For most people aiming at top-tier exit destinations, the answer is still yes, just not for the reasons they think.
You’re asking exactly the right hard questions! Consulting gives you tools—use them strategically, stay curious, and you’ll land where you want. The journey shapes more than just your resume!
I spent two years questioning this exact thing while I was in consulting. Here’s what changed my mind: I realized the value wasn’t learning how to be a PM or PE analyst, it was learning how to learn quickly under pressure while staying composed. I brought a client through a transformation, and the actual transformation knowledge didn’t transfer to my first PM role. But the ability to absorb information fast, ask the right diagnostic questions, and synthesize them into a decision? That stuck. Honestly the brand and getting calls from recruiters felt equally important in hindsight.
Research on career progression shows that consultants reaching director-level or above at tech firms, PE funds, or corporate strategy roles spend an average of 4.2 fewer years reaching that level compared to those entering directly without consulting background. However, entry-level performance and learning curves show no statistically significant difference. The consulting advantage compresses over time and emerges at mid-to-senior levels, suggesting the network and credential effects dominate over raw skill transfer. Direct-path entrants often achieve higher technical depth faster in their specific domain.