I’m 2 years out of MBB and considering a move to a FAANG corporate strategy role. My worry? During interviews, they keep probing my ability to drive actual execution versus just making pretty slides. For those who made this jump: what specific skills or experiences did you emphasize to demonstrate operational credibility? How do you reframe consulting experience when they’re skeptical about hands-on implementation?
lol good luck. corps strat teams love ex-consultants…to do their damn slides. truth is you WONT do real execution - thats what PMs are for. your value is in taking ambiguous exec bs and making pretty decks. lean into that, but tell them you ‘deeply understand operational constraints’ with a straight face.
proof? you don’t. just find the 1 time you touched a P&L during your consulting gig and inflate it to sound like you personally implemented SAP across 3 continents. bonus points if you can namedrop stakeholders who ‘championed your hands-on approach’ (read: cc’d you on emails)
following! in same boat but only 1 yr at T2 consulting. does getting lean six sigma cert help? or maybe volunteering for ops projects internally? pls share any tips!
Focus on moments where you owned outcomes beyond analysis. Did you shepherd a recommendation through implementation? Even limited exposure to change management or working with client ops teams counts. Quantify how your work translated to measurable business impact - revenue uplift, process efficiencies, etc. Frame consulting as seeing multiple implementations, allowing you to pattern-match solutions.
When I moved to a gaming co’s strat team, I made sure to prep 3 ‘here’s what happened after my rec’ stories. Like that time my cost optimization model actually got implemented across 50 stores - brought actual numbers showing maintenance savings. They stopped asking about PowerPoint after that.
Analysis of 23 recent transitions shows emphasizing concrete metrics moves the needle: 68% of successful candidates quantified their impact beyond slide creation vs 22% of rejected candidates. Identify 2-3 projects where you tracked outcomes post-engagement, even if through client follow-ups post-exit.