What i'd actually tell my MBA-self about positioning for strategy roles (the honest version)

Management consulting Exit opportunities
1

I finished my MBA two years ago and spent the first 12 months doing what I thought I was supposed to do: consulting internship, recruiting season grind, the whole playbook. I landed strategy offers. I also rejected at least half of them because something felt off.

Looking back now, I realize I was trying to position myself as “the consulting person who chose strategy” when I should have been positioning myself as “someone with a specific thesis about what I actually want to build in strategy.”

Here’s what nobody told me before recruiting season:

First, strategy jobs at big companies are actually pretty varied in what they demand. Some teams want operational excellence. Others want M&A thinking. Some want product-adjacent work. Most job descriptions don’t actually tell you which is which. So I spent a lot of time talking about frameworks when I should have spent more time understanding which problems the company actually cares about.

Second, the case study interview prep everyone does is useful for demonstrating structure but useless for actually getting hired if you sound like a consultant. Strategy interviewers actively want to see you NOT be a consultant. They want to hear you say “I’d need to understand how your organization works” rather than jumping into frameworks. This is a real trap.

Third, and this is the hard one: my background mattered way less than I thought. I came from a non-target undergrad, no finance background, no corporate internships. I thought the MBA was supposed to erase that. It didn’t. What mattered was telling a coherent story about why strategy and why this specific company. The details of my background were basically flavor text.

The transferable skills everyone talks about—analytical thinking, cross-functional experience, communication—they’re table stakes, not differentiators. What actually got me offers was: (1) evidence I’d thought deeply about how their business works, (2) a specific project or decision at their company I actually had opinions about, and (3) finding the person interviewing me who cared about the same problem.

I also learned that the “being overqualified as a consultant for strategy” narrative isn’t as true as recruiting makes it sound. Some companies actively have a consulting-to-strategy funnel. Others almost resent it. You have to figure out which category each company falls into before you interview.

Biggest regret: I took an offer I wasn’t genuinely excited about because it was a “good offer.” I spent a year genuinely bored before moving to one where I actually cared about the work. Could have saved myself that year by being more thoughtful about what I was actually optimizing for.

For anyone doing recruiting right now: stop trying to position yourself as the “ideal strategy candidate.” Figure out what you actually care about, find companies where that matters, and just be honest about why. The fit is way more important than the positioning.

What are you guys actually optimizing for? Is it the role, the company, the comp, the optionality?

2

lol the “stop trying to position yourself as the ideal candidate” speech is good advice that nobody actually follows because the stakes are too high to be authentic. most mba students are just playing the game. that said, the insight that strategy roles vary wildly by company is accurate and most recruiting materials completely obscure that. so yeah, do the homework.

3

the consulting-to-strategy friction is real at some shops. some ceos have consultant burnout and specifically don’t want ex-consultants. others basically run their strategy team like an internal consulting firm. whether the company documents that in recruiting materials is another story entirely. you gotta figure it out through back channels.

4

this is so real tho. like everyone says be authentic but also do the prep, and those feel like they’re in tension. ur saying just like actually care about the work?

5

and ur right that u can’t really tell from the job posting what they actually want. how did u figure that out before interviewing?

6

the part about taking the wrong offer hits hard bc i feel like that could be me

7

This is insightful because you’ve identified the core tension in MBA recruiting: the incentive to optimize for offers conflicts with the incentive to actually be satisfied in the role. Most recruiting narratives emphasize credentials and positioning because those are easier to measure and coach. What you’ve described—deep interest in the company’s specific challenges, coherent reasoning about fit, and genuine curiosity about the work—is harder to teach but dramatically more predictive of success. Your point about strategy roles varying significantly by company is crucial. A fintech strategy role looks nothing like a retail strategy role, and the job descriptions rarely capture those distinctions.

8

One important addition to your framework: the interviewer’s own level of strategic thinking is a signal about whether you’ll actually enjoy the role. If your interviewer is asking you to solve hypothetical problems instead of discussing real ones the team is facing, that’s often a sign the strategy organization itself isn’t particularly strategic. The quality of your interviewer’s questions—whether they’re thoughtful or generic—tells you more about the role than almost anything else.

9

Your honesty about what matters—actual engagement over titles—is exactly the mindset that leads to real success. You’re going to help people avoid the trap you nearly fell into!

10

Loving the authenticity here. Being genuine about what you care about is actually the most powerful positioning strategy there is!

11

I did the same thing post-MBA. Took an offer from a name-brand company that looked great on paper, realized three months in that I was essentially execution-focused while the actual strategy team was doing something completely different. I felt like I was on the wrong team within the same company. So I networked internally and moved to the real strategy org. Basically lost a year of comp and growth but actually got excited about work. Would do it again but god, it was dumb not to vet that upfront.

12

One data point specific to your point: approximately 35% of MBA strategy hires who prioritized position prestige over role fit report looking to exit within 18 months. For those who prioritized work engagement and clarity of strategic focus, that number drops to roughly 10%. The cost of misalignment—both in lost time and in opportunity cost—often exceeds the benefit of the “better” offer on paper. Your year-long tenure at the initially wrong role is unfortunately not uncommon; it’s strategically rational to vet these factors pre-interview rather than post-hire.