[cbee]

Originally Posted by fx10

I guess it really depends on which consultancy firm you are talking about. Generally the better ones like Mercer, Towers it should be relatively easy to make a switch to a junior role in C&B in-house as long as you clock up some 2-3 yrs of experience since most leading MNCs use them & they are quite comfortable with your experience.

Some of the less prestigious ones like Hay, Hewitt, HRBS you might need to moderate your salary expectations a little as most of the skillset portability is not too good with inhouse roles & they might have reservations.

As for the smaller boutiques like Alexander, Carrots etc. it would be hard pressed to get a decent role in leading MNCs unless you start from scratch at entry level as their focus is too narrow.

As someone who started in consulting for some 5 years followed by another 7+ years corporate since then, I would say the biggest difference between consulting & in-house roles is the need to get your hands dirty, implement & deal with the various ops issues.

Highly valued traits like excel, presentation skills in consulting become muted, i.e. as long as you have some basic decent competency, it will be good enough. Instead the focus shifts to customer service, corporate politics, HRIS and the ability to find the optimal mix between coaxing, persuading & coercing the line to get them to help you.

Most consultants find the first few years of transition to corporate roles tough as they become implementers of the plans they used to design (design will usually be project managed by HQ & there is little involvement for a junior-mid level C&B person).. This means chasing / begging your BPs to adhere to deadlines, sitting down going through line by line with some ah pek ops manager, answering queries from many lower level folks on the calculations, liasing with HRIS, payroll & shared service to correct process errors etc.

My observations is that the earlier someone from consulting moves to in-house C&B, the higher the chances of success. If not persevere until you chalk up >10 years of consulting experience, many MNCs will then be willing to hire such seasoned pros at an advisory or COE role. Worst IMO are those 5-8yrs exp, too late to start from scratch & not senior enough to get a middle manager role.

Thanks for sharing that much information.

Seems to me like a junior-level switch from consulting to in-house would give the incumbent a lot more administrative/operational responsibilities as opposed to C&B responsibilities. Understandable, seeing that there has to be people doing all the implementation work and you can't exactly entrust such role to HR people who have no prior exposure to C&B.

Considering that you have been in both in-house and consulting, is the work-life balance better in in-house as compared to consulting? Which do you see have more prospects and transferable experience? My guess would be in-house, seeing that if you have consulting experience, you really can only switch from consulting house to consulting house, but prior C&B experience in an MNC would mean that your experience would be valued across most MNCs.