Management Consultant MBB Big4 etc etc etc
 

Hey guys,

I'm learning these days what the consulting landscape looks like in Singapore. I'm currently in the US doing my PhD study. After my undergrad in Singapore, I was in government sector for 3 years. I came to the US to further my study afterwards. I'm toying with the idea of coming back to Singapore or stay in the US for more experience.

Regarding the consulting jobs, I don't see any discussion or a bit of interest in local community here. I might be wrong. I checked the current salary thread, and didn't see much info for consulting jobs. I wondered if it's because all consultants from MBB never visit this site to post their salary or we don't have any info for their current market salary? OR consultants population in Singapore is very low?

I knew from my personal experience that MBB in China are now aggressively hiring PhD graduates in the US. I don't know much about Singapore though.

If you have any idea, I'd like to listen to yours.

Most MBB management associates are from international branded schools who already secured an offer before graduation, that's why you are not going to see much discussion online.

As for Big4 "management consulting", it's very different in SG compared to US. Over here their branding is not much different from entry auditors - more like sweatshop mass hires of average grads and ranked lower than even associate hires of local banks/GLC.

I see.

Yes, it's hard to find any information on consulting landscape in Singapore although it's plenty here in the States.

Thank you so much!

I was with MBB in Singapore. US MBA. Most of the ASEAN business is outside of Singapore. I.e. Indonesia can be 50% of the region's revenue. So you fly out on Monday and return Friday, and repeat the cycle.

What specifically would you like to know? Pay is about 80% of US scale.

I'd like to know more about the workload and exit options. Can I PM you?

Seems you don't have an account.

Former consultant here. European MBA. Why don't you post your questions here so everyone can benefit...

Well, first I don’t see much of the discussion on Singapore consulting here. So I thought it’s not very public here in Singapore.

My understanding is McKinsey first opened their SEA office in Indonesia and later spread to other regions. Considering the heavy workload nature of the region, Singapore doesn’t seem to have much of the management consulting to do (highly educated, highly efficient working policy in place, etc etc, I’m not talking about auditing.) whereas you can have so many management policy in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, or Philippines. They still have so many rooms to grow like business expansion, start up companies, M&A etc etc etc.

Bottom line is Singapore is a developed country, and almost saturated with all the working policy in place. All others are still developing. So management consulting would be more beneficial to them rather than in Singapore. I’m not taking a swipe at other regions. I’m being realistic about what’s going on in the region. Based on that perception (correct me if I’m wrong.)

1. I venture to guess if there would be more recruitment of consultants in those countries in near future, Thailand, Malaysia or maybe in Vietnam (I saw one flyer consulting recruitment for Vietnamese office at my school campus.) phasing out Singapore office (reduction) and gradually going upwards ?

2. Since you all are ex MBB consultants in Singapore, can you share your travelling schedule? It depends on your project or which region you travel the most?

3. You said 80% of the US pay scale (I don’t know who is who, all are unregistered here). For e.g., It is USD 100k in the US, so it would be USD 80k in Singapore. Converting to SGD, it would be ~ SGD100k?

4. Since you all are ex-consultants, would you mind sharing why you decided to switch to other professions?

If any of you could shed some lights on your experience and where you are heading now, that would be really appreciated.

I am the ex-MBB US MBA posting above.

Your point re: Singapore is valid. In ASEAN countries, demand for management and strategy consulting tends to be the inverse of the state of market and human resource development. Less developed countries tend to be the bigger markets. Keep in mind also that many MNCs in Singapore, though they are Asia / ASEAN HQs, get their direction from US / Europe and thus have little discretion (or budget) for strategy engagements of their own. So, much of the revenue is from locally-born businesses and govs, and these tend to be from Indonesia, Thai, Malaysia, Phil, etc.

Major client industries are Financial Service (by far), Oil & Gas and Telecom. There are some sprinkles of Retail, Manufacturing and Public Sector/Gov. Why FS is by far the largest? This is mainly driven by # of clients who can afford an MBB rate. When there are many potential clients, you can fill a revenue pipeline. When your client base is smaller (fewer telcos vs. banks in a typical country), your revenue gets lumpier.

Yes, McK (and BCG) got their start in ASEAN doing Oil & Gas in Indonesia back in 1995-6. Bain joined the scene much later.

A PhD is valued by MBB. But I believe McK values it more, and you may find more PhDs at McK. McK also invests more in economics think tanks like MGI than BCG and Bain do, if that kind of work appeals to you. I think they want to speak at Davos more than the rest :)

Travel schedule varies according to firm's staffing model and your specific client / engagement situation. McK in general is a more global firm than BCG or Bain. The more global the firm is, the likelier long travels (6 hours+) are. BCG in ASEAN tends to focus solely on regional clients and build stronger local roots, so your travels are not long (2-3 hours max). YMMV, but if you are an expat consultant from US wanting a 1-2 year stint in Asia, McK model works for you since you have a built-in chance to rotate back to home. If you are a local, perhaps BCG model is more to your liking. Also, some clients are more flexible, others demand you to work at their sites (and have strict control over client data).

Regarding MNC pay in Singapore, what I tend to see is a range of 75-80% of US comp structure. This includes MBB. Pay is very much related to client hourly charging, and the hourly rates in ASEAN are about 80% of US rates. I am now at a US tech MNC and my bonus structure is pegged at 75% of my US colleague.

Mind you that you have to work harder for that 80% than your US colleagues do. Even at only 80% of US rates, MBB rates are considered very high by ASEAN clients, so the tendency is to over-scope engagements for the amount of revenue we are getting in order to win business. This means overwork as large scopes are executed by fewer consultants. Unfortunately, this is a typical situation for frontier offices, whether it be ASEAN, South America, or Africa.

Why I switched? The paragraph above is some of the answer, although for me it's not the entire picture. On the whole, I enjoy my time at MBB, enough to stay for 5 years. I like the colleagues and the client works. I simply found an opportunity outside of it that I like as much (if not more) and provides me with an equivalent financial benefit.

Thank you so much for your insight.
I'd appreciate it. :)

Here in the US, most of the consultants went to PE after several years of consulting. I asked the exit option in Singapore, not because of commitment issue, rather a viable option if things don't work out.

Exit options from MBB are varied. In ASEAN, there are the family-owned conglomerates, MNCs of all kinds, banks, and yes PEs. I see many of my ex-colleagues went to local conglomerates. This is interesting since my gut instinct told me that most would go to US MNCs. It turns out that for the same pay, the conglomerates give them higher positions and responsibilities, so that is a definite draw.

PEs are not (yet) a prominent fixture of the capital market in Southeast Asia. Unlike in the US where the VC/PE market has a balance of techies, ex MBBs and ex IBs, in Singapore my sense is it is dominated by ex IBs. This probably has to do with the fact that most of the deals so far are later-stage or mature deals where the emphasis is in "doing the deal"... vs. early-stage investments where you have a better chance to shape the business. This may change given the wave of tech startups that have been coming to the scene in the last 1-2 years.

Can anyone shed some light on the smaller players like the boutique firms??

My sense is the smaller consulting outfits don't survive as well in the current climate. E.g., Monitor was eventually bought by Deloitte after years of resisting the overture. Roland Berger tried to expand in Southeast Asia but eventually pulled back from some market they were trying out. Others try to serve Southeast Asia via remote control, but without presence here, find it hard to win business.

MBBs can weather storms better because they are essentially generalist firms. They serve pretty much everyone that wants their service and can pay their rates. So when one industry is in downturn, they can serve others. Boutiques that choose only certain industries to cater to must do so carefully because focusing on the wrong verticals means a dry pipeline. Oliver Wyman is the only one I know that's been pretty successful as a rather large "boutique". This is because they choose to concentrate on Financial Service sector... which is fast becoming a crowded place.

Oliver Wyman is part of M&M, so they aren't really boutique per se as they generate a lot of cross businesses from other M&M lines like Mercer, Carpenter and Marsh that tend to cater to a broad base of industries.

Indees, this strengthens the assertion that smaller outfits find it hard to survive in the long term. OW needs an internal ecosystem in order to fluorish.

am i right to say that it will be better to work in london or usa if one was to work in a smaller consulting firm rather than sg?

My sense is this is true for just about any consulting firms, not just smaller ones.

The market for strategy consulting in US / EU is larger because there are more clients who can pay for the service. The clients understand better the value of C-level consulting; I have met clients in ASEAN who don't understand why they have to pay for expert advice.

On the blocking-and-tackling of consulting, there are simply more data tracked that makes it easier to do analysis, unlike here in ASEAN (which can be frustrating... how can I value a market when I cannot confidently assume the # of potential users?)

The Western culture places more emphasis on work-life balance; when I was at MBB, my colleagues from other parts of the world often mentioned that I did the work of two consultants.

And there are plenty exit options should you decide to do something else. I.e., pay gap with industry pay is not as big as it is here.

BUT beware of the glass ceiling for foreigners in the Western world. It's less these days but it's still there. I know that several of my fellow b-school alumni who are non native speaker of English and worked in the US in consulting were dismissed because they spoke English with non-native accent. In their words, "you could not create a bond with your clients".

That is the "official" explanation given by the consulting industry. The reality though is that institutional ownership structure and board composition are very different in ASEAN compared to US/EU and this in turn present rather different market dynamics.

I was in this industry for many years serving the European and Asian markets as well. The reality is that most consultancies were charging outrageous amounts for relatively simple work that was pretty turnkey once you figured out the methodology initially.

As ownership tends to be disperse and separation of powers between directors is more entrenched in US/EU governance, the decision makers were more inclined to pay whatever amounts consultants asked for as long as it is a reputable third party with an independent opinion which they can sell to all the shareholders.

My managing partner has always remarked privately that we were more in the insurance business than a consulting one. Our role was really to provide insurance to directors and executives that what they were doing was in line with industry best practices and any strategy screw up must by definition be due to 'unforeseen circumstances' rather than their own incompetency.

ASEAN businesses on the other hand are far more owner driven and usually have a government entity, individual or a group of strongmen dictating the running of the business. Board and excos are more formality and everyone knows who exactly the real apex decision maker is. Minority shareholders either accept and go along with the system or exit their positions. There really is nothing much they can do to influence any key strategic decision.

Under such context, these dominant owners naturally are not inclined to overpay huge amounts for supposed expert advise to validate what internally they have already decided on. The usual tactic these guys deploy is to invite multiple consultancies to the tender process, dangle a potential contract carrot to keep them coming back for engagement, pick up a few latest industry buzz words and trends from their presentations and either subsequently dump them or squeeze project terms when they feel confident enough.

I would view Western and ASEAN more as a different competitive landscape rather than there is some sort of inherent lack of intelligence/sophistication in ASEAN business executives that cause them not to recognize the value of paying for "expert advice".

It's not everyday that my words are taken as an official explanation. Thank you. :)

Kidding aside, I do see that some (not all) conglomerate business owners don't quite understand the need to pay for management consulting. I see this attitude mostly among the founders. Perhaps it is a generation gap, as many of their sons and daughters that are now running the business are more welcoming to us.

As for outrageous amounts of consulting fees, I think both parties bear the responsibility for it because it takes two to tango. MBB, the place I worked for included, do on occasions make a mountain of a problem out of a mole hill... on the initial proposal. But we are always open to negotiate on work scope so long as it still allows us to work towards a proper recommendation.

On your comment re: consulting as an insurance business, I concur. True story: we were once retained by a major bank in a neighboring country to help assess a rather large loan request... by providing a perspective on the business that the loan was intended for. This is puzzling because a major bank should be able to review this on its own. It turns out that it is not a question of capability, but rather one of integrity. Apparently, the bank did not trust its own loan review team for fear they could be influenced (read: bribed) by stakeholders. In their mind, since MBB consultants are paid high salaries, we are less likely to engage in shady side deals.

Thank you very much you guys for very insightful discussion.

Regarding the glass ceiling for foreigners in the States, I do agree that it exists. I also like to share my perspective on this one. Since the majority of the population in the States speak English and 70% of them are Caucasians, it’s inevitable that one who can speak their language and understand their intrinsic cultural norms, it’d always will be the case that glass ceiling exists for minority professionals. But most are happy with what they’ve got here. Hispanic Americans who earn 80k will take the job even if there’s a glass ceiling. There are also White Americans who get stuck at 30k job albeit they have no glass ceiling?

One user mentioned that since the guy who doesn’t have a native accent, it’s hard to build bonds with their clients and eventually let go. I wondered if that’s the case, would there be a possibility that MBB will staff more of their consultants in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia in near future? No Singaporeans, to my personal experience, speaks Thai, Malay, Indonesian fluently while majority of the projects tend to localize in those regions.

MBB in general is recognized by presence of those high achievers in their workforce. The staffing model, in general, is European offices will staff more of their local with the US education, especially from Ivy and Top ones.

Well, I know that one MBB office in a neighboring country outside of Singapore has expanded their consulting staff 5X in the last 7-8 years, mostly on the junior levels.

I think that Singapore will always have the largest management consultant pool in the region... they are the net exporter of talents for engagements in neighboring countries. The foreign consultants are teamed with local staffs to facilitate better communications.

Top talents like to live in Singapore (vs. Manila, Jakarta, Bangkok, KL) for obvious personal and familial reasons. But whereas 10 years ago, the Singapore talent pool was perhaps as large as those in its neighbors combined, the gap is not as large these days.

I used to run recruiting for MBB in SEA. Yes, we do recruit locally for analyst level as best as we can. From schools like NUS (and NTU to a much smaller extent) in Singapore; Ateneo (and UPH to a much smaller extent) in the Phils; ITB (and Univ of Indonesia to a much smaller extent) in Jakarta, etc. But the yield we were getting out of this channel was typically very low. In a recruiting season, we were lucky to get 1-2 per country put of 300-500 applicants per country. And these applicants were already cherry-picked based on academic and extracurricular measures.

For US/EU graduates, the focus is about 15-20 schools. These are the usual suspects. The 8 Ivies in the US plus MIT and Stanford. The public Ivies in the US (Berkeley, Michigan, North Carolina, Virginia). Oxbridge, INSEAD, LSE, Imperial College. These are the same schools that MBB-sponsored analysts get their MBAs from.

For ANZ, we don't typically go to ANZ for recruitment because they are our neighbors and have their own needs to fulfill. I.e., we don't want to poach their candidates. But if there are candidates over there that are interested in SEA, the ANZ offices will simply refer them to us.

Hi, between Mckinsey's Consultant - Business Technology and Bain's Associate Consultant. Which is a better opportunity?

I'd pick Bain AC. I question McKinsey's commitment to their Business Technology practice (BTO and subsequent incarnation)... they have a hard time differentiating from the likes of Accenture / Deloitte / EY while still wanting to charge higher rates. Perhaps this explains why it's been on and off for the last 10-15 years.

But the more important question is what you want to do in your career? This should be an important driver in your decision.

I realised that Business Technology is actually a functional practice so perhaps not so much of a real consultant per se. I guess Bain's Associate Consultant offers more exposure in terms of the various industries coverage and the opportunity to engage in multiple types of functional practices along the way.

What I really hope to achieve is a career where I can work alongside the most brilliant minds like the fellow consultants, CEOs, CFOs and really pick their brain to help hone my business acumen and both soft and hard skills and offers me lots of opportunities for growth.

Then it's a rather obvious choice between the two, isn"t it? :)

I wonder what was it that causes the yield from local uni to be so low? was it that the quality of the candidates did not meet the expectations?

Can you shed some light on the interview process? I was wondering if interviews for positions that are from functional departments any different from a real consulting position

I am responding as a new poster but.

In my view, MBB just tends to be very prestige conscious. Somehow, they seem stuck in this mentality that graduates from overseas universities in the US/UK are infinitely better than those from local unis.

I know a couple of pretty crappy students who went to the US who got into MBB as compared to their counterparts from local unis who got dinged locally. How would I know? Let's just say that a good number of the best applicants are from the same top few JCs, and it's well known in these places who is good and not so good.

But I guess that's life.. If you're rich and can afford to go overseas, it gives off the impression that you're "better". Whether or not that's true, I have my doubts.

What I am about to say is not an exhaustive list of reasons for the low yield of MBB local recruitment effort, but simply an observation.

The recruiting at MBB is rather unique in that it employs mainly case interviews... where we put a candidate in a situation where s/he needs to assess 1-2 business issues in a short amount of time. Each interview is an interactive process over the course of 45-60 minutes designed to test several skillsets that are important in the strategy consulting world; e.g., understanding business concepts, ability to think logically, intellectual curiosity, and composure in client situations. In my observation, local grads don't perform comparatively well in the last two. I have met candidates that have very high GPAs and yet appear to be intellectually lazy; they don't prod and question the interviewers (which is key to be able to "solve" the problem) when they are stuck in the interview. They seldom take the initiative and are more reactive. Perhaps they want to solve the problem by themselves. But failing to progress in problem solving in turn destroys their confidence and they become flustered in the interview.

One thing to understand is that almost no one is a natural at case interviews, and that you need to have QUALITY practice in order to succeed at the interviews. This is perhaps what is lacking with local grads. They can practice with their fellow students but that does not replicate the actual case interview experience well enough. The advantage of US/EU grads from our target schools (and we only focus on the top schools) is they can practice with MBA students who were once MBB consultants themselves.

As for the underlying quality of the candidates, this is harder to assess. We can only gauge this via the interviews... and a typical candidate will have seen about 5-6 of our consulting staff members across 3-4 rounds before s/he gets hired. Can an otherwise good candidate fall through the crack by failing in the early interview rounds? Very possible, nothing is perfect. But with this process, while we may not hire the "best" candidates all the time, we still get them most of the time.

Having been inside one of these firms, it's true that they are brand conscious. How else can they justify charging 150-200 us$ for a junior consultant fresh grad or 1 year out of uni? If your cv reads MIT, Harvard, Yale, etc, it's more justifiable.

I agree with the recruiter post. First filter is CV (school and GPA). Second filter is interview. You pass the case interviews, you are in. Don't pass, you're out. Few of my ex colleagues are rich, most 90% are middle class ppl. Of course there are some kids of prominent people, but they too must pass the interviews.

Hi, may I ask how much is the ballpark salary for an experienced hire with 3 yrs of experience? From what I read, it's around S$90k and bonus S$10k. Is it around there?

Too low.

It should be 120-150k, bonus 40k +/-

Experienced hire from consulting or career changer? If the latter, you could start out at entry level and the comp first mentioned would be right.

Hi Sam, it's a career change from Corporate Finance at a MNC. I will be taking a pay cut to all-in of S$100k. But I guess the consulting experience will be invaluable.

how many years of working experience do you have?

3 years 2 mths

Which management consulting firm is this? How come their offer is so ridiculously low? And you even bother to entertain them...

What do they offer besides the prestige and 'valuable' experience of being a consultant?

I think you forgot two schools in that league man - Duke University and University of Chicago.

So is the offer from MBB or Big4?

These 2 groups are heaven and earth, you need to be more specific. Nobody lumps them together as etc.

If it's MBB pay cut might be worth it, but personally I won't take up. If it's Big 4, I will just tell them to get lost honestly.

Don't be so delusional. Ivy League or not. 3 years experience is not going to command mid 100k salaries. This is only reserved for the cream of the crop that get into the pure play strategy consultancies. And this is if you are exceptional.

100 all in sounds average at best.

This is my advice. Don't let others make you look like a fool in the market with strongly misguided information.