Afternoon all, I am hoping to garner some advice on a my potential for a move into management consultancy. I have been a passive user of this forum for a short while and would appreciate the 'honest and to-the-point' feedback that abounds here. I have seen the honest and useful feedback posted to an individual in a similar position to myself on a previous discussion thread, and was hoping to spark similarly useful advice. I currently work in the a Defence sector delivering turnkey projects and managing teams to up to 40 individuals. Previously I spent nearly 7 years as an officer within the British Army, again leading, managing, administering teams of up to 50 in both operational and training environments. Furthermore I am coming towards the end of a flexible learning MBA (Mar 2014) at a respectable (but non London based) business school and have a 2:1 from a red brick university. Therefore my experience to date is largely majors on operational and project delivery, with a smattering of more corporate knowledge due to completing a variety of MBA assignments on my current employers on-going business challenges. If anyone is able to advise on my potential suitability based on this info, and advise on any particular organisations who may be worth targeting their time would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance, rsr

Hi rsr,Your skills and experience would certainly be valuable to a consultancy that operates in the defence sector. I am a consultant within defence and work with many ex Army officers. You need to consider whether you want to leverage your military experience and become a consultant in the defence sector, or if you want to make a clean break and become a generalist MC or focus on a different industry, in which case your experience would be less relevant.PWC, Deloitte, PA Consulting, KPMG, and LEK (there is likely more but these are the ones I have come across) all have a presence in defence. There is also many niche players that are great places to work and sometimes provide the really in depth defence knowledge to the big players. PA and PWC are bidding for the new DE&S GOCO.However consultants don't tend to offer project delivery roles, at least in defence. So without knowing the details of your commercial experience, you may be lacking skills in actual consultancy services. If you give some more details of your experience I'm sure others can give you some advice on the level you can expect to come in at.

this is also a reasonable reference to look at:http://news.top-consultant.com/guide_to_consulting_firms.aspx

Defence88, Many thanks for the info, very helpful. In response to your message; I would be keen to leverage my military experience and move to an organisation that works within the defence sector, though ideally in the long term perhaps broaden my horizons once I had gained suitable experience. Additionally the clustering of the defence sector in the south west would suit my current location. I'm aware of the organisations you mentioned and their activities within this sector, but was utilising the voluntary nature of this site to establish my suitability before I start networking/pestering individuals within these companies. I'm also thinking that for someone such as myself with no consulting experience, a larger organisation would provide a more formalised training programme which would be significantly beneficial. In relation to project delivery roles, this is where my experience lies, but I am very keen to move away from this and start gaining experience at a more strategic level. To date this is limited to providing management within my organisation with advice on strategic planning, optimising organisational design and culture change implementation.Again thank you for your advice and if you have anymore I'm all ears!george-tc - thanks for the link, i'll start working my way through that hefty pdf.