With your friend’s experience and background, he is coming in most likely as a Director position, with the hope that he will be able to bring in new business and generate revenue to someday be considered for partner. At that level, the promotions and ongoings are much more complex and less transparent as most big 4 professionals are in the sub 30 yrs old group who left after a few years.
I’ll give my perspective looking up, but just my perspective. I was home grown in the big 4 consulting world and after 8 years, I left as a Manager. There’s a big difference between the consulting side of the business and the audit side, so keep that in mind when you hear people describe their experience. There is also a big difference between Directors on the Partner track, and Directors who are going to be lifetime Directors (they basically are very strong managers who are able to manage and deliver a project, but typically do not sell).
The consulting side is primarily driven by two revenue streams – one is audit support and additional consulting revenue that is won through external audit connections. The other side is the “true” consulting, where the revenue is generated by partners who are considered thought leaders in a particular area and are sought out for projects either by external counsel and/or client/company contacts.
When you come in as a Director at that level, the assumption is that you have some sort of expertise that is currently in demand. The consulting world has an everchanging hot topic that will generate large revenue, but may decline as corporations eventually bring that function in house, or consultants branch off and start doing their own consulting on the side for lower hourly rates. As such, to stay ahead of the game, Directors and Partners are constantly figuring out new rules and regulations and its impact to their clients, and how best to advise clients on how to operationalize changes to maintain compliance. The term thought leadership is always prevalent, and making speeches for conferences and CPE learning events is standard fare.
I’ve seen some very high level experienced Directors come in and completely bomb out. The environment is different because the core of what you need to do is sell. Most experienced hires are smart guys with a boatload of experience, but when it comes time to actually sell services at $500+/hour, it’s not as easy. However, I’ve also seen a lot of experienced hires come in and succeed simply because they were an expert at their prior company in a particular niche area, and other companies in that particular industry are now going through the same problem and are itching to hear how the director’s former company handled the same issue. In a way, consulting is kind of like an informal spying game – I have experience at XYZ company, hire me and I’ll tell you how we did things there. Or, I’m consulting for 5 different companies, and based on my experience of looking at how all 5 companies do things, I think the best way to do things is ______.
I think the biggest factors for success really depends on the partner that your friend will be working with, their ability to network internally within the firm to identify other partners who come across opportunities that relate to their expertise, and the go-getter attitude of establishing themselves a strong external network of clients who trust their advice. The job is not easy and there’s a whole labyrinth to figure out all of the big 4’s internal policies and procedures. These policies and procedures are all designed to mitigate the firm’s risk, but it is a painstaking ordeal just to even set up a client, let alone produce an engagement letter that legal will approve of (assuming they’re able to land their own clients)
This doesn’t even take into account the big 4 consulting lifestyle, which means a lot of travel, long work weeks (varies by project/client/partner), unpredictability of schedule, and overall impact on personal life.
