If you're considering joining an MBB firm and have a business background, chances are that you've come across investment banking. In the past, these two industries were the top career choices for competitive students who wanted a steep learning curve, a high starting salary, and a fast career progression. Data from Harvard Business School reveals that more than 50% of the graduates from their 2022 class joins finance or consulting roles (finance also includes corporate finance, PE, VC, and others in this definition):

If you're thinking about focusing on corporate finance or private equity work in your consulting career, the differences to investment banking, especially M&A, can be relatively small. On the other hand, if you're more of a generalist consultant (e.g., focusing on corporate strategy, operational excellence, or digitalization), the job get's extremely diverse extremely quickly. 

The decision between the two industries basically comes down to personal preference, and this is just our view on the two industries based on first-hand experience. In consulting, you get to work directly with clients from day one. In investment banking, you hardly get to see clients as a junior colleague. Moreover, consulting offers you the opportunity to explore many different industries and functions. In one project, you may be improving the OPEX at a silver mine in Australia, while in another project, you may be working on a big pharma merger in London. In investment banking, your tasks are much more streamlined to your actual function — if you're in M&A, well, you are doing M&A. Consulting also offers you more opportunities to travel and work abroad, as you're usually located where your client is. In investment banking you also get to travel, but only at a later stage in your career.

The everyday work environment and culture can also be quite different when comparing consulting and investment banking. Investment banking is known for its rough environment. What do we mean by rough? Very direct and often hostile language and pinpointed communication without much fluff. Of course, this image has has also been driven by movies like Wall Street or The Wolf of Wall Street and has changed a lot in the past years. However, some parts of the culture still remain. On the other hand, the communication in consulting is usually not as rough and direct. Upward and downward feedback is part of the consulting DNA and people who are either offensive or use foul language are quickly penalized when it comes to promotions. However, you can also get the investment banking working environment in consulting as many former investment bankers make the shift to consulting. And within those subgroups of former bankers that usually focus on M&A or Private Equity you can have the investment banking work environment. And as you pick and choose your projects and thus the people you work with, you have the choice on what kind of work environment you would like to have. 

Related to compensation is the lifestyle question. In consulting, you typically travel to the client on Monday, work hard until Thursday, and then head back home. Fridays are usually relaxed (if there's no SteerCo on Monday...). Generally (if your project doesn't explode), there's no weekend work in consulting — it's actually frowned upon by partners (our guess is that they also want to see their family every now and then). Investment banking is quite different. You don't get to travel that much and are usually bound to your desk Monday to Friday - oh, and then there is the (not so) occasional work on Sundays. Overall, your weekends are much more predictable in consulting.

The exit opportunities for consultants are more diverse than for investment bankers as the industry is much more diverse. In consulting you could, for example, focus on corporate finance but just as well on marketing & sales. The range of profiles exiting consulting are manifold and no consultant can be compared to another in terms of functional or industry experience. Your project history shapes your exit opportunities considerably, and makes a generalization difficult. The classic exit is usually to more strategy-focused roles at a corporate, with the long-term career trajectory heading more towards the CEO role. Moreover, using the experience gathered in consulting to found a start-up or go into VC is also quite common. Many consultants from the leading consulting firms also make the move into Private Equity (i.e., buy-side). However, the window for this move closes after around 3 years in consulting as it is unlikely that you will join a PE firm after becoming project manager. The reason for that is that the equivalent role at the PE is deal lead and you probably didn't have enough exposure to PE deals in consulting for that role. However, nothing is impossible and we've seen colleagues make that exit after focusing heavily on PE during their time in consulting.