Matt Zarracina ⋅ Minneapolis, MN Deloitte ⋅ 6 years experience

Connor,

Strategy and management are usually synonymous. Financial is typically dealing with financial statements and work associated with analysis or reporting. Risk can very widely, but usually pertains to financial.

Bain and Deloitte do overlap in some areas and not in others. Bain mostly overlaps with Deloitte's Strategy & Operations Consulting arm as well as the M&A Transaction Services group in our Financial Advisory arm, but Deloitte is much bigger. as Bain doesn't have Tax, Risk, IT etc.

Deloitte does hire both at the office/region level as well as nationally. If you are interested in a particular location, I would look for that location on the companies career site. I recruited out of business school (Cornell) and selected MN.

Steve Fineberg ⋅ Pleasanton, CA Deloitte ⋅ 27 years experience

Hi Connor,

Good questions. I'd be happy to talk to you live about the different service areas of Deloitte and how the various Consulting firms compare. Generally, I'd think about the consulting service areas in terms of a couple buckets: Strategy & Execution.

Broadly, strategy is when we are helping companies think of new ideas, new business models, etc, and Deloitte has a strong strategy practice that competes with the traditioinal strategy firms, Bain, BCG, McKinsey, etc.

For Execution, this is where we are helping companies execute against ideas or plans that they have typically already thought of and prioritized. What they need is our subject matter expertise and/or the arms & legs to get the work done. The domain is the differentiator for the service lines, and the domains could be Finance, Human Capital, Technology implementation, M&A, risk management, etc. The practioners who work in these domains typically focus specifically in these areas, and bring this expertise to our clients.

There is a lot of info on the service lines at the Deloitte website if you wanted to get more info.

As far as where you work, we are a national practice for all of our consultative service lines, so while you may have an ability to pick your home office, often times our folks spend a significant amount of time traveling. Some markets may have more concentration of industry (i.e. New York for Financial Services, and Silicon Valley for Tech), and allow for folks to spend more time near those home offices.

Andrea Gnilka ⋅ Springfield, VA Deloitte ⋅ 5 years experience

Hi Connor,

Consulting at Deloitte often involves a mixture of the above components you mentioned, but for the Federal consulting practice we are divided into technology, strategy and operations and human capital. Within those, there are a variety of ways to specialize that often mixes the components you've mentioned above. For example, I am a consultant in Strategy and Operations with a focus on General Management for now, until I decide whether I'd like to specialize in supply chain, business model transformation, finance, strategy, etc. The differences between these vary in terms of what kind of strategic consulting I would like to specialize in. Do I want to focus on how the the organization can gain efficiencies by changing its business model? Would I prefer to look at how to better help the organization with how it procures goods and services? The answers to these questions and others will determine which I end up "majoring" in, but they all fall within the umbrella of strategy and operations. Within technology, I might want to focus on the nuts and bolts of systems integration, or I could look at more of the strategy for the technology side of the house in an organization by looking at how it can better align its architecture with its strategic goals. Again, within technology there are elements of strategy as well. The same goes for human capital. I can focus on how I want to help an organize strategize its communications vertically and horizontally, or I can focus more on how to develop the career path to leadership within that organization. There are elements of each that cross over.

As for choosing the area of the country to work in, I would say that with Federal consulting, the bulk of it is concentrated in the Washington, DC area because that is where the Federal government is concentrated. However, there are some opportunities in Atlanta, GA as well. There are some state and local opportunities, but my impression of these is that they are few and far between. I cannot speak for commercial consulting, but it is spread out over the United States and globally, so the project opportunities would be more widely dispersed in the commercial consulting universe.

Hope this helps!

Best,

Andrea

matt widmer ⋅ Arlington, VA Deloitte ⋅ 20 years experience

Really great answers from Andrea, Matt and Steve.
The practice that I lead (Deloitte Federal Advisory) focuses on risk mitigation - accounting, finance, cyber, etc. for Federal Agencies. If you have specific questions on Advisory and/or Federal - I'm happy to discuss with you directly.
Matt