I have been in consulting for 5 years (not counting 2 years for masters). I studied data analytics in my masters but couldn't find a job in DS/Analytics as I didn't have prior relevant experience. Now in Deloitte I'm back to doing SAP work. How do I convince the recruiters to give me a chance without relevant experience? I'm the kind of person who can move mountains to make something happen if I'm sure that this something will let me achieve my goal. But I don't know what I need to do! I've tried online courses, portfolio website, firm initiatives, but still can't get over the feeling that all this is useless without showing relevant experience (and I don't want to fake anything) and this catch-22 is making me depressed. What steps do I need to take to achieve my goal of transitioning from consulting job to a tech job? I'll do anything if it can guarantee my success.
You might not like this answer but if you're only targeting big-N companies, that's like playing on hard mode. If you widen your search for other companies, you can get 30-70% of the TC and some more experience to later interview at that big-N company of your dreams.
I'm not only aiming for big-N companies. I'm okay with any established company where I can learn.
Microsoft hires a lot of consultants
OP, can you be more specific than “a tech job?” Do you want to code, or be a data scientist, or work in business analytics? For example, Lyft, Amazon, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, etc. all have massive needs for analytics and DS outside of their engineering orgs. And people with consulting backgrounds tend to be preferred for that sort of role.
Currently what I'm doing is considered business analytics (requirement gathering, designing solution, creating technical specs, product ownership etc). However, this is in SAP domain. I would love to transition into a role where I'm required to code but I'm okay to settle for a business analyst role for now too if it means that I can design Analytics solutions.
Have you looked at ad-tech companies? There are several that have analytics core features and teams. And from my examples, the commonality is e-commerce (it’s all numbers) and new-look transportation and logistics companies (like Uber or DoorDash). I would recommend examining job listings for the analytics and operations sides of these firms. It’s a very hot market for analysts, and your consulting experience and desire to code would be attractive to all.
Amazon hires a lot of ex consultants. Much easier to get in the door at the level you want with a role that leverages your background then transfer internally to another team.
What kinds of roles do you think I can Target? How easy are internal transfers? (I've heard that it's easier to be hired into a role directly rather than trying for internal transfer)
Not true. Teams are much more willing to take someone without direct experience internally since they already passed the loop to get into Amazon. Also, they won’t have to deal with someone who has to onboard to amazon culture.
If you don't think you can prep leetcode and take SDE interviews, then get some cloud certifications and join the war with one of the major vendors. That's what I did and that landed me interviews with AWS, Azure, and GCP. I also had an analytics/data warehousing background, but I was doing more of the one man architecture, ETL and BI front end development work. Took me 3mo to learn cloud architecture from scratch and get certs in my free time, then around 4-5mo of interview prep and taking them. I'm at Google now. With SAP experience, all these cloud vendors can use people who understand the infrastructure as migrations of on premise SAP to cloud is a big area of expertise needed. As for the job itself, look at either presales roles (sales engineer, solutions architect) or professional services post-sales roles (consultant). If you want to stick with analytics, Amazon always seems to have openings for BI Engineers. If you're more on the functional side, look at program manager (PgM) or product manager (PM) roles. Having Deloitte on your resume and some technical experience should at least get you some sort of response back if you apply to the appropriate roles. I find it hard to believe that you can't.
Cloud certifications were something I was planning on exploring. What certifications do you have?
You should have done a summer internship while you were in school to get the requisite relevant experience
My path? Bootcamp, crappy startup, a ton of interview prep, then FB. I would recommend getting your foot in the door at a lower-tier company to get real experience. Good luck!
If you’ve been a consultant you should have the skills to bullshit your way into a head if BD/partnerships/strategy role in a lot of tech startups (especially ones outside of Silicon Valley, such as in LA or New York)
Another path is join as a PRoduct manager. Lots of companies founded by consultants think consulting will prepare your well as a PM.
As a consultant whos been 15 years in SAP I’ve found myself in the exact situation Its a dramatic change in operating Go to a bootcamp cuz the longer you stay in SAP the harder it will be to transition away
Did you manage to transition away? I can't afford being unemployed for 3 months. Otherwise I would have resigned a long time ago.
Sorry just saw this.. yes i did .. nor has it been easy .. as the tech world moves into agile and devops .. im learning on the goal and its pretty overwhelming.. feel free to send me a pm n we discuss further But i was in the same situation you were in .. doing sap consulting with an si
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Please vote sensibly 🙏
Make accepted non-trivial contributions to open source projects
Thanks. Do recruiters see this? Do you have any recommendations about which projects I can contribute to? How long/how many projects do you suggest that I contribute to before I start applying for jobs?
This is not the greatest advice