My Road to MBB: From HR to Consulting, the Scenic Route Can Still Get You There

I used to think a consultant had to be “naturally flawless and brilliant.” Later I realized the essence of consulting is fast learning plus problem-solving. Your “role” isn’t the ceiling — your capability is the passport. Rather than complaining about your starting point, polish every task as if it were a mini-case.

After countless rounds of trial and error, I finally found my differentiated edge. I joined as an analyst, aimed myself toward consulting, proactively created opportunities, and kept sharpening both my hard and soft skills on projects. The road was full of obstacles — and bias from many directions — but two years later I finally earned the partners’ recognition and successfully became an expert consultant at MBB.

This is my story — a story of going from lost to transformed, taking the scenic route to my consulting dream. If you also want to sharpen yourself in consulting and grow your professional ability, I’d be glad to use my experience to help you get there.

1. Student years: detours are a gift of self-discovery

“I seem interested in everything, but once I try it, I’m not so sure anymore.” That was the honest picture of my student years. I did my bachelor’s in public policy and my master’s in organizational change and international marketing. Behind that seemingly jumpy path were countless rounds of experimentation and self-reflection.

I once thought a “career plan” had to be right in one shot. But through internships, courses, and cross-cultural experiences, I gradually understood: feeling lost isn’t scary — it helps you get clearer on what you don’t want, and what remains is the direction worth exploring. For instance, doing policy research at university, I found I enjoyed solving real management problems far more than pure theory; studying business in Europe, the challenges of international team projects made me realize that cross-cultural communication is actually one of my core weapons.

2. The scenic route: from analyst to expert consultant

Before joining MBB, I worked in group-level HR at a multinational in France, spending five years honing my project management and HR expertise and building solid professional skills. (That experience was hugely helpful for consulting later — because I can really think from the perspective of large enterprise clients.) When I joined MBB, my title was “Senior Knowledge Analyst.” In MBB, a knowledge analyst is a specialist in an industry or functional area who provides expert data analysis and the latest market trends to case teams — the industry calls them “the consultant’s consultant.” But I knew that to truly step into strategy consulting, I had to create the opportunity myself.

My three-step breakthrough:

• Hard-skill breakout: data and market analysis by day; cases and modeling by night. Before each project, I learned the unfamiliar industry so I could offer advice grounded in industry reality.
• Soft-skill networking: proactively helping partners with industry research, “bumping into” project leads in the break room to share views, and gradually getting noticed through solid delivery.
• A field of mentors: once a senior partner noticed my project execution and cross-cultural coordination, I got my first chance to independently own a project module — going from “supporter” to “driver.” Two years later, I successfully moved from analyst to expert consultant in organization and talent management.

3. A consultant’s prep list: the long-termist wins

Certificates aren’t everything, but they can open doors: when I led an agile transformation for a multinational group, I studied for and passed the Scrum Master certification on the fly — not just for the badge, but to speak the client’s language and earn their trust.

How I built business acumen:

• Listening to BFM Business and Les Echos news and podcasts during my commute.
• Closely reading two industry reports a week and dissecting their analytical frameworks.
• Debriefing within a week of each project: “Why did this hypothesis hold?” “Why didn’t the client buy my proposal?” “What did I overlook?” “If I started over, what would I change about this pitch?”

Language as a weapon: after debating a partner in French on one project, it clicked — language isn’t just a tool, it’s a lever for trust. I kept up 30 minutes of reading French aloud every day and practiced expressing myself whenever I could. I even signed up for a drama class, just to articulate my views and emotions better and overcome the language disadvantage at work.

The compounding power of networks: consulting is fundamentally a “trust economy.” I regularly mapped the strengths of colleagues I’d worked with into an “internal skills map” — so next time I hit a hard problem, asking the right person beats grinding alone. Later, partners on projects would even come straight to me to find in-house expertise.