It is realistic, but only if you approach it strategically. Consulting firms do value physicians, especially when you can demonstrate structured problem solving, stakeholder management, resilience, and a credible interest in business problems beyond clinical work.

There is no single years-of-experience cutoff that works across every firm, office, and role. ‘Experienced hire’ is a recruiting category, not one universal seniority level.

A non-business background does not automatically hurt you. Firms routinely interview candidates from science, medicine, law, and other fields. The key question is whether you can think in a structured, business-relevant way during the interview.

There is no single experienced-hire process across every office and role. A generalist candidate may go through a process that looks very similar to standard consulting recruiting, while a specialist or expert candidate may also meet people from the relevant practice.

Yes, the move is realistic, but the application has to translate your engineering background into business impact. Firms are less concerned with whether your title says strategy and more concerned with whether you have solved ambiguous problems, influenced stakeholders, and delivered measurable outcomes.

Manufacturing experience can translate very well if you frame it around the problems you solved rather than the factory setting itself. Cost reduction, capacity planning, quality improvement, supply chain decisions, capital allocation, and operational transformation are all highly relevant consulting problems.

This decision becomes much easier once you stop comparing the two roles on salary alone.

Start with the type of work you want to do, not the title you think your years of experience should earn. Generalist roles make sense if you want broad case exposure and your experience is transferable across industries. Expert roles make more sense when your value is tied to a specific function, technology, or sector.

Experienced-hire recruiting usually uses the same core evaluation standards as campus recruiting, but the path into the interview can be less standardized. You may enter through a recruiter, a referral, a specific role, or a general experienced-hire opening rather than a fixed school timeline.