Has anyone pivoted from management consulting into pre-sales / solution consulting / solution engineering in tech (e.g., Solution Engineer at Salesforce, Solutions Consultant at ServiceNow or Adobe)? Were you able to credibly position your transferable skills? Did you have to start at entry level, or could you come in at a more senior band? And does hands-on experience with the specific platform give a real edge in the process?
People being let go bc of comparing performance against peers is bs. upgrading the team? how come other rigorous fields (investment banking, medicine, Big Law, oil & gas engineering, trading firms, etc) don’t feel the need to do this, yet they have the right people the teams need every year 😂 consulting isn’t the most rigorous/difficult/or prestigious career. just say it’s for the greed of the firm, at the cost of unempathetically uprooting employees lives & at least you’ll be honest.
Basic consulting, communication and presentation are your transferable skills. Rest depends on your skillset. Can you create demos on Salesforce for your customers? Can you describe technical architectures ? Can you figure out what Salesforce patterns can address the client use cases ? So basically you need very in depth knowledge of the platform or product you are part of. Depending on the platform, you are probably not writing code - as you are mostly configuring products. If you don’t have any of that, you are not getting hired in senior band. These roles specifically ask for experience with the platform or product at experienced roles - so it’s not really an edge, it’s basic requirements. You can do entry level, but still gotta know basics of software engineering
I know Salesforce very well from a declarative perspective, and have several certs. Yes, I know certs just tell concepts. I don’t know how to code at all and no SWE concepts. I would probably want to start in a more junior role anyways. I see a lot of people in particular at Salesforce who have liberal arts degrees and are now SEs. I’m sure they have strong product knowledge tho