The coronavirus epidemic has rattled the planet. Universities are shutting down or going to online learning, California has issued a mandatory lockdown for its 40 million residents. The UK has 3,500 known cases of the virus and London will probably be shut down in the next week, if not before. Commerce has ground to a halt. The travel and hospitality industries have been decimated, stock markets around the world have tanked, and governments struggle to combat this devil on so many fronts.
As the world goes mad, what will you be doing this summer?
If the virus isn’t under control by May 1st 2021 and the economy hasn’t picked up, do recruiters have plans to push back start dates?
Thousands of service workers have lost their jobs. How certain can you be that your internship or full time offer from a consulting firm will hold?
Top consulting firms have hundreds of current consultants either sitting idle or working a limited case load. If you can’t visit your clients, you have severe working limitations. You’d be foolish to think that every company is not having a conversation about how the virus impacts hiring and human resources.
Three prior downturns, what can we learn?
During the dotcom bubble, the financial crisis, and the real estate bubble, what did consulting firms do?
The larger firms like Bain, BCG, and McKinsey kept their promises. They put their new hires through training, offered a later start date for those who wanted one, and offered to pay for additional classes or to learn a language while work picked back up. They have the resources to take a long-term view. The big firms need people in the pipeline. They just went through, at great expense, the interviewing and hiring of a new “class” of undergraduate consultants. Back then, the uncertainty level was tolerable. Today, not so much.
The mid-size or smaller consulting firms may not have the same level of resources. Their clients are going to be hurting as well. If the firms don’t have a strong balance sheet, if they foresee a potential cash flow problem, or if they have clients in particularly hard hit industries, I’d be concerned. There are going to be firms and companies that go under.
What should you be doing besides scrubbing your hands ten times a day like Lady Macbeth?
Have a backup plan.
Contact your career services office, not only to see what firms are planning, but to begin preparing if your job gets pulled. Build up your skills to make you a more attractive hire. In addition, learn how to create strategy presentations with PowerPoint, learn new data-driven software programs, or a new foreign language.
The consequences of not preparing could hurt your career in the short term, and have you living back home. Because of all the uncertainty, firms are unwilling to admit any potential hiring claw-backs and you might not find out about the change in your employment status until April or early May. As Churchill used to say, “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and KBO – Keep Buggering On!”
Will is the founder of The Cambridge Consultant, a site which focuses on everything consulting – how to get in and get on!
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