When I started graduate school three years ago, I had only a marginal interests in pursuing a management consulting career. Low and behold, I’ll be starting my first day in management consulting in New York City a month from now. I sometimes chuckle in reflecting on my unlikely path into this field. My story is very different from most people I know who have entered the industry. Yet, I think it will be instructive in helping you fully evaluate it as a career opportunity.
Why Management Consulting Didn’t Appeal to Me… At First… and Why I Was Wrong
Once upon a time, I viewed management consulting as the overly mainstream career pathway that legions of graduate students of all stripes were pursuing. It just seemed way too traditional, something that was the “it” thing to do for graduate students since Mitt Romney’s time in the 1970s. My career outlook hasn’t changed since then. I have always been about being in a career field that could provide unparalleled interesting experiences while empowering me to make significantly meaningful impact. When I started graduate school, management consulting didn’t seem like a pathway for such an experience.
What I failed to do back then was distinguish between what management consulting is really about and the intentions of some of the droves of people seeking such a career from graduate school. Based upon my graduate school experience, I encountered a lot of candidates who sought the field because it continues to be a prestigious career aspiration that provides a distinguishing brand that will be a shiny lifetime asset on any resume. I simply didn’t feel compelled to dive into it with a sense of adventure. In my networking conversations with graduate students from a variety of other schools, I found my reflections to be a rather common observation. However, what I should have done earlier was conduct more exploration on what the real opportunities in management consulting were because as I would find out later, they really were aligned with my career interests.
What Brought me Back to Management Consulting
In graduate school, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to intern with many terrific cutting-edge organizations and be involved in really meaningful work. However, I realized that the range of project opportunities was generally limited to each organization’s specific scope of business and human capital strategy. For example, in a software company I really liked organizing data analytics practices for digital ad revenue, but I wouldn’t easily have the opportunity to do it for productivity software because that would be under another team in a different department. I also naturally wouldn’t be able to do the same for tractor manufacturing since that was outside the business scope of a software organization. As someone who is always hungry to learn new things, I realized over time that I wanted to spend the first few years of my post graduate school career with the opportunity to work in the widest range of projects possible. I found that desire always pulling me back to reconsider management consulting. After digging deeper to understand the career opportunities in the industry, I did something in my last year of graduate school I never thought I would do. I selected management consulting companies as my prioritized job seeking opportunities. My notebook from my first year of graduate school looking for internships had management consulting opportunities in the middle of the pack at best.
Takeaways on Balance
I tell my story because I believe too many graduate students are like my former self, not fully appreciating the true potential of a management consulting career. An industry that offers the challenge of extensively learning something new by having the opportunity to explore a large swath of the business landscape. Even in more specialized firms, the consultants still see greater variation than their counterparts at an organization. This should speak to anyone who is aggressively intellectually curious and seeks a more adventurous career for at least a few years out of graduate school.
There are of course many other considerations to evaluate before entering the industry. The hours will likely be rough and extensive relationship management is essential, just to name two challenges. However, I wanted to go beyond the lure of the prestige and dig through that to illustrate an alternative way to think about entering the industry.
One day, I might settle down and seek a more specific industry and defined role. However, until that day arrives, I am eager to undergo the exploratory adventure that management consulting provides.
Hall Wang is a dual degree MBA and Master of Public Policy graduate from Georgetown University who will be matriculating into a major management consulting firm in the fall. He has worked at America’s most innovative companies including Blue Origin and Facebook, as well as having done two combat deployments as a US Army Officer.
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