Consulting is one of the most prestigious careers you can pursue upon graduation. Every year thousands flock to apply to top consulting firms such as McKinsey and Company, Bain and Company, and Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Without a doubt, a career in the management consulting industry comes with many short- and long-term benefits. However, many applicants are motivated solely by financial gains and prestige without giving due consideration to other pros and cons of consulting.
Having spoken to dozens of working consultants, I will briefly discuss some of the ups and downs of an entry level career in consulting in this article.
Consulting accelerates growth for ambitious careerists
The learning and development opportunities afforded at MBB (the affectionate initialism given to McKinsey, Bain, and BCG) are pretty insane. You will be pushed to your limits and learn lots of new things every day. In part, this owes to the demands of the job; in just a couple of weeks, you are expected to ramp up your expertise in an industry that you might have never encountered before and deliver recommendations to C-suite executives who might have decades more work experience than you do. Growth is forged in the crucible of hard work.
The best part about this is that the intense training and growth at MBB is recognized by most corporate firms globally. That is, they know that someone who has been through (and survived) a couple of years at MBB has the grit to achieve what they set their mind to, and the problem-solving skills to devise creative solutions to overcome complex challenges. In fact, there is often a multiplier effect where firms value years of experience at MBB much more than time spent at any other regular corporate job. For instance, 3 years at MBB might be equated to 5-6 years of experience in a typical office environment.
Consulting offers a unique breadth of exposure
MBB are predominantly strategy consulting firms that mainly work on strategy projects, which are by nature much shorter than the implementation projects undertaken by other consulting firms such as the Big 4 (PwC, EY, KPMG, Deloitte). This means that you’ll generally get to work with a new team, a new client, possibly in a new industry, on a new project type, every few months.
The main exception to this high degree of variety is the private equity ringfence that exists across MBB. If you are staffed in the Private Equity & Principal Investors team (each of MBB have a different name for this team), you will likely remain on private equity projects for an extended period, though you are still likely to encounter different industries from project to project.
Overall, you won’t really get this breadth of exposure this early in your career anywhere else. For example, digital marketing executives would just focus on digital marketing; sales executives on sales for a particular set of products, and so on.
If you seek big bucks or work-life balance, consulting isn’t your best bet
Consultants are certainly well-paid relative to regular office jobs, but it is worth pointing out that they are a step behind compared to their entry level counterparts in top technology and finance firms. Software engineers at Google and investment banking analysts at Goldman Sachs are more well-paid than entry level roles at MBB.
Work-life balance wise, consultants typically work much more than tech employees, but less than investment bankers. In my conversations, most people who end up in consulting are quite aware of this; they find software to be not their cup of tea and aren’t willing to work investment banking hours so they find themselves in consulting as a sweet spot of sorts.
To put these generalized features into comparative relations:
Compensation
Consulting < Tech < Investment Banking
Work-Life Balance
Investment Banking < Consulting < Tech
Expect to be under constant pressure and scrutiny
As much as you will receive support on your projects from colleagues, it is undeniable that you will always be under a microscope lens.
The prestigious MBB has a relatively aggressive “up or out” culture. If you aren’t thriving, you will be promptly placed on a performance improvement plan. This is accompanied by a strong feedback culture and a high cadence of performance reviews (otherwise known as “1:1 check-ins”, or “career development discussions”) that might be as frequent as fortnightly. If significant improvement isn’t observed, you will then be invited to move on from the organization.
Some people thrive best when they’re regularly receiving constructive criticism and specific feedback, but others might find this suffocating and unbearable.
Find what works for You!
Year-on-year, more and more students are attracted to the “holy grail” that is consulting, but surely something as momentous as a starting job deserves deeper consideration before biting the bullet. In this article, we’ve merely scratched the tip of the iceberg concerning the pros and cons of life in consulting.
At the end of the day, it’s up to you to find out more, and find what works for you!
Lucas Foo is a Philosophy and Linguistics Undergraduate at the University of Oxford. He enjoys drawing insights from ambiguity to create real and positive impact.