Is Post-Grad Consulting all grunt work?
Recently received an offer to work consulting. Fell initially in love with the responsibility of driving conclusions for important business problems, but after talking to employees about a FT analysts specific roles in a project, it seems a lot less glamorous.
Is it true for most consulting companies that your responsibilities are mostly “expert interviews” and slide building? Would you say this type of work makes you a stronger business person in the future?
Lol it’s not just expert interviews and slide building. It’s also consumer interviews and slide editing.
I mean, it's not completely inaccurate..
Objectively, the day to day will mostly be gathering information on a given topic through either primary (Expert interview or Surveys, usually) or secondary (market reports, financial data, google search) information.
But anyone can do that, and even do it well. Where the differentiator comes is: how well can you (i) synthesise the information, (ii) extract the relevant insights for your client, and (iii) work out how to get to the next bit of information you need that will make a difference for them.
We can all google and get info from it, but how good are you at analysing / distilling that data and building on it for your next step?
Practically speaking, that will involve a lot of discussion with your supervisor, back and forth with the client, and putting those insights onto a slide in a way that gets the point across efficiently without being distracting or too boring (that last point is debatable, I admit). Occasionally you have to build a market model or some other excel model to achieve whatever you are trying to achieve.
All in all, I admit, this is not necessarily that glamourous or exciting (you as an individual will 100% not be influencing anyone to make any serious decision of consequence, until you make at least Partner, and even then.... very debatable). You have to be in it for the process more than for the output. Sometimes your work does lead to changes (hopefully for the better at your client's company), but often it will lead nowhere. Just the way of the world, we are advice givers, nothing more.
I really appreciate your comment. It seems like with consulting, one seems to excel at executing the process critical to most business problems: 1) what do I need to know? 2) of this information, what matters? 3) how can I achieve alignment?
Quick follow-up: Do you view yourself as better equipped to excel in future business roles because of your experience? When you look back to your consulting experience in 5 years, what are the key skills you will possess that you think you will be able to uniquely contribute to consulting? Are there substitutes that can develop these skills? Thanks so much again.
The main skills I seem to have developed so far are:
Harder skills I alreayd mostly had, although now I also learned to design and manage customer questionnaires / survey, interview experts effectively, and I did improve the delivery of my models (my modelling skills haven't improved as such, but I learned to display them better and build them in a way that others can easily follow / understand).
Skills I expect to build in the future include:
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