Banking<=>Consulting

Hello everyone,

soon I will finally finish my engineering studies and therefore I am now trying to figure out which career path I should enter.

I am interesten in both, consulting and investment banking.

What can you recommend me concerning payment, promotion likelihood and job safety.

(reading the newspaper I got the impression that both sectors will shrink in the coming years, what do you think about that?)

6 Comments
 
Best Response

If you are getting the impression that consulting will shrink because you read about the state of the economy, I would recommend that you think about it differently. Look at it this way, if the economy is bad and companies are looking for was to improve their revenue, they are going to go to consults. In this regard consulting is better in terms of job safety. In terms of payment however, investment banking clearly wins. The difference in pay is as a first year consultant or analyst is quite large and the gap only increases with seniority.

 

Payment is going to be less in consulting, with more travel but usually the hours aren't as brutal. Promotion is going to advance similarly, but consulting is less of a 2 years and out thing as banking is. Likelihood for either is low unless you have a passion for one or the other and are willing to network. Job safety will be lower overall in banking than consulting for a number of reasons.

I recommend consulting to you based on the limited information I have to go off of. If you really wanted to do banking, I doubt you'd be considering consulting as well that strongly, but many would disagree. I say many would disagree because I know plenty of people who will try to go for both.

 

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