Butthurt Consultants - please at least give this a skim before hopping to the comments.
Undergrads that’re struggling to decide between the two - you’ll end up with carpal tunnel either way. BUT - Investment Banking is the clear winner over Consulting for these 3 reasons:
My older cousin started out in Consulting, moved to IB & now works in PE. I’ve heard his stories from both sides, and have many other friends who have lived out both paths. They all would die on the IB > Consulting hill.
1. Work is More Meaningful, Not Hired to Give Answers Already Known
In middle school when you don’t want to go to a sleepover with the weird kid, you you tell them your mom won’t let you. You show them a text from mama & her the “bad guy”.
Big companies will hire consultants to do the same thing. If a CEO needs to fire 100 obviously underperforming employees, they’ll hire a consultant to come up with some “market study” just to prove a point they already knew was true.
2. Consulting = Practice Problems
If you played a college sport, would you want to be a practice player?
The work that you do in IB leads to actual business results. When a deal is closed, change happens. There’s no guarantee the recommendations made in the PPT decks will ever be implemented.
This “theoretical nature” can create lack of fulfillment & meaning in your work.
3. Build Specific Skillset AND Get Broad Exposure
You’ll develop “general problem solving” skills are in both IB & Consulting. But - the “generalist” implications are 10x higher in Consulting.
With this mindset, you might feel lost, never making progress in a specific direction.
In IB, you get the “generalist” broad exposure by seeing so many business models and deal repetitions while also progressing with specific skills of valuation, modeling, M&A, etc.
In Short: You’ll find more meaning & fulfillment with IB’s work content & personal development
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