Distinguishing yourself while on the “Unbeaten Path”

I’m sure I am not the only member of WSO that is forced to take an “Alternative Path” in order to land a career in finance. I am Canadian, opted to go to a community college instead of university, and had no idea about management consulting until I was 22 years old. To get my feet wet as a contributing blogger I want to write to and for my fellow “Unbeaten Path Folk”.

My 6 – 7 year goal is to get into an MBB after I complete an MBA. I’m 23 now; I’ve been landing a number of Government Analysis Projects and Contracts over the last 2 years and have 4 years of Business Analyst experience in total. I recently completed a Business Architecture gig and as I continue hunting for my next contract I want to know what supplementary things do you do to try to catch up and/or stand out from the crowd?

My thing is volunteering. Now it is not your regular old food bank helper type of volunteering, it is a more deliberate and strategic approach to helping the community. I try to stand out from the crowd by enriching my resume with volunteer positions that are directly correlated to my desired career. I only volunteer doing things that will help bolster the skills needed to answer Analysis Projects and Government RFP’s.

There are a number of things that I am contending against when I look for the type of work that I do:

1. Age discrimination (23 year old going up against 30 – 39 year olds)
2. Education prejudice (I am still in university and some people can’t wrap their heads around night classes)
3. Resource capacity (Small consulting firms go after the contracts that I target)

Once the selection process starts I must contend on the rate and project mapping aspects, but I feel that one of the strongest distinguishing factors has been the additional experience gained from volunteering. I’ve done a variety of “analytically challenging” work completely for free (for example, not-for-profit consulting, mentoring and social media integration projects). I have the ability to share with decision makers a number of compelling stories, connect on a heart to heart level and then highlight the quantifiable experience I gained. It all helps build the picture in the decision makers mind that “this guy can do it”, especially when I am not a "conventional" RFP respondent.

So that’s one of my supplementary distinguishing factors, the job market is super competitive and filled with many people doing the same things, what is yours?