What are the best jobs out of college in terms of learning?

I know this is a very subjective and open ended question, but which job straight out of college do you think would allow someone to learn the most on the job? I'd say it might be a start up job where you are given a lot of responsibilities. Investment banking is probably the traditional answer many would say because of its salary and prestige, but in terms of learning you do learn how to model and handle pressure and work long hours but in the end when you look back aren't you just being a workhorse doing mundane and repetitive tasks compared to some of the other jobs?

5 Comments
 

Well you would have to be more specific in terms of what you mean by learning (there is learning to manage a team, and then there is learning to use excel - both very different set of skills that you can learn through different career paths.)

In my opinion - you'll learn the most out of starting your own venture. You are literally doing everything and getting such a wide breadth of skills and experiences that you can't get anywhere else.

But this is all relative to what you want out of life.

 
Best Response

It depends on what you want to gain - do you want to learn new skills or do you want to have a broad understanding of business? Obviously there are many jobs that have a lot to offer, but I'll say management consulting for the sake of not answering your open-ended question with an open-ended response.

Right out of college you'd spend most of your time putting decks together and other low-level tasks but you'd still have that exposure to understanding the issues F500 companies are currently facing. Also, at the lower levels you work on projects in different industries, which gives you an idea of what industry you want to focus in (either consulting in that industry or working in that industry outside of consulting). You'd have good Excel modeling skills and probably most importantly, you'd be interacting daily with C-suite executives, sitting in on closed door conversations that you otherwise would have to work many years in industry to be a part of.

 

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