Advice for choosing full time offers

Hi all,

I am in a really fortunate position to have received a few offers in consulting and in tech and wanted some advice.

I feel like everywhere I look, people compare the clout of each firm and rank these options against each other.

The more I think about my offers, the more I get caught up trying to pick the option with the most “prestige” or that will open up the most doors or that will get me into a good mba program. 

I feel like I’m so lost in my decision process and that nothing I do really gives me clarity. I schedule called with 1-2 people at these companies everyday, try to read on forums (like WSO) about these firms, look on other websites, and more and feel like I can’t make a decision.

Does anyone have any advice on how to move from this point and find clarity in what you want? 


Thank you in advance!

 
Most Helpful

Everyone has their own approach of looking at offers so I'll just give you an idea of what I would think and hopefully it'll inspire you. There's a series of steps I'd take:

1. What's your long-term goal? If it's industry-focused, take tech if you want tech and consulting if you want anything else/don't know. If it's function-related, take the tech job if it gives you the function you want to do (marketing, PM, whatever) and take consulting if you don't know.

2. If you decide on tech - prioritize the function you want. If you're agnostic, prioritize functions that are focused on the operations & products over back-office stuff. The closer you are to working with engineers and products, the more power you'll have and probably the more you'll enjoy your job. So stuff like PM, product design, etc. are popular because they're close to SWE & developers who run the show.

ONLY after you decide on the function would I then look at the different companies. Let's say you wanna do marketing and you've got marketing offers from Microsoft and a mid-sized tech firm. I'd recommend taking MSFT for the brand name. If you've got marketing offers from Microsoft and Adobe for example, I'd look more into the culture because I don't think there's a big name difference between a T1 and a T2 tech firm although some people think differently. The choice is yours, it's more of a cultural fit at this point

3. If you decide to take consulting, we go through similar steps. First, let's talk about prestige.

As everyone knows, there's a clear distinction between MBB or T1, then a large swarth of T2 companies (B4, Accenture, OW, Kearney, etc., etc.) and then small boutiques. The difference in these tiers to me are summarized by two things that trade off each other: Prestige (and exit opportunities) vs. WLB

I would say 90% of the time, if you have MBB, you'd want to take it. However, there are exceptions if you want to focus on WLB and culture more. Let's say you're thinking of having a kid within a year of working, or if you aren't in a position to handle stress. On average, MBB will work 10-20 hours/week more than T2, who will work more than T3. Obviously this differs case by case, but on average this is true because MBB gets their prestige from always meeting deadlines, overdelivering, etc., and well you gotta work for that. So in the rare 10% chances where you care more about having decent WLB (from a consulting perspective), it's worth considering a T2 company over MBB for personal reasons.

Once you've made the decision to go with a certain tier, you can now start thinking about company cultures and industries or functions you want to focus on. If you get to choose between MBB offers, congrats: it's just a cultural fit. No other thoughts needed, go with where you feel the most comfortable cause well you better damn enjoy where you work at in consulting.

If you are looking at the plethora of T2 consulting companies to pick between, think about different criteria and your preference for starting. Do you have a preferred industry to go into and does it match with an offer you have? Do you have LEK or OW and am interested in healthcare? DO you want to go into PE and have Strategy&? Are you interested in going into high tech and have Accenture? Need location flexibility and have B4 and Accenture with their billions of offices?

If there are no interest matches, then go by culture. 

I think the most important thing with working in consulting is that life is gonna suck ass for you so you better at least tolerate working. Whether you can enjoy your work due to the: people, the match with your interest, having WLB, or simply knowing that in 2 years you'll have a goddamn nice exit, it's up to you to choose the best way for you to enjoy consulting as much as you can so you deliver. I say that because for example, if you're a poor performer at MBB for 2 years, you're probably not getting better exits than a rock star at a T2 company, and it's doubly so if you're not performing well at T2, and so forth. Therefore, pick the offer at a place where you believe you can work and perform the best after you've thought about prestige, WLB, and interest matching.

Hope that helps - just a train of thought from my end but maybe it will inspire you somehow!

 

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