Entry Level Consulting: Is it really better or more interesting?
My friend that worked at Accenture told me that in Consulting the first few years of consulting are nothing special. The work you'll be doing analyst and senior analyst is just similar to grunt work you'll be doing in industry. A bunch of excel, meetings and support work for senior people but you don't really have the position to exercise your strategic muscles. You won't learn anything that you couldn't learn in an average role in industry? I'm thinking of a business analyst, finance analyst, operations, marketing type roles.
I wanted to get your guy's thoughts on this. Here are some questions running through my head: How true is this? How much does it depend on which shop it is: MBB vs tier 2 vs Accenture/Big4? Aside from the exit opps, is there much value in starting in consulting as an analyst and doing 2-3 year stint? Is it just about getting through your 2 years so that you can go onto do something better or will you actually learn more and do more interesting work? Assuming you go into consulting for just a few years, Is it better to get into consulting at the associate level?
Personally, I feel like I want to experience consulting for at least a few years and ideally would prefer starting out there. But I wasn't sure whether a stint as an analyst would really provide things like applying the consulting toolkit and mindset, strategic skills, rapid learning and growth that is equivalent to multiples of equivalent years of industry experience(2 years consulting=4 years industry), etc. If not what do you say you walk away with such a stint?
Hi mrgth23, check out these resources:
Hope that helps.
Depends on your firm, but also depends on the teams you get to work on. People don't realize this, but consulting firms are partnerships and partners (and their managers) are going to define the culture of a team/project.
Some teams will be very hierarchical and very no respect for juniors. Some teams will be more flat and you'll get some unique responsibilities.
That being said, you're in way over your head if you think you're going to walk into a client and "flex your strategic muscles". No one would care what you say at all. Why would a VP pay $500k for some 22 year old ivy league dip shit to tell them how to run their business. It takes time to build up to that point. If that bothers, you probably shouldn't do consulting.
And consulting experience isn't some magic pill. For example, you'd be better off dropping off the arrogant notion that consulting is worth 2x industry experience - it's absolutely inane.
It's obviously arrogant to assume 2x, but I think 1.25-1.5x is reasonable both due to longer working hours and diversity of experience
To the substance of your question, the first few years are likely to be similar on average. Like the previous poster said, your industry, company, boss, project, etc will be much more important to your environment than “consulting vs. industry”.
Imaginably, the main advantage of consulting will be to see more clients in more industries. You can get a handle on different organizational cultures. For industry, if you work at the box factory, you’re just learning about boxes. However, you will have to work to get that extra exposure, since consulting will want to typecast you and keep giving you the same work with the same or similar client, so you may end up consulting for the box factory anyway.
Finally, unless you are very unusual, expect your “strategic muscles” to stay limp and flaccid no matter where you go for an entry-level job.
At what level (or rough year within the field) would you say you start to really develop your strategic muscles?
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