Why Management Consulting can be a great start to your career

Having worked in Bain & Company, one of the top 3 management consulting firms in the world, for three years, I believe I know enough about this industry to detail out what it is like to have a consulting job and why it can be a great start to your corporate career.

Consulting, for a number of decades now, continues to be one of the most coveted jobs at B-schools and graduate schools in many parts of the world. It is extremely common to see almost all the leading scorers of your batch getting absorbed by consulting firms and investment banks. These companies arrive and leave during the first few hours of campus placements, leaving a bunch of ‘high achievers’ elated and excited at landing a high paying top job from the campus (this placement process may be specific to India but the essence remains the same everywhere).

Even though after three years I have decided to move on from consulting, I am a strong advocate of top tier management consulting as your first job. I have categorized the reasons below into 2 categories:

General growth opportunities and Extra Perks

1. General growth opportunities

• Exceptional colleagues
• Steep learning curve
• Unparalleled exposure
• Confidence Booster

1. Extra Perks

• Great compensation
• Global Travel
• International friends
• Luxurious experiences

1a: Exceptional colleagues: Being the most coveted campus job and hiring people from top of their classes ensures that you have an extremely smart and exceptional set of people as your colleagues. People around you won’t just be hard workers who spend their entire long days peering into their laptops. Most of them will be extremely efficient with a good business sense even at an early age.
They will be aware about what is happening around the world, will have strong opinions about things along with excellent rational arguments to defend those opinions. Be ready to have amazing intelligent conversations on almost any topic on earth with these folks.
One might say that all this is likely to come with a lot of arrogance and pride. Well, you will be surprised to find how many of these are genuinely nice human beings who will care for the people in their teams, talk with humility and are good listeners.

1b. Steep learning curve: If you have heard anything about management consulting, you know that consulting firms are hired by corporates to solve their problems and take them out of whatever mess they are in. In many cases, there need not be any immediate problem but a planning for the future. Essentially, consultants are never brought in for business as usual; only for extra ordinary situations in the company.
At the same time, typical consulting assignments range between 3 to 6 months and it is highly likely that majority of the working team would have very little idea about the company and the industry beforehand.
This ensures that the consultants are expected to get smart about the industry and the company very quickly and start working on the possible solutions. Everyone, even a 3 month old joinee will be expected to do this for his/her workpiece. This helps in making consultants aware about a large number of industries and businesses in a very short span of time. This is one of the biggest value propositions of consulting. Very few jobs will allow you to work on 3–4 interesting problems every year in 3–4 completely different businesses.
The variety and quality of work takes you on a very steep learning curve and provides immense learning.

1c. Unparalleled exposure: While you are solving some major problems for your clients, you are also interacting with a whole lot of people on a daily basis, most of whom are at fairly senior positions. It is not uncommon to find 24–25 year old consultants present their findings to the CXOs of the companies with the CXOs listening intently. True that you will have sufficient support in the room in terms of senior managers, partners etc. but the mere fact of sitting in the rooms from where large companies are run and being a part of some of the decision making processes so early in your career is an exposure that few other jobs can provide.
Consulting firms typically have a much more flat organization structure than corporate. This along with the fact that team sizes are usually 6–8 ensures that everyone in the team can get ample face time with managers and partners who are on the team. These are great opportunities where you can expect to get first hand inputs on the problems you are solving from people who are recognized as experts in the very fields. If you ever think you are getting too bogged down into details and are not sure how your piece fits in the big picture, talk to a partner. Their 10,000 feet perspectives will usher a new energy and focus into your work.

1d. Confidence Booster: People say that a lot of new joinees into consulting usually come in high on confidence having achieved a lot in life till then including bagging that top offer. This confidence is usually tested for the first few months as they begin their sudden and steep climb onto the learning curve.
However, almost all of them come out as much more confident and poised individuals on the other side. They are more authoritative and informed in their conversations within the teams and with the clients and feel a higher surety about their future even if they end up leaving consulting.

2a. Great compensation: Now let us move on to the more glamorous parts of the job. It is no secret that consulting offers one of the most lucrative compensation packages after only investment banks and private equity. Not only are the entry packages good, the annual growth is also disproportionate to industry norms. This proves very helpful in your early years of employment to pay off student loans if any and also start building a good financial foundation for longer term.

2b. Global travel: You will get numerous opportunities to travel the world. Top tier consulting firms have great international training programs. I can personally vouch for Bain in this aspect. Every year, you are mandated to attend one international training program where your colleagues from more than 50–60 nationalities come to get trained by Bain senior management. These training happen in beautiful properties at world class locations and are supreme fun.
Other avenue is international transfer. Again, top tier consulting firms give an option to their employees to get transferred to one of their international offices for a period of 6 months to a year. Needless to say, turns out to be a great experience!
Apart from this, you might end up travelling to another country simply because your client has presence there or wants to expand there or you might be sent to another international office to support existing team for a particular project.
If all this is not enough, then thanks to the general environment and pedigree of people around you, vacations often mean international trips. So, even if you haven’t traveled anywhere outside India, you will soon find yourself planning your next vacation in Bali just because everyone around you is going someplace or the other.

2c. International Friends: With all this international travel and working with colleagues from international offices of your firm enables you to form an international social circle. Because of these interactions in Bain, I have friends in more than 5 different countries with whom I am still in touch with.
Having international friends is not a bragging right. Talking to people from different countries, cultures and belief systems gives you a whole new perspective on life. It helps you in seeing your own country in a different light and also makes you much more sensitive and accommodating to the differences between human beings. Even if you don’t end up in consulting, never miss a chance to make genuine friends from different parts of the world. It is an enriching experience in itself.

2d. Luxurious experiences: For the more materialistic within you, there is no dearth of luxury in a consulting job. More often than not you will be travelling to a different city than your hometown every week for your assignment. Corporate air travel (which can be business class in some conditions), chauffer driven car, 5 star hotel stay with more than enough budget to cover even lavish meal expenses are the norm. Also, irrespective of travels, your team will periodically plan dinner outings to some of the fanciest places in the town.
On top of all this, the system has been conveniently designed in a way that you pay for all these gigantic expenses from your credit cards and get that reimbursed from the firm. Hence, credit card points and airline miles are a big thing in any consulting firm. You can very easily find platinum members of all frequent flyer programs and hotel groups in your firm. These additional perks enable you to carry your luxurious experiences into your personal life as well.

Does that mean all is great and hunky dory? Consulting is the best job in the world? It depends.
When a consulting firm gives you so many avenues to grow while being pampered in all luxury, it also expects in return a lot… A LOT!
It is no secret that working hours are much longer than the corporate average. It varies from country to country and from project to project. But in India, top tier consultants work on average 60–70 hours per week and that can go up to 100 hours during some crazy times, spilling into weekends.

The steep learning curve also means that you have to be on your toes every single day. There is hardly any time to relax and let it be because your share of responsibility increases every 6 months and there is significant change in your role every year. Therefore, if someone is not able to run at that pace, all this can actually be a very depressing and demotivating experience.

Even those who continue to shine project after project, the long hours and continual travel (4–5 days per week) can take its toll. Problems aggravate if you want to get married and have a family. You will have practically no time for your family for at least the first 5–6 years. After that, you become senior enough to manage your calendar but still the share of responsibility has increased so much by then that it is extremely hard to justly allocate time to yourself and your family.

Hence, it is often said that consulting is not merely a professional decision but a life decision. It is not for everyone. One needs to be extremely clear in his/her mind about the priorities in life before committing yourself for the long run here.
Having said that, for the first few years of your career (especially if you are planning to do your MBA after it), the pros heavily outweigh the cons and as long as you are not vehemently opposed to the very idea of consulting job, you should definitely give it a shot.
If selected, you get a chance to bask in the glory of all the pros listed above and when you finally decide to move out you are a much better version of yourself, you have a big brand on your resume so that everyone wants to hire you and you would have easily jumped 1–2 years ahead compared to a corporate career from the start.

Hope this helps some people who are on the fence to make a decision on joining consulting. Do leave your thoughts in the comments below!

Disclaimer: All the views expressed here are strictly personal.