Having lived in Europe for a little over three years, it has been fascinating while at the same time appalling to see the rise of the financial meltdown and more recently the road to its damage control. Fascinating because of the way the entire meltdown proceeded and partly because of the role that bankers from the top schools and firms played in this crisis situation, and appalling because of the effect it had on the various industries, banks and firms – read the pink slips.
While consulting companies in most countries recently were trying to settle down, projects had dried up and people either put on bench, if the firm were able to sustain on their resource investments, or worse shown the pink slip. Despite this, the number of MBA hires is growing strongly, with all size and types of consultancy targeting MBA graduates.
According to the European association of management consultancy in Europe (FEACO.org) there are over 65000 Management Consultancy firms in Europe employing over 350,000 consultants. Despite the downturn, many sectors are still recruiting even though the internships for graduates for this summer were hard to get by. Cost reduction and innovation has made IT Consulting, Operations Management, Marketing and Communications even more challenging and demanding profession. At this juncture it is necessary that the consultants or the MBA graduates understand the different inroads one can make while thinking of a dream career move.
In the first place, is consulting your game? Well it may be if you like long work hours with frequent time-critical decisions, highly competitive environment, moving from one deadline to the other and more importantly traveling. For the few lucky one’s bluffing through the interview to get that high salaried job will only end up lowering your performance and confidence if you are not sure of what you are expecting or anticipating next. Early exposure as an analyst and/or consulting only helps you develop and enhance your functional, technical and soft skills for your long term professional growth. Having involved with clients from a rookie level IT consultant to Project & Team Management roles, I did manage to polish my skills and find the right fit for the projects before embarking on the assignments. After having worked on few start-up business plans, and played my part in few consulting projects, I did realize the importance of understanding the business or the company in advance before picking up any project or assignments. If you already been doing that the you are ready for the next move – research the company that you would like to work with, understand the different sector options and functional roles they have to offer and lastly what you can offer from your experience. While the best experiences are gained through small boutique firms, the best clients to work with come from the Big 4 consulting firms.
You might need to understand what fits you well. Every stage of the company’s application process becomes as equally important as every minute on the football game between Real Madrid and Barcelona. CV’s, CL, Case Studies, Initial interviews, Fit interviews, HR interviews, Partner interviews – all start looking like those challenges you always wanted to jump on just as the athletes would do in the hurdle trainings. CV is the first thing that will land you an interview and one of the biggest challenges that most candidates face – writing the resume. Every CV needs to be tailored to the needs of the company and role and the best bet is to explore the sample CV options that these companies provide, else we always have the option of ‘Google’ing in this flat world. I personally am a huge fan of case studies. While there are no definite solutions to it but it just tickles your brain to define the most suitable solution in a short span of time backed with numbers and analysis. Listening skills, body language, question asking abilities, character – gives you a pint of the gallon of projects that are in store. The basic golden rule like for any game or challenge is to PRACTICE and to PREPARE in advance.
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