Because I get bored easily! …. really…. that’s it!
For more context - I joined Consulting after working for over 8 years in Big 4 Audit and international Compliance for 5 years. I was really lucky to get an internship/articleship in a Big 4 Audit firm when I started my career. It opened so many doors for me later but thework itself was mind numbing. In fact, I’ve been told by one of my seniors that “I viewed Audit as a liability!!!” I left the Big 4 firm as soon as my 3-year internship ended and without a job in hand! THAT’S how much I hated audit. I joined a Risk Consulting firm soon after that had projects all over the world. That was very exciting to me as I had never traveled internationally, on my own before. The work was ok but the lifestyle was great! But the learning stopped after the first few years and so I started applying to top B-schools to fulfill my dream of doing an MBA. After my MBA I had 2 options in B-school placements. The first job was working for a global bank, doing more of the same thing I did pre-MBA for more money. The second was to try something radically different with the potential to learn and grow more. This was the opportunity to pivot to Management Consulting. So, I moved to Consulting after my MBA and was very excited about my new career….till I actually started it that is! Tbh, I cried the first day I started working at a Big4 Consulting firm! I was at a firm event, with all international senior Partners in attendance, and I was standing outside the venue - talking to my boyfriend - in tears - thinking I had made the worst mistake of my career by choosing this profession. The people were so different in the way they communicated, their executive presence, confidence, and (what seemed like at the time) extroverted behavior unnerved me. I was like a fish out of water and very VERY uncomfortable. In fact I almost quit after we had an internal training that included a personality assessment. I felt there was no point being in a profession where my personality type was rare if not non-existent. If you haven’t taken the Myers Briggs personality test, I highly recommend it. Any guesses for my personality type? I (Introvert) N (Intuition) F(Feeling) J (Judging). But I ended up staying 10 years. Why? Because that Consulting made me push the borders of my comfort zone… EVERY. SINGLE.DAY. Can’t say the same about many other professions out there. Even though my personality type wasn’t the best fit for Consulting, I realized I could pick the best learnings from Consulting and create a unique style that resonated with many clients who didn’t quite like the slick overconfident consultant types. So here’s what made me stay a decade in full-time Consulting: 1. Constant learning - As a Consultant, it is your job to stay one (or a few!) steps ahead of your clients. That means: · knowing and more importantly, having a point of view on industry trends, · training yourself on the latest technology/ software · applying its features to solve the issues faced by your clients · developing strategies to constantly innovate and create efficiencies for your clients Only after spending a a few years in Big 4 Consulting and climbing up the ladder, did I understand the level of effort and time investment it takes to become a professional with this depth of knowledge and the ability to apply it to multiple clients with different issues/challenges. I once worked for a Big4 Consulting firm that invested in a 2-year training effort to get 40,000 people certified in various Digital/ Automation software! This is the extent to which firms need to invest in their people to enable them to serve clients. 2. Reinventing my brand – Before I joined Consulting, I had just about heard of an Elevator Pitch. I didn’t appreciate how important it is to know your Elevator Pitch and your Brand as a consultant (yes – those are 2 separate things!). Imagine being an outsider on every project and billing by the hour for your ‘expertise’. Obviously the client stakeholders would want to know what exactly you are doing at the project. This is your elevator pitch for the project. Now extrapolate that to an internal discussion with a new Partner, who wants to know the value you bring to the firm/ project you are on. (Also known as, “why did the firm hire you!?”) This is your internal elevator pitch for your firm. And now think about a combination of the value you deliver to your clients, skills and experience you bring to your firm AND the way you are developing 1 or more skills (e.g. IT Cloud strategy, Finance operating model etc.) to be “known” for a specific area in the firm. This is your Brand. As you focus on new skill sets you want to develop, so you will build your Brand. 3. Mentoring and developing people - This is the part I really enjoyed once I had built a solid brand within my Consulting firm. Giving back by mentoring and informally coaching new consultants or consultants going through milestones like promotion, parenthood etc. made the Consulting experience really “human” for me. And as the famous quote goes: “They may forget what you said — but they will never forget how you made them feel.” I learnt as much from the exercise as I gave out. And I built friendships and associations that have helped me back to this day. 4. Building, growing and re-building my network - In my early Consulting days I was naive enough to think that I had “built my network” if I knew 2 key Partners. I got a rude shock when I came back from my 2nd maternity leave to see that the main Partner who I worked with, had retired (unexpectedly) from the firm. So my network was totally wiped out in a week!
I had to learn, the hard way, to build a network that was deep AND wide enough to support me through such upheavals. But once I developed that muscle, I was golden. 5. The people - It’s so true when they say that you become the average of the 5 people you spend most of your time with (I’m paraphrasing). I worked with really smart, confident and ingenious people in Consulting, who had excellent presence and communication skills. This polish definitely rubbed off on me over the years.
Most importantly, I learned to develop a Consulting mindset - the big picture thinking and problem-solving skills that Consultants help C-suite executives with. Consulting projects allowed me access to senior leadership in Fortune 50 companies, who would have never given me time, let alone seriously considered my ideas to solve their challenges. 6. Developing the “life skills” – Consulting teaches you core skills that are transferrable to any profession. Be it client relationships, project management, storyboarding, leading workshops, analytics or problem solving. When I moved to Industry after 10 years in Consulting, I definitely leveraged my Consulting skills and had an edge over other peers because of the way I presented and analyzed business cases. I went through several milestones in my consulting career and I doubt if any other profession would have given me the opportunities for growth I got as a Big4 Consultant . Consulting is not for the faint-hearted though. (Check out my other answers for why people leave consulting) But I will say that the learning and professional edge you get is well worth it.
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Got more questions on Consulting? Comment below or email me at punya@byondgood.com. Punya is a former management consultant with 15 years of experience at 2 Big4 firms, serving top Fortune500 clients. She has lived and worked in 6 countries and changed 3 careers working across several industries. Punya is passionate about coaching new and aspiring Consultants to succeed in Management Consulting.
