Management Consulting Program that I personally lead at Blue Chapter: https://bluechapter.com/consulting-experience-program-gen/
If you are applying for fall 2024 MBA programs, check out the global MBA fellowship program: https://bluechapter.com/global-mba-fellow/
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Follow me here LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavan-sathiraju/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/pavan.sathiraju
*****
Management consulting is a glamorized profession. I worked at McKinsey and Company for 7-8 years and had ups and downs in my career. In one of the appraisal cycles, I was rated to be among the top 2% of McKinsey consultants. This is a tough feat to achieve but in another appraisal cycle, I was almost asked to leave. In this video, I highlight some of the cons of consulting and the negative aspects of being a management consultant.
The first negative aspect is well-known. It is the amount of effort you must put in daily. As a management consultant, you would be working 12-14 hours every day Monday through Friday. You thus don’t have time for anything other than work. Personal life takes a backseat. Thus the management consulting work-life balance is pretty skewed. Some consultants even have to work on Saturdays and Sundays but that’s not the case at McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and Kearneys of the world.
I quit McKinsey because I had a child and a family that I wanted to spend more time with even on a weekday. In consulting families, wives often call their husbands weekend husbands. The next point is excessive traveling. If you travel a lot as a consultant then mostly you will use the same airline to travel with. However, as you keep traveling you collect some points which you can later convert into free tickets or free hotel stays. But as you keep traveling again and again, this travel will get to you pretty quickly.
The other point is the impostor syndrome. You will be working with some of the best minds in the industry. People from the best colleges and universities across the world. But while you are working with these people you will start questioning your own worth. This is a classic case of Impostor Syndrome. When you start questioning your own caliber, the initial stages of being a consultant will be pretty rough for you. But as you progress in your journey, you will notice that these thoughts willl slowly subside.
The fourth issue you will face will be that while working with these good people you will not be able to stay connected with them for a very long time. Your projects won’t last beyond 2 months. You will not have the ability to build a long-term relationship with any of your colleagues. You need to put in a lot of effort to build that connection with the other person. The fifth point is that many clients will question your existence itself.
They will ask you point blank if it is worth spending millions of dollars on consultants. You will face these questions many times and every time I faced such questions I asked the client to ask these questions to my manager since as an entry-level consultant I couldn’t answer these for them. You will face these uncomfortable questions many times in your career. You need to manage these problems efficiently.
*****
About Me
I publish meaningful and valuable content on this channel. My aim is to make business news more accessible and easy to grasp. If you find my videos informative and insightful then make sure to subscribe and leave a comment. I’ll see you in the next video
*****
Chapters
0:00 - Intro
0:59 - #1 - Work-Life Balance
1:53 - #2 - Travel
2:30 - #3 - Impostor Syndrome
3:18 - #4 - Short term connections
3:50 - #5 - Questioning your existence
4:29 - Summary
5:09 - Outro
If you are applying for fall 2024 MBA programs, check out the global MBA fellowship program: https://bluechapter.com/global-mba-fellow/
*****
Follow me here LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavan-sathiraju/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/pavan.sathiraju
*****
Management consulting is a glamorized profession. I worked at McKinsey and Company for 7-8 years and had ups and downs in my career. In one of the appraisal cycles, I was rated to be among the top 2% of McKinsey consultants. This is a tough feat to achieve but in another appraisal cycle, I was almost asked to leave. In this video, I highlight some of the cons of consulting and the negative aspects of being a management consultant.
The first negative aspect is well-known. It is the amount of effort you must put in daily. As a management consultant, you would be working 12-14 hours every day Monday through Friday. You thus don’t have time for anything other than work. Personal life takes a backseat. Thus the management consulting work-life balance is pretty skewed. Some consultants even have to work on Saturdays and Sundays but that’s not the case at McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and Kearneys of the world.
I quit McKinsey because I had a child and a family that I wanted to spend more time with even on a weekday. In consulting families, wives often call their husbands weekend husbands. The next point is excessive traveling. If you travel a lot as a consultant then mostly you will use the same airline to travel with. However, as you keep traveling you collect some points which you can later convert into free tickets or free hotel stays. But as you keep traveling again and again, this travel will get to you pretty quickly.
The other point is the impostor syndrome. You will be working with some of the best minds in the industry. People from the best colleges and universities across the world. But while you are working with these people you will start questioning your own worth. This is a classic case of Impostor Syndrome. When you start questioning your own caliber, the initial stages of being a consultant will be pretty rough for you. But as you progress in your journey, you will notice that these thoughts willl slowly subside.
The fourth issue you will face will be that while working with these good people you will not be able to stay connected with them for a very long time. Your projects won’t last beyond 2 months. You will not have the ability to build a long-term relationship with any of your colleagues. You need to put in a lot of effort to build that connection with the other person. The fifth point is that many clients will question your existence itself.
They will ask you point blank if it is worth spending millions of dollars on consultants. You will face these questions many times and every time I faced such questions I asked the client to ask these questions to my manager since as an entry-level consultant I couldn’t answer these for them. You will face these uncomfortable questions many times in your career. You need to manage these problems efficiently.
*****
About Me
I publish meaningful and valuable content on this channel. My aim is to make business news more accessible and easy to grasp. If you find my videos informative and insightful then make sure to subscribe and leave a comment. I’ll see you in the next video
*****
Chapters
0:00 - Intro
0:59 - #1 - Work-Life Balance
1:53 - #2 - Travel
2:30 - #3 - Impostor Syndrome
3:18 - #4 - Short term connections
3:50 - #5 - Questioning your existence
4:29 - Summary
5:09 - Outro
- Category
- Management
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