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What its like to work as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) - read the full article about it consulting 2021, IT Consulting and from RichyG on Qualified.One
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hey everybody today im really excited because its my first user requested subject that i can talk about and that is what its like to work for the boston consulting group or bcg so first ill tell you my experience with consulting because i started off as an engineer doing software and working normal hours and then i went to business school at wharton the first week i was in the consulting club and it was huge right wharton puts out a lot of consultants and the place was packed everybody wanted to go into consulting it seems or banking and this you know this woman was up there talking about her experience at mckinsey and she said yeah we did this we advise people and we worked our normal 80 hours a week and i heard that and i almost fell off the chair i had never heard about anybody working an 80 hour work week before i had always thought you know 40 was normal and i and i raised my hand i said did i just hear you say that you worked 80 hours a week everybody looked at me like i was crazy and shes like yeah of course im like well scratch consulting off the list because im not working 80 hours a week thats stupid right i was making good money and that why would i do that well fast forward two years i end up working for the boston consultant group in consulting traveling going to the clients and working my 80 hours a week so today im gonna tell you what that was like consulting comes in all different shapes and sizes theres the elite strategy management consulting of bcg bain and mckinsey and then there are more operational consulting like accenture ibm consulting and maybe deloitte and then theres very specialty consulting like marketing consulting or technology consulting different things like that so you can get consulting in everything i worked for the boston consulting group for four years which is one of the management strategy consulting companies what you do as a consultant is you go into one of these companies and you first try and figure out what exactly the problem is so theres usually a a senior executive that youre uh interacting with and then you figure out exactly what it is theyre trying to solve then you break up into teams usually depending on how big the problem is and you dig into the data and you go and talk with all the employees you try and pull data from wherever you can you might do market analysis you might do some interviews with the markets it depends it whatever the the case requires and then you work to try and crack the case youre trying to solve the problem and give a recommendation to the client so you say okay heres your problem this is what we saw this is what we heard from you here is the data that we gathered and this is the evidence that we have this leads us to this conclusion this is what you should do with your business and when you are a young associate or a consultant you get access to top top level management ceos executive vice presidents and and and the very top of large organizations and its really exciting and you really add value by advising them on what to do with the business when youre solving a case when youre working on a case typically most consulting companies will travel to the client and thats a big part of the lifestyle so you have to be at the client side typically about four or five days a week so usually youre flying out monday morning sometimes sunday night and then coming back on thursday evening and during that time basically you just work you are completely engaged with the project and it makes sense from the clients perspective theyre paying a lot of money millions and millions of dollars for you to be there so they want to get that face time they want to see that you are working but also its a lot easier to go talk to the employees talk to the people that you need to when you are there on site typically one of these cases lasts from two weeks on a real short one but a typical case is probably six weeks to six months on a longer one they dont usually last longer than that unless you get follow on work or so on youre assigned to this case and then you have to become an expert in whatever the field it is that youre going to be consulting on so you can work in different industries and you have to come up to speed on that industry it might be the technology industry something i know well or it might be trucking or it might be pharma or it might be consumer goods all of these you might be assigned to a case one after another so theres a whole research division in these companies that you can just tell them i need to become an expert in trucking and in specifically uh part distribution and they will bring all this knowledge they will research that and give you a ton of the research so that you can go through it right in the beginning and become an expert then you go meet the client you you all as a team figure out what the case is about and then you break up into teams and you start solving each of the different components and the work is intense its really intense because the client meetings are set in advance typically on a normal cadence and then you have to be ready with real value at each of those meetings theres no excuses to not have your stuff together so if you have to work until 2am 4am pull an all-nighter youre gonna do it and youre traveling at that time so youre in a hotel room youre going to the client that is basically your life so often we would go to sleep late usually after midnight wake up early 6 7 a.m we would go into the client in the early morning work all day then grab dinner together and then work in the hotel rooms until well past midnight there are a few things in consulting that really get to you after a while and some people seem just built for this and other people are not most people i think are not on the long term so certainly 80 hour work weeks thats a real thing its a real thing and its a normal thing even though they try to work on work-life balance and they do a lot to to help 80-hour 60-hour work weeks its it happens a ton so thats something to consider and that takes a toll on your body and on your mind and so on even though its very rewarding work the other thing is the travel so the travel really the first year its exciting youre in the top hotels youre flying business class everywhere you can eat at any restaurant that you want you have a great expense account so you can go to all these great cities and live it up at least for you know going to the restaurants and the hotels and you have status on all the airlines you have status on at the hotels you can you know choose whatever you want to eat every night so the first year is very glamorous youre like wow this is amazing and you you know youre really into it but then after the second year youre like okay i recognize this this is uh this is normal its just like last year the third year youre kind of like whoa im doing this every week and you know fine restaurants they all kind of feel the same really to me anyway maybe not to other people but by the third year they all just felt the same it was all just food and i just want to go home and and work and then go to sleep so thats an issue and also of course with travel youre gone from your home base for four or five days a week that takes a huge toll so youre away from home traveling from away from friends and family for the entire week and that is really difficult to build and sustain relationships back home because most people dont really understand that right when youre when youre a consultant you have to put in those hours because youre youre youre solving really hard problems that the company themselves cant even solve so you have to be there you have to work those kind of hours youre not available for your loved ones and your friends and that can be devastating and i know quite a few people that have had real relationship trouble because in many ways because of their consulting career so be careful on that so overall consulting for me was a great experience but of course its got advantages and disadvantages it can be a wonderful career accelerator so when you see a consulting company on somebodys resume you think oh this person is analytical they can solve business problems and so on its sort of a stamp of approval you get an idea of where theyre coming from however it has disadvantages for sure the heavy workload the travel even though the pay is good the kind of per hourly pay is lower but you learn a lot so all kinds of things to weigh and if thats success for you and thats your trajectory great go for it and its a lot of fun and you learn a ton so if you like this content please smash the like button it helps me out a lot just to get in with the youtube algorithm and please subscribe hit the notification bell as well so you can see content coming up great to see you have a great day
RichyG: What its like to work as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) - IT Consulting