Why you should NOT join Consulting (horror stories, mental health)
why you should not go into consulting this is the topic for today's video it's a bit of an unusual topic if you know the other videos on my channel and indeed i also want to make the format of today's video a little bit different than otherwise because today i really want to give you a real talk i want to show some real stories to you tell you really about my personal experiences and thereby talk about why i really think that for some people probably consulting is not the right thing and also really explain that to you what really the downsides of the career are i hope i also touch a couple of things which are not the obvious reasons like you travel a lot i think we all know this but let's really go into the details of this and so indeed the format i want to do it here today also in the video format is that i will just sit down here with you i wrote a couple of notes here on my piece of paper and i just really want to have a heart to heart conversation with you which is really frank probably was a bit less edited this video than usual so apologize if maybe i just talk a bit more or are less structured than usual because again this will just be due to the nature of this video just because i want to be as frank and as open as possible with you today so in the spirit welcome to another coffee break here on my channel from learning i will of course drink coffee as usual and i will probably put it down here next to me or please do not wonder if i'll casually pick it up again on my channel i want to help you to become successful in the first years of your career and again just to start this also off to make sure that i'm not being misunderstood here if you've seen other videos on my channel you know that i'm in general a very big fan of consulting i'm a very big proponent of consulting and this was not just fake i truly believe that i truly believe that consulting is a great extraordinary career opportunity for many many people out there i really mean this by heart though it's not only positive what you experienced there for sure i had some dark moments for sure to me that happened things which weren't that great and i want to talk about this as well also on the channel just just in terms of being fair right because i believe that if you decide yourself to start consulting then you should know what you're getting yourself into and then also what maybe some things are which may be a bit nicer in other career paths because of course even though i like consulting a lot by no means i want to claim that consulting is the only career path that you can pursue to become successful or to be happy or to have a great life of course there are many other alternatives i mean i hope that this is obvious as well so let's talk about these things and i have prepared three points i want to talk about and maybe if i just kind of read the topic of the point it might sound a bit obvious to you but again i hope to touch also a couple of not so obvious points here and the first point i want to talk about is the pressure the pressure that you will feel when working in consulting especially also as as a junior really from the start and here just really try to put yourselves in the shoes of of a young consultant how will your day look like and i'm especially as always talking about these very large tier one strategy consulting firms with some other firms that might be a bit different of course not all firms are the same and so on and so forth you know this right but let's talk about this type of firm and indeed they are often from day one from week one after the first onboarding days or so you will be sitting at the client on an actual client project and you will have significant responsibilities the team sizes are very small on a typical mbb type of project you will be one of two three four five consultants and you will very early on be responsible for a full work stream and if for whatever reason your work stream isn't doing well the pressure is on let me just tell you this because everybody is so loaded so full of work it's not the case as in many other larger companies that your colleagues can just pick up the work and just help you out necessarily can just do the work for you for whatever reason you do not really manage of course there will be a project lead who will coach you who will help you who will really benefit you also try to develop you and in difficult meetings also join you but even then very early you will have meetings with also rather senior clients on many projects alone you will sit alone with them and then again for all kinds of reasons it wouldn't be unusual that maybe a client isn't happy with you with your work with the value that you deliver with the results that you bring and he will criticize you and you might not get a long way with him or her whatever the client is the client might complain to your project lead to your partner and then depending on how it goes i mean again depends on the circumstances but then rather quickly sometimes you will really also be very quickly in the focus of the critique and if this happens also just mentally psychologically but can be extremely tough imagine going into the team room every day you're working with clients who you know don't like you don't appreciate you don't want to work with you and of course this also often has political reasons right some clients might literally be incentivized to not make you succeed to make you fail and of course in an ideal situation your team will recognize this will help you out will support you and this is also how it is most of the times but not always and you know this can really be tough and i also made a video about that talking about stress and anxiety in situations like this i will link it somewhere above here where i'm sharing things like this and i was explaining a bit more also more personal stories but i mean i can tell you let me be honest here i had projects where i really just felt like so miserable like also psychologically so bad i remember one time i just went to the client toilet locked myself into a toilet cabin and just because i couldn't handle the situation anymore in the team room sitting together with the colleagues just coming out of a client meeting just really being heavily criticized by the client and then also often feeling powerless because i mean sometimes of course the criticism is right but especially as a junior you then lack sometimes also the the political agility to really play this in the right way there are also things that are out of your control and very frankly i've seen colleagues who just were crushed by that i mean who really spent like one or two years in this atmosphere and really psychologically mentally probably even had like some more or less like lasting damages from that because it can be like extremely difficult extremely tough and if you do not develop some some really mental resilience strategies then this can really take a toll on you and again now i also don't take me wrong i i don't want to not make consigning sound like mental abuse or anything like that i mean clearly there are many many other things where you have much worse experience than what you can experience there but again i think on some people it can be extremely tough extremely difficult i for sure had my dark moments as well i believe there's like almost no concern for sure no consultant i personally know who didn't have like ones or two situations on projects but i really feel badly also really mentally for for all kinds of reasons of course the great thing in consulting is that then after the project is always the next project where you then work with a new team with a new client with the new situation and also here in terms of your career only if you fail on one project for whatever reason this doesn't mean that you need to leave the firm or that you need to get kicked out or whatever right i mean it's not like that but still this mental pressure is a thing and i also like to compare this to some other jobs because i mean there are jobs where you just go into the office you sit down there you do your work and then at five or six pm you leave the office and then at home there's really nothing else you need to think about anymore like you have like an empty head you know these are these more if you want to call it this way simple jobs i don't know don't mean this in any derogatory way but this for sure is not how your job in consulting will be i mean you will leave the office you will sit at your desk at night late at night still continue to work potentially late after midnight next morning back in the team room and then on the friday on the weekend yes like there is a strong culture at least what i experienced to not work on the weekend but for sure you're already thinking of monday i mean clearly it's not a job where you just have an empty head once you're home or anything like this especially if you compare this to some other careers so this is the first truth the first downside the first thing you need to be aware of this pressure and of course many things i just talked about are very closely and directly related also to the learning curve i mean these are situations just why you learn so much i mean it is just because you are under so much pressure that you develop yourself in such a quick way that you need to learn this political game you need to learn to interacting with senior clients that have their own agenda and so on i mean also again you need to understand that this is closely linked right but still this is part of the reality as well this is what it is so hope i didn't now already talk too much and too long here i have a bit of a feeling this one might get into a bit of a longer video but let me know take a zip of coffee here and because of the second point i want to talk about the second thing that i believe really people underestimate is this travel aspect and i know i said this in the beginning that i don't want to talk too much about the obvious stuff so let's cover that quickly first right so i mean what is the obvious stuff about the whole travel discussion of course you will be away from home monday to thursday again i will link another video up here where i talked about the typical work week in the life of a consultant so this interests you how like the schedule looks like where you are at what point in time at least especially like until end of 2019 before the current health situation of course most people are at home office but for this place i would um have a look at that video but what i really mean with the travel is that it's really more than that right and of course the one part of it is that it can be very glamorous and you know you might fly business class around the country a lot of course that feels glamorous you have all the status cards of all the airlines of all the big hotel chains you might stay in some great very very amazing hotels these are the nice aspects and yes this is nice and even after several years i still enjoyed that okay i mean with the dancer of course that you are away from home away from the family this is still a nice aspect but still the rarity is that not every project is in a nice big city where you have this infrastructure where you can enjoy all this and for me probably at least every third or every fourth project for me was at some place very deep like in the middle of nowhere in the countryside where it was really difficult to get to i mean i remember being like at some very very rural location in the uk there was only a discount carrier taking you there so for sure nothing like business class or any like great status with launches or so experience at the airport then there was a long ride with the with a car than really to get that location on the logistics would take you hours every day would mean that you would need to wake up i believe i was waking up on 4 am every monday just to get there and then was like super late when i arrived back on thursday but then also these places often there aren't great hotels or anything like that so especially at this point i was on a hotel it was like really not a great italian i'm i'm not like it's not even that you know i'm the guy who to whom it is so important that it's so luxurious or whatever but it was really not a great place it was in the winter it was cold i remember freezing at night because the heating in this hotel wasn't working properly i just needed to like take several sweatshirts on just because i was literally freezing there right the food was super bad there was not any restaurant close by that had really like a decent food quality and of course this is so demoralizing if you know you work so much you work so late and you are in the hotel room and then it's cold and the food is bad and i mean this just adds so much to this also really mental pressure that you have and again there are some glamorous parts sometimes it can be great again i had great experiences in amazing hotels of course these are the nice sides but don't underestimate how many also very big very large companies have sometimes their headquarters at very very rural places or of course you are not always at the headquarters maybe you are working in in in production and then you are in some production factory somewhere in the middle of nowhere working with these people um it can be tough and this again adds to this mental situation to the pressure it adds to this overall sometimes really really bad situation that you can then find yourself in this is just also part of the reality this was the second point i wanted to share here today the third point is the learning curve and specifically what's maybe not so great about the learning curve because most people want to join consulting who are interested in a career in consulting do this because they believe that the learning curve is amazing and again like overall i agree overall i believe the learning curve is great it's amazing at least much better than most other career paths that you can take because specifically you just have exposure to a very high number of industries a very high number of different functions like probably there's no other career path where like in a couple of years you will likely have worked in retail in automotive in pharma and telecommunications i mean what you see what you can do is great though still to some extent it does get repetitive this is also part of the truth and probably this is even worse in for instance i.t consulting types of firms where the projects are even longer the type of projects that you do are even more similar but i would argue even in strategy consulting with mbb type of consulting firms it gets repetitive not necessarily regarding the the contents that you do because often yes it is different but even here over time you will be asked to specialize more and more after two or three years you will really focus much more on specific industries specific types of functions of types of projects because of course this is then where you build knowledge and then of course everybody wants you to do this again because this is really something you've learned and you're really good at i mean it makes sense but of course then the contents start to repeat after some time but even if you do do different things the overall structure the type of things that you do are very similar i mean always like in the first week you always have a client kickoff right so you prepare this client kickoff then you start the project you have expert calls calls with internal experts other partners who do similar things already in the past maybe some external aspects experts that you talk to this is then this next phase then you have your weekly draw fixed meetings your weekly regular meetings with the clients but then you always prepare this through a fixed document you talk about this with the client then you prepare your analysis get some data build an excel model crunch the numbers derive this share this back with a client discuss it then every second week you have a steer co so it's a big steering committee the big committee where usually with what level type of members you're discussing the results again the process is always the same the partner comes in discuss this with you then do an iteration loop another iteration loop until you have the document then present it in front of the board get the feedback so this kind of type of activities that you do these types of discussions it really starts to get repetitive after some point again probably much more interesting than many other career jobs but after you did this a couple of years it doesn't necessarily feel like this anymore like the very first time like the very first years to do this and of course this is also part of the reason but then after a couple of years many people do switch right many people do then transition and of course then once your project lead the new experience that you add is really managing the team leading the team this is a new experience once you are then a partner here the new experiences really are responsible for acquiring your business doing sales if you want to call it this way of course this is your new experience but i would argue depending on what exactly then you do but then there are some exit paths that you could take that really then increase your learning curve much more and here one of the things i missed most in terms of consulting in terms of the learning for sure was really this operational experience because let's be frank it's very different to just be the expert just tell other people in a smart way what they should do you know this is one thing and of course this is important and a great skill to have you understand intellectually what's right but they're really implementing something like this in an organization talking to the people making them do the things that you want them to do all of this might sound obvious to you as a consultant and probably i even thought that this was rather easy you know when i was a consulter but now after a couple of years and more operational roles after i have consulting so you know i worked for two years at a at a cto position in a retail company now since this year i transitioned into a chief revenue officer position at a medium-sized company here in munich when you're responsible for your team when you need to talk and work with real people and maybe then also with people where not everybody has an ivy league education where not everybody is getting paid a six-digit salary because of course these people are then super motivated will do everything you ask them to do right but maybe with people also with other profiles motivating these people influencing them to really work together with you on the things that are important to you and then also that they do it the way that you believe is right and you know it's right this is really a significant challenge and i really think that this is an experience that you do not learn do not get in considering because therefore you often just stops in the theory at least for most types of projects so this is my third point let me just recap first the pressure that you are on early on can be immense can be unbearable at least it feels at times that it's unbearable and can really crush you especially if you are like your mental health isn't already in a strong place in the beginning you're not really able to build some good resilience strategies here second this travel that just adds on it can be really really tough on you and third the solar repetition yes the learning curve is great but maybe not always as great as you think it is or as you think it will be when you join consulting these are my truths these are the things where i believe that maybe consulting is not the right career path for everybody and at least i believe it's very fair that you know about this before you start your career in consulting this is just my perspective my opinion of course i trust other people might have had different experiences also so i'm not claiming that this is now the reality the truth for everybody i'd love to get your perspective on that as well i mean what were these maybe darker moments darker situations not so great experiences that you had let me know in the comments i'd love to to to interact with you on that as you know i will do my best to answer every comment but i trust it would also be interesting to other people who watch this video to learn from your other experiences as well and you know it as always if you took some value out of this video i'd really love you if you hit the like button and subscribe for more content like this also a big thank you to all the members of firm learning for your support i really appreciate it my name is heinrich i release weekly videos here on my channel firm learning so stay tuned until next week until next saturday all the best to you this is heine from from learning and bye bye
2021-06-23 06:45
