Jobs at consulting firms have long been highly sought after by recent graduates and MBAs. A career advisor at Harvard University says there are other ways to start your career than just consulting. He recommends looking for a company that has a dedicated early career rotation program.
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Landing a job at a top consulting firm may be the ultimate dream for many business students, but not everyone who applies is successful. Additionally, some young professionals may not be as interested in the industry as their previous MBAs.
However, there are other options for recent graduates who still want the broader experience that typically comes with working in the consulting industry.
Golic Ng, a career advisor at Harvard University and author of “The Unspoken Rules,” told Business Insider that many students are eager to get into consulting, but “just don’t have a firm footing.” There are many students who just want to build their own.” And while consulting firms provide a great stepping stone to that, it’s not just consulting firms that can provide a great stepping stone,” he said.
Consulting has long been attractive to young professionals drawn to the prestige that comes with working for a major company. Ng said these companies tend to do a good job of creating a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) on campus, which is largely why many students feel pressured to take these jobs. He said this is because people around him have decided that it is the ultimate prey.
However, Ng said he is seeing an increase in students taking internships at consulting firms and then choosing not to return to full-time work. Part of the reason, he believes, is that graduates, especially Gen Z, are increasingly looking for meaning in their careers.
Rather than defaulting to the allure of consulting, we encourage students to look for other ways to reap the benefits of starting a career in consulting.
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That’s where a dedicated early career program comes into play.
Young consultants previously told BI that one of the biggest benefits of their job is that they learn a lot and very quickly. By working on a different project every few months, they said, they were able to gain a lot of work experience and get a better idea of what role they ultimately wanted to pursue.
Ng said these are exactly the perks that new graduates get at companies with early career programs. Some of the best programs to look for are those that offer one- or two-year rotation programs that allow new employees to rotate through different aspects of the business, such as sales, marketing, human resources, and operations.
“Consulting is an opportunity to meet different people with different types of business problems and different backgrounds,” says Ng. “More and more companies are realizing that they can actually provide very competitive experiences through these leadership development and rotation programs.”
Mr Ng said one of the most impressive students he had ever mentored was eyeing a job at a consulting firm, but competition was fierce. He looked for other options and ultimately accepted a role in a media company’s early professional leadership development program.
Ng compiled a list of more than 1,000 companies with early career programs. He encouraged young professionals to filter the list by industry of interest. For those who aren’t sure which industry applies, he said it’s helpful to simply think about which words are most interesting to you, or which brands actually touch your everyday life.
Some of Ng’s favorite companies to introduce to young professionals include GE, Fifth Third Bank, Aon, CNBC/NBC Universal, Granger, and Salesforce. He has worked with people at each of these companies and said their job is to make sure young talent has access to the resources they need to learn and advance.
His list of technology companies with dedicated early career programs includes Nvidia, PayPal, Snap, Dropbox, Zoom, and Workday. And if you’re interested in finance, his list of top companies offering graduate programs include UBS, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and Piper Sandler.
Mr Ng said that while consulting can be a great career and an entry-level job, it shouldn’t necessarily be the default goal for every ambitious student, adding: “Most people want to become a consultant. I think it’s because a friend told me so.” Honorable. ”
“But there’s a bigger world out there,” he said. “And you may discover, as many people do too late, that there is actually a more direct path to doing what you want to do.”
