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Question from a college student about lifestyle as a Management Consultant

by | Dec 13, 2014 | Business, career, career path, career-life balance, consulting, professional advice, real life stuff | 0 comments

The email below is from a reader who is wondering about something that concerns most folks who consider careers in management consulting: the lifestyle. Specifically, he is wondering about how the life of a consultant might impact a young family and, in turn, whether that is taken into consideration during the hiring/recruiting process.

I found his questions to be really good ones, but I had to be careful in answering them because it is difficult to generalize from firm to firm. I think that I provided him with a balanced, general perspective on things.

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CR wrote:

Hello,

I am a undergraduate engineering student at USC in Los Angeles. I am considering a career in consulting, and wondering about the effects of the crazy lifestyle on a young family, and if these companies consider that at all in the hiring process? Also, I’m majoring in Industrial and Systems Engineering, considering a minor in Management Consulting or Business Finance, wondering if you have any advice on the issue?

Thanks!

CR

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My response:

CR,

I hope this message finds you well.

Thanks for reaching out to me with your questions. I get a kick out of sharing my insights with people to help them guide their paths forward, especially folks who are still in college. It is definitely a good thing to be thinking through these kids of issues early on in the game while you still have limitless choices of where you can take your career.

OK, now on to your questions…Please see below for my responses:

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  1. I am considering a career in consulting, and wondering about the effects of the crazy lifestyle on a young family, and if these companies consider that at all in the hiring process?

    Working in consulting is tough. If you’ve read through any of my past blog entries, I’ve written about it more than a few times. Every case is different and is based on the people involved, but, if one has a young family, there will inevitably be some kind of impact from that person having to travel a lot for work and often work on the weekends when he/she is home. There’s no way around that.

    The firms are well aware of these concerns and usually discuss it in some way during the recruiting process. If you go to any information sessions for consulting firms, you will likely hear something about the lifestyle pressures from the job and how the given firm allows flexibility to help alleviate those concerns. When a job requires travel from Monday (or, in some cases, Sunday) to Thursday (or, in some cases, Friday), there are bound to be fears among people considering jumping into the industry, so firms know that they have to talk to those issues during the recruiting process.

    I do believe that firms have good intentions of allowing for flexibility for its consultants, but, to put it bluntly, clients pay a lot of money to get a piece of work done and, no matter what, that work done. In turn, most consulting firms pay their consultants well and expect them to handle whatever issues are required in order for them to deliver on client work. Whether those issues involve family, fitness, stress management, or anything else, it will be incumbent on you as the consultant to ensure that you balance everything to get the job done while (*hopefully*) having a happy life. I wouldn’t say that there’s a good or bad there…it just is what it is.

    When it comes down to it, people go into management consulting for a variety of reasons, but things like exposure to interesting work, a range of industry/functional areas, pedigree/reputation associated with working for a given firm (or from simply having been a consultant at all), and compensation are key. Most people go into the game knowing that there will have to be a trade-off involved with getting those benefits and are willing to accept those trade-offs for a certain amount of time.

    Once the time comes when the benefits don’t make up for the sacrifices, folks can make the choice to leave their firms and move on to good roles in a variety of industries. The question is how long it will take to hit that “I’m done with this way of life” point and, for the majority of people, that period of time isn’t that long, which is why the average tenure in consulting is about 2 years. In the meantime, they’ve gained a ton of knowledge and skills that can be deployed for the rest of their careers. Having gone through it myself, the sacrifices suck in the moment, but, in the long-term, they’re well worth it.

    Let me close out this one with a personal story… Back in 2009, I was sort of getting my mind back right after having dealt with a lot of stress related to my career. One night, I decided to sit down and just let my feelings pass from my brain and through my fingers…Next thing I knew, I had a pretty long blog entry that ended up getting a ton of hits back then. I thought that seeing my comments from that time might be helpful to you. You can find the blog entry at https://marquisparker.com/2009/04/never-get-too-busy-making-living-that/.

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  2. Also, I’m majoring in Industrial and Systems Engineering, considering a minor in Management Consulting or Business Finance, wondering if you have any advice on the issue?

    I’m a little confused about what you’re asking me here. I think that you’re asking for my perspective on which minor to choose, so I’m going to answer that question.

    If your goal is to pursue a career in consulting, then you might want to strongly consider getting the Management Consulting minor. I don’t know which specific courses would be in that kind of curriculum, but I’d imagine that you’d learn some key concepts, like structured problem solving, hypothesis-based analysis, data analysis, and business communication. In other words, it sounds like you’d get some classroom training in topics that would be key success factors if you were to become a Consultant.

    The most important asset that you’d get from those Management Consulting classes is an introduction on how to think and work like a Consultant, which should prove to be very useful during the recruiting process. Those of us who make a run at that industry without any academic background in the area end up having to learn to think in the structured manner that firms want while we’re prepping for interviews. Folks who have a chance to study Management Consulting in a classroom setting have a deeper introduction into that way of thinking, so I’d imagine that the case interview would be a breeze for a person like that.

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I hope that you’ve found my comments above to be helpful. It’s pretty impressive that you had the presence of mind to ask about this kind of stuff while you’re still in college. You’re waaaaaaay ahead of where I was at your age. Hell, I didn’t even think to be concerned about the lifestyle side of consulting until I was already a few weeks I to my time at McKinsey.

Take care and good luck with the new academic year.

Marquis