Got some Q&A from recent college graduates. Some want to get into consulting, some want to make sure they are not getting stuck in a job that doesn’t make sense for themselves.
TLDR; skills, GenAI, relationships, questions, luck, focus
Q1: My background is psychology and marketing/sales. Which consulting paths?
A: So many different types of consulting (financial, operational, marketing, branding, GenAI, risk/regulatory, R&D etc), all of which have some marketing and sales elements to it. In particular, as you get higher up the consulting pyramid, you will work increasingly with clients, understand their needs, and sell them consulting services.
Basically, when you are a senior manager / director / managing director it’s all psychology, leadership, sales
A: In terms of your college major, it’s important that you get away from that thinking. After you are in your 1st or 2nd job, people don’t really care as much about your college major. They want to know a) can you help me solve problems b) can you create massive value from the company & and it’s customers.
Q2: What skill gaps from non-business majors? Which ones should I focus on first?
A: No matter what business, industry, company you are in = you need think like a business executive. You need to be able to read an income statement, balance sheet and be able to tell stories with financial ratios. You should understand the business model (how does the company make money); what are their customer acquisition costs and customer lifetime value? From a marketing perspective, do they have a top of the funnel (awareness) problem and they need more people to know about the service, or a bottom of the funnel (prospect conversion) problem where TONS of people know about it, but people aren’t buying.
John created this MBE (mastering business essentials) to give you the top 150 MBA frameworks:
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/mbe-mastering-business-essentials
You gotta escape the imposter syndrome. Spend the time to know that basics, yes?
Q3: Small projects, volunteer work, or internal initiatives to build relevant consulting experience?
A: This is a great question and really like the attitude of trying things out and making progress. Treat your current job as a place to acquire skills, relationships, and build a foundation for a career. Treat this like an internship.
- Project-based work: shorter time frame, teaching project management, creating deliverables, working with people from other departments
- Client-facing work: this shows that you can work with clients (maturity, patience, communications)
- Get results: we all need to add value; GenAI will take all the low-level paper-pushing, processes
If you want to know some of the management consulting basics, here is a Coursera specialization here.
Q4: How to position myself on the resume to stand out to consulting firms?
A: This is VERY hard. Consulting firms typically recruit through top-tier MBA programs and PhD programs.
A: If you plan to get into a consulting firm as an experienced hire, you need to have tangible skills that the firm needs RIGHT NOW. This means you should a) get really good at something that consulting firms want b) write a great resume to highlight your achievements very well. Think of your resume like this.
Q5: If I want to break into consulting within the next 12 months, what steps to prioritize?
A: Agentic AI. GenAI will eat up 1/3 of low-level white collar work over the next 20 years (my thinking). So, anything you can do to demonstrate your fluency, entrepreneurship, and ability to vibe-code simple agents, or work with MSFT Co-pilot and other apps can set you apart.
Companies desperately want to figure out what processes they can streamline, eliminate, improve with GenAI. If you can help them to save $millions of wasted time, paperwork, customer frustration, throughput. You’re hired.
Q6: How do I know if this is what I want to do?
A: This is a key questions to be asking yourself – not just now – but also when you’re 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years old. This is something I am asking myself (30+ years older than you), on a Sunday morning blogging. This is a GOOD thing and very useful. I have so many potential responses here, so here we go:
- Meet successful people. Admit it; your sample size is probably small. So get exposure to many different types of people who are successful and worth imitating. This can be IN-PERSON, but also through reading books, listening to podcasts, and feeding your mind with stories of successful people. You need to know what success looks like for you. Here’s a nice interview playlist I put together here.
- Learn like crazy. We are at a renaissance of intelligence. GenAI is absolutely Harry Potter magic. Be a sponge. Be coachable. Do more. Be humble. Ask questions. Have masters share their craft wit you. Take one small jobs and do them with excellent. Run experiments and stretch. Get in a safe environment where small failures are not fatal. Get harsh feedback and improve on it. Don’t chase small trophies. Learn, learn, learn.
- Do amaze-ball great work. Maybe you’re not learning as much, but your are super-performing. Are you top 10% in your company at task XYZ? Can you improve and make it there? What’s holding your back? Treat your career like a jigsaw puzzle; reverse engineer the answers. Are you a solo-contributor, and now it’s time to take it to the “next level” and do team-based work? Are a team-member, but now it’s time to lead something?
- Ask for harder assignments. Read any of the quotes from some of these famous people and they will tell you that your effort & focus = long-term success. Find out where the value is in your business. . . is it in marketing to new people, or converting existing “so-so” customers into loyalists? What is the perennial problem that you company spends $,$$$,$$$ trying to figure out every years? Solve it. Build a win-win relationship with your manager and find out ways to make her life easier (hint: this is a fast-track to being loved in the company).
- Disrupt yourself. Ask ChatGPT the scary question, “how might GenAI take over big parts of my current job?” Then keep asking questions until you understand how you will be disrupted. . . the you either need to a) protect against that b) accelerate that and be the disruptive.
Q: I don’t dislike the company, but how do I know when to look around, or leave?
A: One of my mentors (hat tip: BR) says you can evaluate any given project, job, or station in life by asking these three questions. You satisfaction with YOUR OWN answers will help. Think of it like a balanced scorecard:
1) What am I doing? Is this work that I want to do, or is pointing me in the right direction? Am I intrinsically motivated to do this kind of work? Is this my jam? Would I like to get better at this? Aspirational.
- Kinda love this work
- It’s cool and I am proud to talk about it
- This has massive potential, huge business
2) How well am I doing it? Am I exceeding expectations with little difficulty or do I stink at this (because it’s new)? If most people consider this a 40/hr week job, realistically how many hours am I putting in?
- I am good at this job
- Not quite a Jedi, but getting there
- Headed to mastery; got past learning curves
3) How much am I learning? In the corporate world, it is quite easy to STOP LEARNING. No one is forcing you to work on new things, take exams, create presentations, experiment, face feedback from faculty, and demonstrate proficiency. Nope. In work world, do your job. . . and in a hybrid, remote environment, you are given a lot of freedom to do it when/how efficiently as you want.
So, we often start to coast (sure I do it too). Coasting is good sometimes, but certainly not all the time. In today’s GenAI, agentic world . . we gotta learn how to work with digital employees. Frankly, if you’re not learning how to ride GenAI-enabled workflows, you are about to lose some work.
Q: How to get better at presentations and being more visible and relevant?
A: Toastmasters – non-profit group. Self-organizing. Meet 1 hour a week. Thousands of local chapters. Take turns speaking publicly (sometimes on ad hoc topics) in front of attendees, members, strangers. Brave and yet, doable.
Q: How do I know if skill XYZ is worth learning?
A: This is a critically important question. In the world of GenAI, you don’t want to spend 1,000 hours getting wicked good at something that GenAI easily does 2x better for free. a) ask people who know. do informational interviews for no other reason that building community, asking smart questions, getting free advice, potential building a professional relationship, and even having some professional fun. b) go to Linkedin. Find a profile that is 5-10 years ahead of you – someone who has “succeeded” in some facet of life that you admire (position, pay, profession, achievements, Linkedin resume). Then see what certifications, proof-points, or artefacts they have (e.g., white papers, SubStack, diagrams, patents, research, publications, podcasts, news articles etc)
Q: If I want to improve my resume, what should I do?
A: Try Coursera. I put 11 courses on the platform. It’s a easy – do it at home – want to demonstrate some dedication. 75% of people don’t finish their courses (uh, me too). This shows an interest, work ethic. Also, the faculty members will scaffold the topic (put it into buckets, and walk you through the traditional approach of understanding the content).
Ask to be on a team project that is cross-functional. So you will be tasked for your current role (XYZ) and also make this work within a context of the organization (think: enterprise sized problems), expand your network, and give you some definitive timeline, milestones, chances to score a goal.
Reverse engineer the bullet point you would like to put on the resume. “After I finish this 5 month project, what are 2 bullet points that I could put on my resume that shows PAR (problem, action, results).