This question PLAGUED me when I was applying for jobs. Why on earth would I want to do consulting?? I want to sit on a beach all day or run a highly successful tech company. In reality: you can’t do either of these. Being on a beach all day, you’ll not only run out of money, but you’ll get very bored very quickly. And the chance of you becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg with zero real-world experience is literally zero. Zilch. Capiche?

You need to treat your first two years out of uni as MORE UNI. You are learning. You are learning how things work so you can really figure out what you want to do. And it doesn’t matter what anyone tells you, whatever job you go into: be it banking or social media marketing, you will be doing the exact same stuff: POWERPOINT AND EXCEL. Every junior does them. So the real question is: where do you want to do PowerPoint and Excel?

You need to think about three things: the people, the pay, and the experience.

Firstly, the people. Let’s be honest, you didn’t go to uni because you ADORED economics, you went because of the people. It’s the same with the job. You want to think about where you are going to meet the most number of (nice) people. The first thing to think about is the size of the company: bigger is better in this sense. Not only in that the brand name goes further, but if you go to a small start-up you will have far fewer chances of meeting people you click with. Furthermore, if you go to investment banking, you will meet literally the worst people in your life. In my opinion, consulting strikes the balance of these factors; yes you will have to deal with a few dickheads, but there are also a whole lot of great people and huge social events that come with it.

Secondly, the pay. London is expensive. Consulting pays a lot. At least a lot for the time you put in. Yes, investment banking does pay more, but PER HOUR consulting is easily winning this battle. If you are going to be doing Powerpoint and Excel wherever you go, you might as well go where they’re going to pay you the most.

Now finally, the experience. This is what your parents think you’re doing consulting for. “It’s so cool you get 6 years of professional experience packed into 2!!”. You are getting experience in Powerpoint and Excel. BUT, you are also getting to see loads of different industries and learn how companies actually work. This all helps out with the main goal of figuring out what the hell you want to do with your life.

So there you have it. Three reasons why you should do consulting. I’m sure there are a million reasons why you shouldn’t do consulting, but hey I guess you could say that about any job.

You might like consulting but have a listen to what the legend himself thinks about it (spoiler: it’s not positive…😂).

Check out the lovely Wikipedia definition of consulting here

Check out our other article on what you should do at university to get into consulting