EPTWhat I learned as a Consultant at PwC Korea Part 3 - Page 2
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flamewheel
FREEAGLELAND26780 Posts
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jtype
England2167 Posts
However, I realise that's not the drive or purpose of these blogs. It's just something I've been interested in knowing more about for a long long time, but never took the time out to educate myself. Cheers for posting these though, they've been fun. | ||
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Vinnesta
Singapore285 Posts
On August 28 2010 00:31 flamewheel wrote: Ahh whenever I see a MightyAtom blog I bookmark it. I'll definitely be reading this (and I assume there's parts 1 and 2 somewhere!) when I get the time. His external blog has an archive of all his (recent) writings! And there is a very informative thread about consulting/finance/banking lost somewhere in the General section that isn't in his blog, sadly. Every time I read your posts I think, "Damn, am I lucky to be able to communicate with an experienced consultant so conveniently!" I've really learnt a lot from your posts, and hope you continue writing! jtype wrote: Yea these are really interesting and entertaining blogs, I must say. I would love to see a little bit more specific information about the consulting you do and what professional advice you can offer to those wanting to take that path. However, I realise that's not the drive or purpose of these blogs. It's just something I've been interested in knowing more about for a long long time, but never took the time out to educate myself. Cheers for posting these though, they've been fun. In the thread I mentioned above, he gave me some advice on pursuing consultancy. I'll be nice and share it with a potential competitor :p + Show Spoiler + 3. You should read every forbes and fortune magazines from the last 4 years. I'm not kidding, go to the library and sit down and spend 3 weekends and read every single issue. At first you won't know like 70% of the terms, and you won't know 90% of the companies, but after reading 4 years worth of magazines cover to cover (with the exception of the editorials), you will have the basic vocabulary and current business paradigm in your head naturally. 4. Most business books are freaking useless, the Harvard Business Review sucks pretty bad as well because most things are either: trendy and unproven, or too theoretical and not possible to execute or apply. Go back to the basics: read 'Essential Drucker'. Peter Drucker, the founding father of management. I've read all his books and I cried when he past away a few years back now. Every business management book is a derivative of his work whether or not they know it. For marketing read a classic like: Al Ries with Jack Trout. Positioning, For an understanding of life in management, read, Jack Welch - Straight from the Gut, the best CEO of the 20th century and read at least one book on Warren Buffet, I'd recommend 'The Warren Buffet Way', dont' bother reading anything written by Mary Buffet, his son's ex-wife. Also read the BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY annual reports from the last 5 years, with a first focus on the Chairman's letter. As a consultant you need a broad understanding of everything in business. 5. Pick 10 pubic companies you know or are interested about in 10 different industries, auto, air, computers whatever, then read their annual reports from the last 3 years, spend special attention to their financials and try to make sense of it. Dont' worry if you can't figure it out at all, just get any text book about accounting or 'reading financial statements' and start with the basics: Total/gross income, liabilities/costs and profit for the year. 6. Lastly, even if you do all this, its not enough without 1 major key element, application: you need to get your greedy little hands on every possible case study you can find, in this case the Harvard Business Case studies are the best and if you can't go to the libary and find out the 'Strategic Marketing' text books/case studies and read every single real life case study you can and then go through the questions yourself. I personally was a case study addict. Usually the case study will give you the background of the situation, the companies involved and a 'what should the CEO do' and then it will list questions. The actual outcome, you can probably find out online if the case study doesn't give you what the real life outcome was. For the whole conversation you can search for MightyAtom's thread. "Come to TL.net for Starcraft, stay for advice about dream job." | ||
MightyAtom
Korea (South)1897 Posts
On August 27 2010 19:44 Baksteen wrote: You should become an author Dave, great read once again. Gogo #4 :p Thanks ^.^ much appreciated. | ||
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MightyAtom
Korea (South)1897 Posts
On August 27 2010 21:27 Zona wrote: "Machine Mode" indeed. When I was reading the walnuts part I was thinking "silly, silly"...but it worked?!? Yeah it did, surprising eh? Empty stomach and 2 kg of walnuts, do you know many walnuts that is, its like a big bag of chips size. keke | ||
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jtype
England2167 Posts
On August 28 2010 01:17 Vinnesta wrote: In the thread I mentioned above, he gave me some advice on pursuing consultancy. I'll be nice and share it with a potential competitor :p Thanks alot.  I don't know if you're referring to me with the "potential competitor" remark, or any others that might read it, but if it's me then you give me too much credit. I'm not sure I'd be able to compete very well in that field. Then again, who knows?  | ||
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MightyAtom
Korea (South)1897 Posts
On August 27 2010 21:36 tomatriedes wrote: Read all three- really interesting keep 'em coming! Can't wait to hear about all the liver abuse during clinet hunting season. BTW- What was your starting salary? Now, you need to keep mind that its a partnership, so the way it works, you start really really low, but every time you move up a level it increases by a minimum of 100% to a lot more than that. Also by the time you are senior consultant like me you get a 60k cash bank credit line at prime rate. its pretty sick and a gold corporate card for expeneses. so you're corporate credit line increases as well so by senior manager you have a 300k cash credit line. Annual associate: 30k senior associate: 40k manager: 80k senior manager: 100k non-equity partner: 180k entry equity partner: 700k divisional equity partner: 3M director equity partner: 8 M Executive director equity partner: 16 M its should be relatively close | ||
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MightyAtom
Korea (South)1897 Posts
On August 27 2010 21:47 rainei wrote: Great insight to a subject I am absolutely not familiar with.... What exactly is consulting??? I've never been interested in "business" or management or any of the corporate things, so what exactly is happening here? excuse my noobie-ness  No worries, consulting is a bascially when a company needs some expertise that they don't have; so instead of training or buying a company, they will hire a team 'consultants' to come in and set things up for them like a new business unit or an assessment on a new investment which they don't have internal experts on. Example: Samsung want to start an advertsing firm, they may hire consultants to make a plan how to proceed. GM wants to make power boats, so consultants will come in to assess whether or not its a good idea or not. you can read my main blog for some other points here and there, but don't worry because this kind of insider information is never posted on the web, consultants are not ones to bother blogging keke and if you're not from business at all, its not likely you'd know about consultants. Cheers! | ||
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MightyAtom
Korea (South)1897 Posts
On August 27 2010 22:25 haduken wrote: I have a question though, why Rugby? From your writing, I get the gist that you were raised in North America? Rugby can't be a very popular sport there :/ It is popular in certain areas, my particular school had a very old rugby program and it was very much the exception, but was pretty much my life nearly everyday since I was 14 to 28- but Union only, I hate that League crap ^^ | ||
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MightyAtom
Korea (South)1897 Posts
On August 28 2010 01:08 jtype wrote: Yea these are really interesting and entertaining blogs, I must say. I would love to see a little bit more specific information about the consulting you do and what professional advice you can offer to those wanting to take that path. However, I realise that's not the drive or purpose of these blogs. It's just something I've been interested in knowing more about for a long long time, but never took the time out to educate myself. Cheers for posting these though, they've been fun. Visit my blog and on the top left under the banner is basic quick start guide ^^ But after I get through these stories which have taken a life of it's own, it will be more focused on those practical points. I wanted a mix, but now its OUT OF CONTROL. keke. http://geektohero.typepad.com/geek-to-hero-mighty-atom/ | ||
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cyberspace
Canada955 Posts
On August 28 2010 02:11 MightyAtom wrote: It is popular in certain areas, my particular school had a very old rugby program and it was very much the exception, but was pretty much my life nearly everyday since I was 14 to 28- but Union only, I hate that League crap ^^ You grew up in Canada right? Where about? I'm from Toronto and in high school a lot of my friends really loved rugby. | ||
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Nightmarjoo
United States3359 Posts
On August 27 2010 20:43 MightyAtom wrote: I was just downloading our consulting procedures, think private text books of a billion dollar company's business who product is just the people who take these consulting know-how procedures and apply them. But there were litterally thousands of such material in the global intranet from years of internal investment. So as a consultant, it was actually a benefit for me to dl and get up to speed on this, but of course most consultants woudl specialize on a certain process like 'marketing promotion benchmarking ' or 'stronger payroll controls' but I basically read every single thing I could get my gubby hands on. Now every consutlting firm has their own consulting procedures, so while this is very confidential information, it will not have any material affect on the immediate business if it taken. But, in anycase, it was more like company physical assests. Whereas... What that other unethical girl was doing was bascially taking confidential business proposals that exposed what current companies were up to, the terms of the deals and what the results were. By having this information, you could: make a better proposal, advise a competing company in the same field, undercut our business and there is one thing about applying theory, but seeing the actual know-how applied in lots of current examples- its a practically theft of the business. So she had been hired by another firm and she wanted to take this with her to give her an edge in the same field or steal the firms current clients to her new firm. When you get to any senior management position, there are 2 things you are critically responsible for: 1. management of the operations, 2. gaining and maintain client accounts (new & old customers). but since the majority of your junior staff will likely have more uptodate business knowhow for current project execution, gaining clients is the #1 priority. Oh I see, thanks for explaining. May I ask what specifically from what you've downloaded/printed has helped your understanding of the company's procedures then? | ||
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MightyAtom
Korea (South)1897 Posts
On August 28 2010 04:10 Cyberspace1 wrote: You grew up in Canada right? Where about? I'm from Toronto and in high school a lot of my friends really loved rugby. I went to high school in North York, Earl Haig S.S. You definately should know it. ^^ | ||
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MightyAtom
Korea (South)1897 Posts
On August 28 2010 05:38 Nightmarjoo wrote: Oh I see, thanks for explaining. May I ask what specifically from what you've downloaded/printed has helped your understanding of the company's procedures then? Well, there is absolutely no way for you to get access to this information, but to give you an example, if you were to buy a strategy book that was written by a major consulting firm like Bain & co. The methodology that they use is their know how, now if you look at how they basically come to their conclusions, you can begin to guess at what kinds of frameworks or analystic concepts they used. But there are books published that state the methodology of Mckinsey, for you if you are intersted in a shallow overview of their knowhow, you should pick up one of those books to start. Cheers! | ||
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