The world of consulting - Page 3
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hazelynut
United States2195 Posts
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Doraemon
Australia14949 Posts
On June 27 2011 23:25 hazelynut wrote: I'm a senior at Princeton and throughout the years, I've seen my upperclassmen friends go into consulting. I never really know what it's about and how they can consult people on things they don't know O_O;; how do you even have the confidence to consult people when you don't know anything about their work? How does that work? the main reason is that the inefficiencies are very similar across all industries. company A will have similar problems as company B despite their different industries, as such, many solutions are transferable from client to client. consultants are good at diagnosing the problem and applying solutions, albeit something we don't have excessive experience in, but what we do well is identification and application. | ||
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OneOther
United States10774 Posts
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Doraemon
Australia14949 Posts
On June 28 2011 11:54 OneOther wrote: Thanks for your informative post. Many older friends from my university will be working at the top consulting firms you named (BCG, McKinsey, etc) and I have wondered what that lifestyle would be like. I guess if there's a right time to be a consultant, it would be in your 20s. Travel a lot, meet people and establish resourceful connections. Would you want to share one or two anecdotes about some memorable projects you have had? Where did it take place and what kind of work did you have to do? i think the project i had that's best represents consulting is an insurance project that i did few months back. they had a very inefficient claims review process and we were brought in to fix that and report anything else we observe. my colleague and i has had 0 experience in insurance, albeit we advertised ourselves as specialists in the field. i had to travel mel-bris every week and mel-bris-syd-mel every second week, so the travelling was quite hectic and started to dread sunday nights and monday mornings. the work wasn't very difficult because the solutions were simple, however the roadblocks are common symptoms of a dysfunctional organisation; the project sponsor that hired us already had solutions in his head and we were really there to validate his ideas. The politics were insane, the COO disliked some very intelligent staff and held them back, the project leader was a wanker and undermined us at every opportunity, everyone hated IT (beyond the usual cliche), the business units were pillared and had no idea how to collaborate with other teams and individuals with personal agendas tried to drive our deliverables to be favourable for them. so it was a very tricky project, but we managed to find a solid base with a very helpful business unit and they offered me a job 4 weeks in and we managed to get everything done. still waiting to hear back from them to see if they want us to implement phase 2 for them. hahaha. so yer, kind made me hate industry! | ||
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