hey everybody today i'm really excited because it's my first user requested subject that i can
talk about and that is what it's like to work for the boston consulting group or bcg so first i'll
tell you my experience with consulting because i started off as an engineer doing software and
working normal hours and then i went to business school at wharton the first week i was in the
consulting club and it was huge right wharton puts out a lot of consultants and the place was
packed everybody wanted to go into consulting it seems or banking and this you know this woman was
up there talking about her experience at mckinsey and she said yeah we did this we advise people and
we worked our normal 80 hours a week and i heard that and i almost fell off the chair i had never
heard about anybody working an 80 hour work week before i had always thought you know 40 was normal
and i and i raised my hand i said did i just hear you say that you worked 80 hours a week
everybody looked at me like i was crazy and she's like yeah of course
i'm like well scratch consulting off the list because i'm not working 80 hours a week that's
stupid right i was making good money and that why would i do that well fast forward two years i end
up working for the boston consultant group in consulting traveling going to the clients and
working my 80 hours a week so today i'm gonna tell you what that was like consulting comes in
all different shapes and sizes there's the elite strategy management consulting of bcg bain and
mckinsey and then there are more operational consulting like accenture ibm consulting and
maybe deloitte and then there's very specialty consulting like marketing consulting or technology
consulting different things like that so you can get consulting in everything i worked for the
boston consulting group for four years which is one of the management strategy consulting
companies what you do as a consultant is you go into one of these companies and you first
try and figure out what exactly the problem is so there's usually a a senior executive that
you're uh interacting with and then you figure out exactly what it is they're trying to solve then
you break up into teams usually depending on how big the problem is and you dig into the data and
you go and talk with all the employees you try and pull data from wherever you can you might do
market analysis you might do some interviews with the markets it depends it whatever the the case
requires and then you work to try and crack the case you're trying to solve the problem and give
a recommendation to the client so you say okay here's your problem this is what we saw this is
what we heard from you here is the data that we gathered and this is the evidence that we have
this leads us to this conclusion this is what you should do with your business and when you
are a young associate or a consultant you get access to top top level management ceos
executive vice presidents and and and the very top of large organizations and it's really exciting
and you really add value by advising them on what to do with the business when you're solving
a case when you're working on a case typically most consulting companies will travel to the
client and that's a big part of the lifestyle so you have to be at the client side typically
about four or five days a week so usually you're flying out monday morning sometimes sunday night
and then coming back on thursday evening and during that time basically you just work you are
completely engaged with the project and it makes sense from the clients perspective they're paying
a lot of money millions and millions of dollars for you to be there so they want to get that face
time they want to see that you are working but also it's a lot easier to go talk to the employees
talk to the people that you need to when you are there on site typically one of these cases
lasts from two weeks on a real short one but a typical case is probably six weeks to
six months on a longer one they don't usually last longer than that unless you get follow on work or
so on you're assigned to this case and then you have to become an expert in whatever the field
it is that you're going to be consulting on so you can work in different industries and you have to
come up to speed on that industry it might be the technology industry something i know well
or it might be trucking or it might be pharma or it might be consumer goods all of these you
might be assigned to a case one after another so there's a whole research division in these
companies that you can just tell them i need to become an expert in trucking and in specifically
uh part distribution and they will bring all this knowledge they will research that and give you
a ton of the research so that you can go through it right in the beginning and become an expert
then you go meet the client you you all as a team figure out what the case is about and then you
break up into teams and you start solving each of the different components and the work is intense
it's really intense because the client meetings are set in advance typically on a normal cadence
and then you have to be ready with real value at each of those meetings there's no excuses
to not have your stuff together so if you have to work until 2am 4am pull an all-nighter you're
gonna do it and you're traveling at that time so you're in a hotel room you're going to the client
that is basically your life so often we would go to sleep late usually after midnight wake up early
6 7 a.m we would go into the client in the early morning work all day then grab dinner together
and then work in the hotel rooms until well past midnight there are a few things in consulting that
really get to you after a while and some people seem just built for this and other people are not
most people i think are not on the long term so certainly 80 hour work weeks that's a real thing
it's a real thing and it's a normal thing even though they try to work on work-life balance and
they do a lot to to help 80-hour 60-hour work weeks it's it happens a ton so that's something
to consider and that takes a toll on your body and on your mind and so on even though it's very
rewarding work the other thing is the travel so the travel really the first year it's exciting
you're in the top hotels you're flying business class everywhere you can eat at any restaurant
that you want you have a great expense account so you can go to all these great cities and
live it up at least for you know going to the restaurants and the hotels and you have status
on all the airlines you have status on at the hotels you can you know choose whatever you want
to eat every night so the first year is very glamorous you're like wow this is amazing and
you you know you're really into it but then after the second year you're like okay
i recognize this this is uh this is normal it's just like last year the third year you're kind
of like whoa i'm doing this every week and you know fine restaurants they all kind of feel the
same really to me anyway maybe not to other people but by the third year they all just felt the same
it was all just food and i just want to go home and and work and then go to sleep so that's an
issue and also of course with travel you're gone from your home base for four or five days a week
that takes a huge toll so you're away from home traveling from away from friends and family for
the entire week and that is really difficult to build and sustain relationships back home because
most people don't really understand that right when you're when you're a consultant you have
to put in those hours because you're you're you're solving really hard problems that the
company themselves can't even solve so you have to be there you have to work those kind of hours
you're not available for your loved ones and your friends and that can be devastating and i know
quite a few people that have had real relationship trouble because in many ways because of their
consulting career so be careful on that so overall consulting for me was a great experience but of
course it's got advantages and disadvantages it can be a wonderful career accelerator so
when you see a consulting company on somebody's resume you think oh this person is analytical
they can solve business problems and so on it's sort of a stamp of approval you get an
idea of where they're coming from however it has disadvantages for sure the heavy workload
the travel even though the pay is good the kind of per hourly pay is lower but you learn a lot so
all kinds of things to weigh and if that's success for you and that's your trajectory great go for
it and it's a lot of fun and you learn a ton so if you like this content please smash the like
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