Hi, I'm kchoi. Welcome back to my channel. Because my channel focuses on
career and education related content, I get a lot of DMs and comments with
questions about people's own career dilemmas and career journeys. So I asked
on Instagram for you to share your career dilemmas and career questions, and
I'm going to answer some of them today. I plan to make this an ongoing series, so
if you're not already subscribed to my channel, then please hit that subscribe
button below, and while you're there hit the notification bell as well so you can
be notified whenever I post a new video. A quick disclaimer before we jump into
the questions: I am NOT a career counselor or a recruiter. I don't have
any professional experience in any of this. All of what I'm going to share is
from my personal experience, as well as things that I've observed about my
friends' and my co-workers' career paths. So all of the advice and the responses that
I give is just food for thought for you to do some additional research, some more
reflecting, and make a more informed decision for yourself. The first one is
about switching into a consulting career, specifically from hospitality. I studied
Hospitality Management and have been working in the hospitality industry for
the past five years, and will now change into hospitality consulting within a
real estate company. It's not that I want to take two steps at a time, but I'm
basically wondering how likely it would be to eventually end up in one of the
big consulting firms in a couple of years, and transition into possibly more
diverse management consulting. First of all, I love that you're thinking a few
steps ahead because even though you have this new job that you're starting at the
real estate company, and you of course want to focus on that and do a good job
there, it's always good to just be thinking of what your options are in the
future. In terms of the question itself of how likely it would be for you to end
up at a big consulting firm, it seems to me that if that opportunity came up, that
you could be successful at making that switch because as you said you have five
years of work experience, and you're especially now getting some more
specialized experience as you go in house to a real estate company to do
hospitality consulting there. Now in terms of the part about maybe
transitioning into more diverse management consulting, I also think that,
sure, that would be possible, but I would want to know why that would be your goal.
Usually at a consulting firm, people start in a more generalist
role, and then as they move up, they specialize. So they specialize in an
industry or maybe they specialize particularly on customer experience or
in digital experiences. So to me, what seems like the most natural transition
is that you get this additional experience consulting at a real estate
company, on top of the five years of experience you have in hospitality
management, and you go into one of the bigger consulting firms with a focus on
hospitality, since that is where your specialty is. So I would just think about
what is it that you want to gain out of moving into a management consulting firm,
and then if you are interested in going into a more diverse set of industries,
what is it about that? Is it just that you want to mix it up? Is it that there
is another particular industry that you want to transition into specifically
from hospitality? Whatever that end goal is, I do feel like you could eventually
get there because once you get your foot in the door at one of these
consultancies, there are other opportunities open to you. From my
perspective and given the information that I have, it seems like you can use
your depth of knowledge and experience in the hospitality industry to go into a
more senior role at a management consulting firm, and probably work with
hospitality clients primarily, but from there I think there are other options
and who knows what can be available to you. I got several questions that have to
do with having a different background and whether that can allow you to go
into consulting. "Thoughts about consulting with a medical degree," "Breaking into
consultancy with a technical/STEM degree," and "Currently studying a Bachelor's
in Psychology in the UK. Do you have advice on applying to consulting firms?"
Overall, it really doesn't matter what undergraduate degree you have if you
want to go into consulting. Yes, the most common majors that you'll see are
economics or business, but I think part of that is because the people who major
in those degrees already have an idea of consulting, and an idea that they want to go
into it. But if you have any other degree other than economics or business, that
should not deter you from recruiting or applying to these consulting jobs. In one
of my recent videos with my friend Judy, who used to work at Bain & Company, she
shared that she had co-workers who were history majors, engineering majors,
English majors, and they were all really successful as consultants. It's not so
much about your undergraduate degree, but more so about your case interview and
your recruiting and the connections that you
make, as well as the experience you have on your resume, whether it's related work
experience or extracurriculars at your university. So as a general statement, it
doesn't really matter what your degree is in. I think if you major in economics
or business, you might be more aware of recruiting events or things like that, or
be aware of these different types of jobs in consulting, but ultimately, having
a degree in something that's not economics or business related is not
going to reflect negatively on you. I also had a handful of questions related
to grad school, so I'll start with this one: "I'm two years into my career and I'm
debating if I should go to grad school or switch to another job." Both of those
can be valid options, but I think it just depends on what your end goal is. If
you're looking to switch to another job that is similar to the role you're in
now, or maybe it's so that you can go a level up and get a pay increase, then
grad school probably isn't the most wise option for you. If you're looking to
switch into a completely different industry altogether, then maybe grad
school is an option, but it also isn't necessarily the answer. In my case, I
wanted to switch from public relations to management consulting, and while there
are a lot of transferable skills, like project management and client management,
I personally felt that it would be beneficial for me to have a foundation
of a business education, which is why I decided to get my master's in management.
I want to clarify that I still think that as an undergraduate, you don't need
to have that business education and foundation. If you're coming
from an undergraduate degree and then going into consulting right away, then I
still think that it doesn't matter what major you have. I just felt like for me,
going into more of an experienced role, I wanted to have that foundation just for
myself. I don't even necessarily think it was 100% needed, but it did help me for
my own confidence, and also I had other reasons for going to grad school such as
wanting to go abroad and all of that, so just wanted to pop that in there. But you
don't always need a master's degree in order to make a career switch, depending
on how closely related those careers are. For instance, I have a video coming out
soon where I interviewed my friend Sam about how she switched from working in
public relations to social media. Now, PR and social media are a little bit
related, but there are actually a lot of different skills between the two
but Sam didn't go to grad school in order to make that switch. A couple of
other questions related to this were: "dilemma between quitting my
full-time job and pursuing a master's degree abroad" and " is a PhD worth it for my
career," and again, I think for the most part you don't need a master's in order
to make a career change, but it can help you and it never hurts to have more
qualifications and more education. You just have to think about if the outcomes
are going to be worth the time and the money and the energy spent to go to grad
school. I actually have a couple of videos that explore this topic of
whether getting a master's is right for you, is it worth it, so I'll link those in
the description box so you can check those out. How do you get an internship
opportunity at a consulting company especially, now? I chose this question
because I recently heard about two different things that students can do
these days in order to get some work experience, particularly in consulting. So
the first one is this website called InsideSherpa, and they have virtual
work experience programs for people at companies like BCG, Accenture, KPMG --
companies that I know a lot of you who watch my channel are interested in. It
seems like they offer different resources and tasks to help you
understand and get a feel for what the responsibilities are in a given role.
This video is not sponsored or anything, and I personally haven't gone through
any of the programs myself, so I can't say what they are like, but I thought it
would be interesting to a lot of you and that you could check it out and look
more into it. The second one is I saw a post on LinkedIn about this guy who
started a company called Covid Fellows, and they connect small businesses who
need support during the current pandemic with students who want to get work
experience. Again I don't know too much about it beyond that, but I bookmarked it
because I knew it would be helpful to a lot of you. So both of those resources
will be linked below, and again everything that I talk about in this
video will be linked below so that you can check everything out later. The next
two questions are about networking, so the first one, "How do I network with
intention, but not in an eager way?" I think the key here is to get to know
people. Get to know what interests them and then share opportunities that would
be helpful to them. Be interested in their goals and aspirations and make any
connections for them that you can, and if you don't have someone to connect to
them, then share interesting articles or resources or anything else that you
think that they would want to know about. It's much better to build a network
through giving rather than always asking or taking. You should definitely use
network to ask for support when needed and when appropriate, but I would focus
more on what you can offer to others. I have a video where I share additional
tips about networking, so I'll leave that in the description box below. It's me
again, so somehow, I lost the footage for the second question about networking, so
I wanted to be sure to include it. The question was, how to network and
build connectivity within the firm, for example getting to know a partner. And my
answer for that is to do really good work. Be good at your job and stand out
in that way. If you are on a project with a senior leader and you do good work,
they're going to notice that, they'll recognize that. They might ask you to be
on another project with them. They might tell their peers and those people will
be interested in working with you. It's all about figuring out what you want to
be known for, and building a good reputation. So if you want to be known for your work
ethic, if you want to be known for being super creative, figure out what that is
and do things to make that known. And then also building good relationships
with people -- so not only impressing the people who are higher up than you, but
building good rapport with everyone that you work with. And then your reputation
will speak for itself and it'll help you make those connections that you want
to make. How do I deal with a gap year from work? Does it always negatively
reflect on my CV? This one was interesting to me because I haven't
personally taken a gap year before, but it allowed me to just think critically
and put myself in those shoes. I don't think that a gap year has to be a
negative thing. In fact, I think it could actually be really positive for your
resume. You just have to be intentional about why you're taking that gap year,
what you hope to accomplish during that time, and how that applies to your career
goals. Even if you're just taking a gap year because you need a break between
education and work, I think you'll want to consider what skills and experiences
you can gain during that time. Can you live in another country and learn a
foreign language? Can you do some volunteer work that somehow will relate
to your career goals? I don't want to come off like I'm saying that you need
to be gaining experience in the traditional sense, because that's not
what a gap year is for, but I just feel that you should think about finding a
way to show what you've gained during that time, and how that makes you unique
and how that could benefit the company that you're applying to. I think
generally people are interested and drawn to unconventional experiences, so I
would lean into that as you craft that story about
your own experience. This kind of relates to the last question that I'll answer in
this video, which is, "Did you have to justify yourself in interviews for
changing your career from PR to consulting?" I kept this question at the
end because it's more about me talking about my personal experience than
answering any career dilemmas or questions that you have. Simple answer is
yes, I did have to kind of share that story or explain why I decided to switch
from PR to consulting, but I don't think it's a negative thing at all -- and it was
actually kind of fun to build that story of why I decided to make that career
change and make it compelling. I think I've shared here and there on my channel
in different videos about why I decided to move from PR into consulting, but I
thought I would take some dedicated time in this video to share that story with
you, so that it can potentially help you if you're crafting your own story about
your career change. So we'll start at the beginning, which for many people in terms
of their career, is college. I majored in English and I absolutely did not know
what I wanted to do. I just knew that I didn't want to go into law, I didn't want
to become a teacher, and I didn't want to continue studying English and go to grad
school. Those are kind of the common things that English majors do. But I
learned about public relations, and it was really interesting to me because
it's all about communicating with people through media. And so I thought I could
use my writing skills that I gained through my English major, I could use my
people and social skills, and I could also work in some cool industries,
specifically in fashion, which is where I started out. As I continued my PR career
and worked at a boutique fashion PR agency, then worked at a global PR agency
and that worked doing in-house PR, I realized that while I enjoyed the fast
pace, I enjoyed working with a big team to complete a campaign plan, and a lot of
other aspects of PR, I didn't feel like I was making the most meaningful impact
that I could with my skills. I definitely believed and still believe that PR is
really important and can make or break the success of a brand. I just didn't
feel like my personal efforts and the trajectory I saw for myself would help
me make a huge impact there. So I wanted to move into something where I felt like
I could have an even stronger impact on a company's performance, and that's how I
decided to move into consulting. Of course, management consulting as a whole,
they help companies solve problems, they help them work better and run more
efficiently. Once was able to narrow down that focus into
consulting, then I realized that it's not necessarily a company's sales or their
supply chain or their acquisitions that make them successful --
of course those things are very important and really critical to a
company's performance -- but where I felt that I could make the biggest impact was
in engaging a company's people. You could have the best strategy and process in
the world, but without the people executing on it,
you're gonna go nowhere. So I found my way to change management consulting and
I get to help companies build strong cultures and communicate their
strategies to their people in a way that makes sense. When I look back at that
career path that I took on a high level, I went from doing external
communications about a company's products and reaching consumers, to
doing internal communications about a company's strategy and culture and
reaching their employees. A lot of those skills that I developed in my previous
experience in public relations apply really nicely to my role today as a
change management consultant. I know that was a bit long, and of course I would
kind of condense that or shorten that depending on the audience, but I wanted
to share that full story so that you can get an idea of how to make your own
story about your career choices and your career path really compelling. Again, I
think taking an unconventional path to get somewhere can actually make you
stand out a lot, and help you show that you have a strong conviction for the
role that you're pursuing today, so hopefully you can see some of that in
the story that I shared about my career path, and I know that you can do the same.
That's it for this video. I really hope that by answering some of your specific
questions, it helps not only the people who asked them, but also others who are
going through something similar. Again, this is going to be an ongoing series, so
be sure to follow me on Instagram because that'll be the primary way that
I collect these questions. Leave any video requests or ideas in the comments
below, and as always thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the
next one. Bye!