DON'T JOIN CONSULTING if... | Reality of being a consultant

It’s time for me to get out

Not to belittle those in the industry, but I wonder what they are "consulting" about being newly grads with no prior experience running a business?....

Once Satan contracted McKinsey. Hell fired 1/3 demons, its favorite sauce. Then they rehired the demons and the rest is history.

Dont join consulting in the big 4 accounting firms lol

Yikes, this really drives the point home that management consulting really shouldn’t exist.

This is not true for everyone. Based on what has been said here i shouldnt do consultancy. Consultancy has now became a huge word, everyone, even the cleaners can call themselves a consultants. There might be huge differences in what we r doing

I just got about five and a half minutes into your video and noped out of this career path. Thank for giving me your inside perspective. You have just saved me a whole lot of time, and even protected me from the misery, should I have gotten that type of job.

Im glad that i failed my accounting major, otherwise my life would be miserable. I’m doing IT consulting. It has its own stress but not like in accounting an financial field

💯

I created my own consultancy agency(brand management) and only realized what I had done when a client told me "I admire your courage for starting a consultancy business". Apart from everything else, I'm fine, ty.

Unfortunately this is creeping into corporate world as well. The number of “business strategist”, “special project strategy teams” etc have increased and with that a lot of aggression and expectations to write the one proposal after the other and do the most beautiful PPT’s. But the output is decreasing and industry/domain experts are leaving.

Consultants have least amount of skills and paid the most. Slowly the world is realising we don’t really need them. They will be in first line of getting fired

What you are describing is really just competitive corporate culture, not limited to just consulting. Smaller firms will have less of all this..

I wish i had an option no one in consulting will hire me 😂

A perfect breeding ground for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

I learn a lot but it's a terrible environment. As a lead in tech consulting I have to manage every single aspect of the project. Do all the planning, be in all the meetings, break down all the development tasks and take on the hard/impossible stuff, teach/KT my team and the in-house team.

If anything goes wrong I am the first to get blamed so I need to send emails for everything and take hundreds of screenshots. All the while smiling as the client throws me flaming garbage and invites me to all kinds of random meetings with no notice and expecting me to magically fix it.

I don't believe anyone actually likes constant change. Much better to work in a stable team where you can learn. Don't go into consulting grads, go into your field of study and then you can go into consulting in your field when you're experienced. From a chemical engineer who briefly considered consulting and had a few friends who went into it.

Not everybody works too hard either. Also some stars of the underestimated, complex projects that your company was ruining initially, does not even get rewarded or recognised. You may put off all your life aside, work blood sweat and tears but the guy before you who ruined the project and the guys who sold it underestimating and the senior manager who did nothing to lead it right, will continue their promotion and comfy life, not learning any lesson while you can be just pushed aside with others owning your success... This happens a lot. If that a lot of work, knowledge and customer feedback rewarded, I understand but most of the time, it is all about your personality - if you are someone who knows how to sell yourself, have the appearance, talk with confidence, who is good at politics etc you will thrive in consultancy... Others who care about the quality work and learning the things that matter in the right way, will feel miserable. You need a high BS tolerance and you need to know the way to the heart of incompetent useless senior manager, that will do it. Other in-betweeners, who are the most decent crowd, will get burn out and leave or stay and be miserable forever.

I'm a consultant and I have 5-8 hours work days, my promotion doesn't depend on how many of my peers get promoted, which means there is no competition between colleagues, and nobody asks me to work when I'm on holiday or outside of working hours, which is 9-5. I guess not all consultancies are the same...

what do you do now?:) thanks for posting

Thanks for this summary. I am working as an IT-Consultant in a Software company. But we work as a team, share customers and the consulting work we have with the customers. We have fix working hours per week and are not allowed to work more than 40 hours per week. But I assume, one difference is that I am working in a German company and that it is not a Consulting company in the first place. Still, I am pretty sure Consulting how you described it is not the right thing for me :D

This is the reality of consultants who work as employees of consulting companies but the reality of individual self-employed consultants are MUCH better.

So all of this video pertains to being an employee of a consultant. She is not a consultant. As a consultant, life is not this. It’s fucking amazing!!

Worked as senior consultant and I thought it was all smoke in mirrors. Toxic cultures, toxic competition between employees and people were actually clueless about what they were doing. Mostly theoretical deliverables with no added value.

No lies told. I work at Big 4, have been here for 4 years and I am only staying because of the pay and horrible job market. Applying to different opportunities to leave but too burnt out to apply!

All these views apply to almost all private companies and salaried employees.. Nothing special about this or new surprise to me.. Need not to be consulting firms only...

This proves to be wrong if you are working with right manager or management or customers..

If clients dislike you enough to tell your boss then you should absolutely be removed. That’s not unfair at all. If it happens multiple times it is probably not a coincidence.

I was wondering why I was getting so many job offers but turns out they were all jobs as a consultant. I didn't know the field at all so thank you very much for this warning video

Your point about competition is unfortunately not limited to consulting. I work for a huge government-funded research organization. My experience is everyone turns into a vulture sooner or later. If you want to move up, and you share a space with competitive personalities, people are going to step over you.
I would say the same for not being able to say NO. This too will be exploited depending on who your colleagues are, and as a result you will be overworked, and more often than not, miss deadlines.

This is so true. I thought this is happening in only my company 😅

Note that the work life balance is mainly a HUGE problem in the big firms. I’m an engineering consultant in pharma and my work hours are great!

If you have integrity

I've been an electrical engineering consultant for over 10 years. If you can't handle change, don't like to travel & work in the field, and can't work with all types of people, consulting is not for you.

The video after this one is how consulting “was worth it (for me)”

My prof works at mckinsey and if you have theskills and knowledge it is a great job to do

Not true

Being a consultant is a badge to say you want to be a scapegoat when shit hits the fan.

Such a good video !!! So true. I’m working in consultancy & what I hate is you get projects through networking!! And having 2 young kids i can’t socialize much. And how much ever work you do, if you can’t speak well, this is not the place.

The big 4 are accounting firms. The big 3 is consulting like mbb.

You earn lots of money

Can relate to the burnout. You have to learn to market yourself effectively. It’s not for everyone.

Lmao - all these downsides are the same in my current job, except worse, with daily risk to my personal safety, and I get paid 1/5th as much!

100% my last agency shuffled me around from project to project midstream to fill gaps which prevented me from fully being up to speed with clients.

It was a setup for failure and burnout.

I just joined a smaller agency and it's been much better and much more collaborative, dedicated to a single client from discovery to launch.

peoples are actually hats 🧢

Good thing I am competitive and like change by nature, cant really relate to your situation, hopefully I get something in healthcare consulting and ready to excel in it :)

If a company needs a consulting company it needs a new corporate management. When you dont know whats going on in and out of the company, you are in the wrong place.

But how’s the pay?

Any healthcare Consultant here?

I am a hat