Fast pace, Dynamic and Exciting

It has been more than a year since I have graduated from the Queen’s MBA program and it has been an interesting journey since then. To sum it all, life after Queen’s MBA has been all about hard work, managing expectations and handling pressure. I have enjoyed my stint at Management Consulting.

I got to write a thought article (that was published in a magazine), work on projects in different sectors (Automotive, Telecom, Staffing Solutions, Aerospace) and got a chance to work or be at India, UAE, US, Canada and Thailand - all in the last one year.

Any reflections on the career choice I made? Yes, of course. I was thinking about the past year during one of my flights back home, and here are some of my observations:

*Consulting is all about being proactive, not reactive
*MS Excel and MS PowerPoint are the two powerful tools ;)
*Consultants work very hard; clients pay the firm a lot of money and expect them to
deliver value
*There is a lot of brain power at a consulting firm
*Honesty with clients is of paramount importance; trust once lost is difficult to
regain
*Impressions matter! Watch out for how you dress, carry yourself and communicate
*There are several stressful moments and if you can get through them, you'll
develop into a better consultant
*There is no room for slackers in Consulting
*Fitness (mental and physical) is important
*Project Director determines the work culture of a team for a particular client
engagement
*Work life balance is tough! If you are perhaps aiming for that, consulting is not
a wise career choice.
*Fresh out of business school, you can have some really good perspectives on
client issues
*If you have think that you worked really hard at B School, wait till you get into
Consulting!