vinayrsm wrote:
Alex, can you pls further expand on your comment that if one knows the industry he/she would like to work in then it's best to join that industry post MBA. What I find that even though one knows & enjoys working in that industry, staying w/ same firm can get boring n may not provide an understanding/access to complex problems in that industry. I feel MBBs can do a better job of showing problems from many industries including ones preferred one. And I think for that reason it might still be worth working at MBB post-MBA. Pls feel free to share if you disagree.
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Sounds like a narrative straight out of a consulting recruiting presentation.
The biggest blind spot with mgmt consulting is this: confusing "thinking" with "doing". If the intellectual/abstract aspects of business interest you more than the actual execution, then you probably should remain in consulting, or become a professor.
Consulting can expose you to all kinds of business situations -- but it's still very conceptual. You spend your time researching, compiling, analyzing, and writing. And that can give the false impression of actually doing.
If it were sports, it's sort of like coaching versus playing. Just because you have a brilliant mind for game plans, set plays, etc. as a coach has nothing to do with whether you can actually make plays in the clutch as a player.
And in many ways, I think that is a HUGE problem with the mentality of MBAs: they tend to overestimate the difficulty of the 'thinking' (strategy, planning, analysis, etc) and underestimate the difficulty of execution. To be blunt, all the stuff you learn in school, the conceptual stuff that consultants do, etc. are actually the EASIER aspects. The hardest part is actually doing it.
When the reality is, it's much harder to *do* than to simply *recommend*. And spending time learning how to *recommend* as a consultant really doesn't prepare you any better for the realities of *doing* and actually having to run a group, business, etc. where you are fully accountable for your decisions.