Is Consulting a good graduate career?

Consulting is still one of the most popular career choices with graduates. This blog will give you an insight into what you can expect as a graduate consulting analyst so you can decide whether it’s the right career for you.

Pros for New Graduates

Some of the key benefits of a graduate consulting career include:

• Hands-on learning through client projects   

• Early responsibility and leadership opportunities

• Chance to tackle complex strategic challenges 

• Exposure to diverse industries and business areas

• Opportunity to work with senior people at leading, global, organisations

• Frequent travel to client sites (often paid for)

• Strong foundations to pivot into various careers

You’ll be doing a lot more than pushing numbers around on a spreadsheet. Consulting offers you an opportunity to make a meaningful impact on some of the biggest global organisations. 

Potential Tradeoffs 

Every job has its positives and negatives. For graduate consultants, here’s some of the things you might want to consider:

• Long hours and tight deadlines on projects

• Can be challenging work-life balance at times

• Less specialisation than industry roles 

• High pressure to constantly perform at top level - clients, and therefore the firm, have high expectations

• Expectation to hit ground running with minimal hand-holding

Whether these are positive or negative things is subjective. For example, if you’re looking at the opportunity to get stuck in at the deep end of a project with lots of autonomy as a positive, then that’s a good sign that consulting is for you. 

The Verdict…

Consulting provides accelerated personal and professional growth that few other graduate roles can match. The tradeoffs are real but worthwhile for the right person.

To answer the original question: is consulting a good career for graduates? YES!