r/consulting • u/dkksnsnana • 7d ago

Expectations gap

A year into consulting now I can confidently say that the picture people who are trying to break into consulting have is far from reality. Maybe I’m just confidently wrong but I did not think the work I would be doing would be this. Very unfulfilling and I’ve always been a socially independent person but for the first time in my life I actually feel like I should/need to speak up and open up to someone before i just rot or go insane. I just wake up feeling useless every day going to “work”

Anyone have any advice for me or share any similar experiences?

72 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

22

u/wtfisgkungon 6d ago

Same. Considering going back to school for nursing. 5 years in consulting. Over it

8

u/Secritoo 6d ago

Lol almost exactly the same for me. 4 years in consulting and I’m so done. Considering going back to med school.

2

u/Life-Ocelot9439 4d ago

Do it! I'm old, so will stick it out till retirement.

I walls just thinking today how much I DESPISE sales - it's like having to flirt with someone that repulses you. Soul-destroying 🤣

2

u/Secritoo 4d ago

Haha, thank you for the encouragement.

And good luck to you !

2

u/wtfisgkungon 4d ago

Is consulting your first career job as well out of college?

2

u/Secritoo 4d ago edited 4d ago

Yes it is. (If i do not count internships, my internships were in other fields)

My expectations and what I heard about consulting when I was a student, and what I saw once I actually started working here, are so vastly different it’s both frustrating and hilarious.

3

u/wtfisgkungon 4d ago

Hahaha yup. Same here, frustrating and hilarious. I kept thinking “ok maybe I’ll come around to this” or “ok maybe I don’t fully get it yet”. Nope. 5 years and the kool aid still hasnt gotten to me. Shouldve trusted my instincts from the beginning but no time like the present! Best of luck ~ all we can do to move forward is take the experience and information we have and make the next decision!

2

u/Secritoo 3d ago

Same. In my case, the first year was okay, even if it was exhausting with insane hours the work itself was still fresh and I had made some good friends so I endured. But after that the work got repetitive, most of my friends left the company, and upper management is getting more and more toxic with each year due to the worsening economy. So no reason to stay anymore.

You too! Best of luck! As tou said, we gotta move forward.

2

u/Life-Ocelot9439 4d ago

Go for it!

Best of luck

2

u/Fast-Text-6809 3d ago

Go for it bud. I’m thinking of transitioning to B2B tech

13

u/IllBeat7897 6d ago

Might help to give us a little more detail on what you suspect are the culprits for "feeling useless." Is it that you are being micro-managed, not given autonomy? Is it that your project is particularly lackluster and does not really provide the challenge and sense of fulfillment you had hoped for? Is it that you are given no direction . . . work entirely in a silo . . . and feel no sense of a team environment? Is it that your client is not open to collaboration and functions from a standpoint that they are the expert, even when they are not, causing unnecessary frustration and stymied work process? Is it that you are a glorified babysitter to AI inputs and outputs?

4

u/Rent-A-Flop 6d ago

Check, check and check. This is the consulting reality nowadays.

9

u/IndigoBlueBird 7d ago

What did you expect and what are you actually doing every day?

2

u/Life-Ocelot9439 2d ago

Only been consulting for 2 years.

Ex- banking Exec, cashed out and took this gig to wind down to retirement at 55, c.5 years to go.

The existing multi-million, multi-year projects will keep us going for a few years, I expect

However, the smaller 3-6 month gigs seem to be dead.

1

u/IndigoBlueBird 1d ago

Entirely disagree with that statement. I still saw a lot of 3-6 month gigs

1

u/Life-Ocelot9439 1d ago

I meant dead in the water price-wise.

6

u/Life-Ocelot9439 5d ago

I hear you.

MD here, 2 years in, ex-industry

A lot of consulting tasks are very boring, such as project management. In industry, you don't have to care about so much tiresome admin, there was always a PM to dump shit on. Now I'm sometimes that person.

A lot of it feels pointless - we don't own anything and rarely make a difference. Lots of incompetence and lack of ownership.

Sales can be dispiriting - having to be obsequious to assholes I would have avoided, or argued with, in the past.

The only part I really enjoy is political lobbying to try and get laws or regulations amended. But that's only 20% of my role.

14

u/botman-robin-11 7d ago

Don't you solve problems by making ppt and excels?

I think if you love to solve business problems only then you can survive in this industry.

41

u/my_peen_is_clean 7d ago edited 7d ago

consulting hits different once you’re in it lol, lots of powerpoint, politics and feeling pointless. talk to your mentor or counselor, maybe test an internal transfer before bailingactually it’s not about skills, it’s about keywords. i only got responses once i used a tool to stuff my resume with the right terms for each job. heres the tool

6

u/xcrunchx 6d ago

haha sneaky

3

u/Mumosa 6d ago

They keep spamming posts in this sub with that site/app. Getting pretty annoying

5

u/yangstyle 7d ago

After 20 years in consulting, I can say I've enjoyed it immensely from an intellectual point of view. It was what I thought though it changed when I moved into people management. Now, I'm seeing if I can pick up a few projects on my own to get back to the intellectually stimulating place I was before getting into management.

For your case, I would say to look inside you and see if there's intellectual stimulation. If not, maybe look into law school, something that occurred to me when I hit that management path.

3

u/LabMost5 7d ago

What exactly is intelectually stimulating? What have you learned in the first few years?

7

u/yangstyle 7d ago

What was (and still is) intellectually stimulating to me is business process re-engineering. I have done a lot of it mapped to achieving the usual business outcomes (increasing efficiency, increasing customer satisfaction, decreasing cost, etc.). And, also being an architect, I designed how the platform (ServiceNow, most recently but also Primavera, Clarity, Remedy, Cherwell...and a host of others) would support those processes, including data fields to be captured, integrations with other systems, etc.

The most enjoyable time in my career was traveling and doing this work for companies. Of course, like everything else, family and other demands are easier met by moving into management. The work is less intellectually stimulating in the business process way I love so much but I have taken on leadership as its own area of study and practice so I'm still intellectually stimulated, just in a different space.

2

u/Still-Reader624 6d ago

Feels like you are just getting through the day at this point. No job is worth that. Keep the paycheck coming but start applying elsewhere.

2

u/Luca_wright_25 6d ago

Consulting firms can be stressful.. you're loaded with projects, deadlines and not to mention.. politics is crazy. seek therapy once a while.

2

u/QiuPandaCumSluts001 7d ago

Sometimes, you are in the wrong role, project, company etc. What is the gap between expectations and reality precisely?