Our introductory meeting was fantastic, and there's much more to come with this nation-wide partner!
Monday
Canadian Youth Business Foundation...
Thanks to Rob and his AB team for the new partnership, eh? Go Alberta entrepreneurs, go!
Our introductory meeting was fantastic, and there's much more to come with this nation-wide partner!
Our introductory meeting was fantastic, and there's much more to come with this nation-wide partner!
CONSULTING CONTINUED...
A YOUNG consultant’s life is gruelling. A typical week starts before dawn on Monday, with a rush to the airport and a flight to wherever the client is based. A typical brain-for-hire can expect to stay in hotels at least three nights a week, gorging on minibar peanuts and glumly texting a distant lover. “It’s quite normal to spend a year living out of a suitcase,” sighs one London-based consultant. An ex-McKinseyite in New York adds that 15- to 18-hour weekdays are normal and six- to eight-hour Saturdays and Sundays common. It can be draining, she admits; the job appeals to “insecure overachievers”—a phrase widely used in the industry—“who are always worried that they haven’t done enough work,” jokes a former employee of Bain & Company. Some 60-65% of consultants are recent college-leavers. Most drop out within a few years and take more settled jobs elsewhere in the business world, where their experience and contacts allow them to slot in several notches above their less-travelled counterparts.The elite consultancies have offices in big cities, which is where ambitious young people want to live. The best-paid jobs are in places like London, New York and Shanghai. Such cities are also where the culture and (crucially) dating opportunities are richest. “Everything that happens, happens in London,” says Lina Paulauskaite of the Young Management Consultancies Association, speaking of Britain. Other countries are less unipolar, but all have a divide between the big city and the boondocks.Companies based outside the big cities also need “clever people doing clever stuff”, as one consultant puts it. “But”, he adds, citing a litany of dull suburban towns in which he has managed projects, “there is no way in hell I’d have taken a [permanent] job in one of those places.” A recent graduate working at a rival firm agrees: “I wouldn’t have considered working for a firm outside London,” she shudders.Such attitudes are frustrating for firms in Portsmouth or Peoria. But consultancies benefit from boondockophobia. They recruit bright young things in the metropolis and then hire out their brains to firms in the sticks. This is one reason why consultants have to travel so much. (The other is globalisation.)The system works, more or less, for everyone. Firms in the provinces get to borrow talent they could not easily hire. And young consultants get to experience life in the real world (during the week) before returning to the capital to party with their friends at the weekend. They have it all; except enough zzz...
@TheEconomist: Consultancies supply young urban talent to firms in the boondocks http://t.co/oZ7rssL06d
@TheEconomist: Consultancies supply young urban talent to firms in the boondocks http://t.co/oZ7rssL06d
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