Thursday, October 06, 2005
Career Catharsis
Ok, change of heart, I will blog after all.
I’ve been bizarrely quiet about my summer experience thus far. The primary reason is that I am an outed blogger, so to speak, so I have to watch what I say to a certain extent. (Interestingly enough, I was discussing this just this morning with the old blogger Joey, who is also an HBS student, who had no problem staying anonymous.) Anyway, my summer went pretty well. Jie was in Boston for the summer because she had to work, so I went down and stayed with my parents. I was working for an investment management firm, which I was excited about but had a few concerns as well.
The concerns, as astute readers may remember, centered around the amount of interpersonal interaction I would get in investment management. My career team, people from the industry, my career coach, and others all told me that this could be a deal killer, and in fact it more or less was. Now, the firm I was working with was extremely team-based, and I worked with some great people (one guy in particular turned it from a good experience to a great one), so I could see myself returning after school. I couldn’t, however, see a long term career in investment management. Now, there are two ways that can go, one is that I could stay long enough to make my millions and then who needs work, and the other is that I should look elsewhere because at it’s core IM is a destination industry. To make my decision a no-brainer, the firm I was with restructured after I left and so it’s highly unlikely that they will even have a position for me.
So after all that I was back to the drawing board. Now, since everyone and their dog had predicted that I would not find eternal bliss in IM, I decided to actually listen to where they were recommending and I looked into consulting. I resisted initially because I didn’t want to follow the MBA herd, but what I found was encouraging. In consulting I could find interesting work, indulge my desire for high-level problem solving with a dose of numbers thrown in, and I would get to work closely with lots of bright people. After an absolute mania of networking events I think I’ve found my full time career, and now it’s just a matter of becoming an expert in the case interview and away we go. Of course, there are several interesting general management positions that I am looking in to as well, so it’s not all consulting.
In other news, the Astros won game one against the Braves in the NL Division Series, and Texas plays ou this Saturday at 1pm EST in Dallas. I hope the Astros do well, but I would trade my first-born for a Texas win. I’m having dreams about the game already. I have butterflies in my stomach. The wait is killing me. (One advantage of the NFL: I don’t care who wins, so it’s low stress…) Come on Texas, take care of business!
I’ve been bizarrely quiet about my summer experience thus far. The primary reason is that I am an outed blogger, so to speak, so I have to watch what I say to a certain extent. (Interestingly enough, I was discussing this just this morning with the old blogger Joey, who is also an HBS student, who had no problem staying anonymous.) Anyway, my summer went pretty well. Jie was in Boston for the summer because she had to work, so I went down and stayed with my parents. I was working for an investment management firm, which I was excited about but had a few concerns as well.
The concerns, as astute readers may remember, centered around the amount of interpersonal interaction I would get in investment management. My career team, people from the industry, my career coach, and others all told me that this could be a deal killer, and in fact it more or less was. Now, the firm I was working with was extremely team-based, and I worked with some great people (one guy in particular turned it from a good experience to a great one), so I could see myself returning after school. I couldn’t, however, see a long term career in investment management. Now, there are two ways that can go, one is that I could stay long enough to make my millions and then who needs work, and the other is that I should look elsewhere because at it’s core IM is a destination industry. To make my decision a no-brainer, the firm I was with restructured after I left and so it’s highly unlikely that they will even have a position for me.
So after all that I was back to the drawing board. Now, since everyone and their dog had predicted that I would not find eternal bliss in IM, I decided to actually listen to where they were recommending and I looked into consulting. I resisted initially because I didn’t want to follow the MBA herd, but what I found was encouraging. In consulting I could find interesting work, indulge my desire for high-level problem solving with a dose of numbers thrown in, and I would get to work closely with lots of bright people. After an absolute mania of networking events I think I’ve found my full time career, and now it’s just a matter of becoming an expert in the case interview and away we go. Of course, there are several interesting general management positions that I am looking in to as well, so it’s not all consulting.
In other news, the Astros won game one against the Braves in the NL Division Series, and Texas plays ou this Saturday at 1pm EST in Dallas. I hope the Astros do well, but I would trade my first-born for a Texas win. I’m having dreams about the game already. I have butterflies in my stomach. The wait is killing me. (One advantage of the NFL: I don’t care who wins, so it’s low stress…) Come on Texas, take care of business!
