Meet Mr Fix-it
Anurag Malik finished his MBA in 1998 from XLRI Jamshedpur and joined a consulting firm after working for a few years in the corporate world. “When I was doing my MBA, a consultant’s career was always an aspiration. But I wanted to get a good grounding in the corporate world, and spent a few years working in it. Those years have given me a good perspective of the mindset and concerns of people on the other side. I believe it has helped me connect better with clients, speak their language, understand their concerns better 
and recommend solutions that can be implemented,” says Malik, partner – people and organisation, performance improvement, Ernst & Young.
Today, many MBAs and graduates from other fields, including engineering, prefer management consulting jobs. Mohit Kant, an engineering graduate from a private college in Gurgaon, works in one of India’s top consulting firms, but – for gaining experience – joined a smaller company first. “An MBA degree from a premier college is supposedly a definite passport to a consulting job. However, engineers, if competent enough, can also make the cut,” says Kant, who also runs an online knowledge and networking portal, consultingnetwork.co.in.
“The recent years have seen a shift in mindset and consultancies are keen on picking up graduates from good colleges. At Ernst & Young, we lay a lot of emphasis on grooming graduates to take on additional responsibilities. Some graduates who perform well can (even) outdo people with higher qualifications,” says Malik.
“Consulting is probably the only job where you can implement the entire learning you accumulate in a B-school. Every project demands a different approach. No wonder then that all top rankers in management colleges give the thumbs up to jobs in consulting,” says Gyanesh Sinha, a final-year student at Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University, who interned with Arthur D Little, a consulting firm, last summer. He recently got placed at Accenture Business Consulting.
One of the major reasons why MBAs are so keen to take up management consulting is the exposure it offers. “Learning and professional growth aspects are quite extraordinary. Arguably, one year of management consulting is expected to be equal to multiple years in a traditional business environment,” adds Malik.
The wide scope of a consultant’s work profile makes the job enriching as well as intellectually stimulating. The major thrust is on ensuring maximum returns on investments for one’s clients. Many a time, the fee a consulting firm charges depends entirely on the profitability it commits to the client. For example, when a consulting firm commits that the client’s sales will grow by 20 per cent after their suggestions are implemented, the firm would charge an “X” amount. This would increase if the sales jump is of 30 per cent.
This makes consulting as demanding as a sales job. “You have to deliver results, without which consulting has no meaning. Sometimes, we also have to execute the plan to prove that the said plan will actually work,” says Sumit Sagar, an associate at a big consulting firm in Delhi.
Consulting jobs also help people when they choose to become entrepreneurs. “In a few years’ time, one can learn everything there is to know about running a business and can even start one’s own enterprise. Coming back to a corporate job is also not difficult,” says Prof Ajay Singh, who teaches HR management at IIM Lucknow’s Noida campus. “In a consulting firm, you end up learning a lot about how businesses are run. After that, entrepreneurship is a very logical shift for any successful consultant, especially when one discovers that one’s strategies are bearing fruit in companies across different sectors,” says Kant.
Author: HT Horizons
Date: 10th March, 2010
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