Going to McIntire, but hesitant on consulting/banking?
Did you know that last year, 75% of McIntire graduates went into a finance or consulting related position? Check out the 2018 destinations report:
The interesting thing is that students who are driven towards careers in finance or consulting are typically motivated by a higher salary — amongst other factors. But Information Technology seems to sit on par with both industries — and Accounting/Marketing/Management don’t actually sit that far behind when you take into account the average cost of living difference for the cities that these students tend to go to.
Better yet — the most frequently cited reason for going into a finance/consulting career is to “do your two years” to build the skills that you need in order to succeed in a career afterwards.
Two years?
That’s a lot of time, and frankly, a rather false narrative. Plenty of people go into non-finance/consulting careers and arguably achieve equal or greater success afterwards. Ezra Klein and Anand Giridharadas discuss how and why firms like Goldman, McKinsey, and Google are able to recruit so many bright and intelligent college graduates.
“I don’t know much about consulting but I do know if I were having trouble recruiting smart kids for a job, I’d hire a consulting firm to help me out.” — Yale Daily News
The reality is that we all fall prey to our availability bias when it comes to recruiting and the job search in general. Consulting and finance are the most visible jobs, and also some of the largest funnels for students after college. So of course the easiest examples of success come from those occupations.
The real problem is that we’re not looking hard enough.
If you’re willing to take the time to invest in yourself, your interests, and your general life path (something that college leaves little to no time to do …) — you’ll find that there are plenty of interesting careers you can go into.
- You could work on the cutting edge of city design.
- You could create your own podcast, and/or freelance.
- Better yet — you could create a role for yourself at a company you admire. (No link here, but plenty of personal anecdotes).
The actual options are plentiful. But embarking down the road less travelled is never an easy journey. Then again — is postponing the decision to find work that you enjoy by 2 years really any better?
P.S — We’re helping people build a careers with passion over at LifeSchool. You can even get school credit. Find out more here.
