Motivations for Pursuing Consulting

Genre and Sub Genre — Verbal Folklore: Orally relayed experiences and beliefs

Language: English

Country where Item is from: United States

 

Informant Data: Hailing from Bellevue, Washington, Andrew Liu is a junior at Dartmouth College majoring in Computer Science and Math. He has been successful in securing both winter and summer consulting internships. He is interested in tech sector as well, and has been looking at specific firms in the area.

Social Context: Given the very high-stakes nature of Consulting jobs and the host of sacrifices one is compelled to make as a junior employee, prospective graduates must have a high level of conviction that a career in Consulting is truly something they want to pursue. In light of that, senior undergraduate students will often question those younger than them who ostensibly want to go into Consulting why exactly it is they think they might be interested in Consulting. As such, the folklore in question is not only circulated among Econ and Business majors more generally, but among those who are more junior and those who are more senior in their undergraduate careers. This verbal folklore is shared amongst both males and females who aspire to careers in Consulting.

Cultural Context: In a country where employment opportunities abound, it is often hard for people to decide what it is they want to do professionally. And given the myriad of choices one often has, it becomes imperative to do one’s due diligence about different fields of work so one can make an informed decision about what one’s best career path may be. In the same vein, it is also important for one to pursue something they’re passionate about. This is something particularly emphasized in American culture and impressed upon graduating college students. And so, in order to understand this particular aspect of corporate recruiting, we collected folklore surrounding the experiences and beliefs people had with respect to pursuing particular fields of work, and in this particular case, Consulting. To this end, Andrew Liu was interviewed by Mark Cui one-on-one in a quiet area in the library. We interviewed other individuals as well, but for the sake of brevity, have simply included some of their insights here.

 

Item: Andrew Liu cited a host of different reasons for pursuing Consulting. He noted the opportunity to work in a vast array of different industries as being particularly compelling. He also cited the opportunity to help companies contending with a vast array of different problems as being something that drew him to Consulting. He also cited his interest in the more theoretical aspects of problem solving vs. implementation as being something that motivated his interest in Consulting. Others interviewed noted the ability to develop hard and soft skills within Consulting as being something that drew them to consulting. The wide-transferability of skills one develops in Consulting is also something that made consulting compelling for some of our interviewers. Also the ability to travel frequently and all around the world was something we heard time and time again by our informants as being particular selling point for Consulting.

 

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Relevant Portion: 00:00 — 1:12

Transcript of Associated File:

  • Mark Cui: How does that goal align with your pursuit of Consulting?

 

  • Andrew Liu: So I think Consulting is a very interesting field in that you.. you get exposed to a diverse set of industries… you’re not limited to just one sector that you stay in for a long time.. Um.. and so .. there are advantages and drawbacks .. one of the advantage are that you get to .. hopefully .. help out people in very different circumstances … and so you might have one case in the healthcare industry and then another case in the tech industry and you can help out both companies… in that process.. ultimately .. you get to solve some of the problems they are facing.. .and help the companies

 

Collector’s Comments:

  • Informant was very lucid and had a good understanding of the motivations behind pursuing a career in Consulting and why he himself was particularly drawn to Consulting.

General Comments:

  • By and large, what we were told by our informants jibe. No meaningful variances noted.

Collector’s Name:

  • Mark Cui

Tags/Keywords:

  • Verbal Folklore, Experiences, Shared Beliefs

 

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