Career planning questions
- Please describe your short term (3 year) career goals (Please do not exceed 200 words)
Following the completion of my MSc course, my primary goal is to obtain the position of a consultant at an elite management consultancy of the order Boston Consulting Group or McKinsey.
In the initial three years I would like to focus my skills and efforts to guide debutante entrepreneurs transform their business ideas into realities. My present environment, i.e. the milieu of my current university is strongly influenced by an entrepreneurial culture, resulting in a large number of new graduates being keen on starting their own business ventures. A similar entrepreneurial behavior has also been witnessed in numerous alumni of business and engineering schools specifically. However, in their initial days all startups get mired numerous difficulties, during which time they need an expert to help them navigate through the real business world. These initial days are the most crucial for any business owner as it affects his confidence along with myriad other factors, hence startups need an experienced guide - someone who has the knowhow of their specific business world and therefore can mentor them; an external party who can take an objective position on any problem facing the business and help the owners put together a viable business plan.
Further, with a similar demand for consultancy services by startups rapidly developing across China, I believe that with experience, I can cater effectively to that market too. Therefore, my plan is to utilize the knowledge and wide-ranging skills acquired through the MSc program supplemented by my undergraduate business education, to ultimately assist start-up businesses overcome all initial days’ issues, consequently pushing their businesses forward.
2. Please outline the challenges you think you will face in achieving these short term career goals and how you will overcome them? (Please do not exceed 200 words)
The biggest challenge in my career path is credibility. As a fresher into the consulting world, my first priority would be to convince and assure the start-up entrepreneurs of my ability to guide them through the early stages of their business and also add overall value to the same. Some of my entrepreneurial peers have already acceded to use my assistance with strategy and feasibility analysis on their business plans once they graduate, and this experience is bound to provide some cache in my professional path.
The other challenge I can face is that of risk. Start-up businesses don’t always prosper economically, and even those that do, they need to budget their expenses carefully to conserve capital for further investment. Therefore, I will have to adopt a speculative remuneration model in most cases, incorporating a portion of the future earnings of the businesses. Thus, I will have to be prepared to work with viable businesses on an ongoing basis, to aid their growth. To achieve all this I must strive to put together a superior set of ideas and tools that will demonstrate the abilities of both valuable insight and value addition to these businesses from the start. Hence, I want to acquire exhaustive case based knowledge on startups and awareness of their hazards.
3. Please describe your long term career goals or, if these are not clear, please outline the roles and industry sectors that are of particular interest to you and why. (Please do not exceed 200 words)
My long term professional goal is to begin my own consulting business in the next five years where the clients would include a batch of viable businesses that I will have identified/worked for at the initial stage of my consulting career. Thus, not only do I wish to acquire new clients, I also plan to perpetuate the patronage of the existing ones.
Ideally, a start-up will prosper under my guidance and I can get on board with that as a full time consultant, to foster its growth further. The issue of trust will play a major role here, as it has been seen before, especially in the Chinese entrepreneurial market that external associates have stolen ideas from startups to begin their own business. A robust work background covering ties with a strong portfolio of startups in the initial stage of my career will help me earn credibility, trust and reliability in the eyes of potential clients. In my endeavor to one day own my own consulting business, what will provide me a further edge over the rest of the competition is my early experience on a wide array of projects, and strong academic knowledge from the MSc course.
4. What skills do you think are important in the career that interests you, how would you demonstrate that you have been developing these skills so far? (Please do not exceed 300 words)
The work of a consultant is an interactive one so the primary skill I would require would be good communication, persuasion and negotiation skills; not only will these skills help me convey my ideas better, but they will also help me win over new clients and credibility during my own rookie days. The other skills would include good forward planning and effective strategy formulation along with the ability to recognize the viability of a project is viable. Broadly, the skills of - flexibility, activity-reactivity and the ability to get the work done are crucial for a successful consultant.
As all experiences leave their impact on us, I believe I have been preparing all my life for my goal. However the more targeted and specific steps I have taken towards honing the above mentioned skills would include, the string of extracurricular activities I participated in while at university. The foremost among which was my stint as the director of publicity management at CIMA UNNC Branch (one of the most influential student organizations at my university). This role required working with a team- thus building my interpersonal, negotiation and persuasion abilities (especially when getting people to join the team), the duties of coordinating a multitude of tasks and program organization helped me hone my organizational skills and maintain equanimity no matter how stressful the situation. At the personal level I am also musically inclined and wish to excel in everything I do, whether at the professional or personal level. The advanced education provided at the MSC level will not only help me further my academic and professional goals, it will also help me broaden my horizons, bring me in contact with people from diverse backgrounds and prepare me better to face all the challenges life will throw my way in the future.
