The LinkedIn posts about courses for Management Consulting and the Facebook ads about how to become a product manager or how to become a consultant at BCG intrigue you. You are considering enrolling in those courses.
It might be time to reconsider.
Even if they claim to be free management consulting courses, I recommend you read this article before considering them.
I am not against the courses for management consulting. In fact, I help my students with my courses as well. And frankly, any course or workshop is doing the job of making you learn new skills.
Workshops and courses are good. But the problem is with how you are selecting the courses and workshops that you are attending.
People should not blindly attend those workshops or courses just because consulting jobs after an MBA sound cool. It is almost as if they just follow the crowd and aren't even considering if it is what they actually want!
So, if you are an MBA student or an aspirant, I urge you to read this article carefully before enrolling in these courses for management consulting
Workshops and Courses for management consulting - Is it what you want?
I am not going to tell you how to prepare for management consulting or how to become a consultant at BCG. Neither am I going to discuss how to get become a product manager at Google or Amazon.
There are numerous best management consulting courses online for that.
Let me instead suggest how to know which workshops or courses you should attend.
The fact that one of your friends is going into business consulting after MBA shouldn't lead you to follow suit.
He may be very confident about getting that consulting job after MBA. Thus, he would certainly be enthusiastic about the courses for management consulting. And he would certainly take part actively in the consulting case analysis.
He would also never forget the skills which he learned in those courses for management consulting. This is because consulting is something that fascinates him and he is very happy to practice those skills daily.
On the other hand, you enrolled in the course because your friend persuaded you to do so.
The decision to enroll in courses for management consulting has arisen from the trend, the fashion, not out of your own interest.
Everybody wants those consulting roles at BCG, Bain & Company, etc. because it is “in fashion”.
As an MBA student at IIM Udaipur, I have also fallen victim to this fad.
During the weekends, I attended numerous workshops organized by the placement committee.
Even after attending those sessions with full concentration, I still find I don't remember much about the workshop I attended a week ago. Why did it happen?
This was because I never really thought of those workshops or courses for management consulting. I just attended them because everyone else did.
An Acquired Goal vs. Your Original Goal - Choose wisely
As an MBA student or an aspirant, you might relate to my experience of attending various workshops or courses for management consulting in my B-school.
When you start chasing a goal that is not really what you came up with but it is something that is fashionable at your B-school or among your friends - that’s an acquired goal.
For a job or a field in which you have to spend the rest of your life, should you have an acquired goal or should you have an original one of yours?
You need to understand that you can only get the best career outcomes from your MBA if you follow your passion and area of interest.
So, what should be your approach?
How about you introspect and find out which industry you want to go into after your MBA.
You might want an analytics job role or you might be interested in the course which talked about how to become a product manager at Google.
Once you find out the specific domain which you want to get in, you can also find out those important skills which you need to focus on and you just need to practice them.
You must be wondering how you find your area of interest and the skills required for that domain of industry.
I have got something for you
Back-Hacking the Placements
So, I have created an exercise for you which is the Back-Hacking the Placements. You need to do this exercise before you enroll in any of the courses for management consulting or workshops on how to become a product manager at Google or Amazon.
The first step is setting your goal and identifying the target companies/job roles you want to work for.
That is because only once you have identified what kind of job role you want, only then would you be able to identify the skill set required for that, and only then will you be able to know the courses you need to pursue.
Therefore, I am bringing to you the live demonstration of the back-hacking of the placements process that I have discovered for you.
This process will give you the clarity that is required for you to get a clear vision in your MBA.
I also offer a course called Skill Clarity Blueprint in which I discuss all these steps included in the Back-Hacking the placements exercise in more detail.
Skill Clarity Blueprint
What you’ll learn in this course:
How to decide which one (or more than one) target job roles or industries to aim for in your MBA placements
How to focus on the short-term results (i.e. MBA placements) and gradually develop yourself into an expert, a global consultant/freelancer or as an entrepreneur, in the same field that you choose
Understanding how any job role or career can be broken down into its constituent hard skills and soft-skills
Find which hard skills and soft skills you need to learn based on the target job role/career that you would have selected. This is called Back-hacking the placements
How to build your personal brand in your industry by discovering the exact topics that you need to learn and write on
What are your next steps?
By now you must have realized the importance of having an original goal rather than working on an acquired one.
You should never follow the herd mentality at your B-schools, rather you have the opportunity to follow your passion and make it something big in your career.
Therefore, before enrolling in any of the courses for management consulting, I would recommend you simply watch my youtube video on Back-Hacking the Placements and get a clear picture of your area of interest or simply enroll in the Skill Clarity Blueprint course.
