Why do so many graduates who chose to work in engineering complain about their career choice?

I just returned from a focus group discussion where the other participants and I were interviewed on our tertiary education, our career options, our future goals and everything in between. Most of the participants who are currently working as engineers have little praise for their jobs and were complaining throughout. That made me wonder why they chose the profession at the outset.

Was it due to ignorance of the industry, of the company OR or the alternative career options?

Many said that they want to switch to a job that will allow them to perform a business function such as sales, marketing, etc. But they are unwilling to do so as it will result in a short term pay cut. Logical, I say, which is why it is crucial for a graduating student to ensure prudence in selecting the first job.

Engineering graduates from NUS and NTU have many career options that involve a business function. However, if they what the best if all worlds, i.e. the opportunity to work across business functions AND industries, management consulting is the best choice. In fact, I'm not even sure if any other job offers such a benefit. Probably now.

Which is why engineering undergrads and non-business undergrads should be made known of management consulting as a career to be fair to them. Based on experience, there is a significant proportion of engineering undergrads who already know that engineering is not a career choice long before they graduate. Open your eyes and ears wider. There are many options out there, and management consulting ranks as one of the most attractive.

A management consulting career in Singapore - what % of NUS, SMU, NTU and other graduates know what it is?

Like many of my graduating peers, I was busy attending career talks, networking events and pondering career options at NUS several years ago.

I was an electrical engineering major but had also been immersed in a highly selective global entrepreneurship program mostly sponsored by the university that took me to the US for a full year where I worked in a startup and received premier Wharton School business education.

While many of my friends were lured to the financial industry (mostly banks), I never had a strong interest in that industry and hence, pretty much avoided that path. Still, figuring out what to do was tough despite eliminating an financially lucrative option. It didn't dawn on me that there is a career called management consulting; and seriously, What is management consulting?

Unlike business school undergraduates, engineering students rarely had opportunities to learn more about non-engineering careers until we are about to graduate. To date, this is still an issue that I grumble about but let's leave that to another post.

Because non-business undegrads typically are not aware of an interesting, lucrative and largely considered as prestigious career called management consulting, they obviously are not able to apply to such a job or prepare themselves for it. However, management consultancies are constantly on the look-out for smart people regardless of their majors. Hence, you can already see a mis-match in the supply and demand conditions of management consultants.

What Management Consultants Do

Starting off with a very high level and basic definition, management consultants work in teams to help their high profile senior management clients define and solve the business problems that they are facing.

Why that is Interesting Work

Management consulting projects typically last between a few weeks to a few months. As consultants move to a new project after completing an existing one, they get exposed to new team members, new client counterparts, maybe new industries and likely new business functions. Isn't that exciting?!

Imagine yourself in a team of 3-5 consultants that over a period of 2mths, help a telco MNC formulate a growth strategy that your team justifies will help it grow revenues by 20% y-o-y for the next 3 years.

Thereafter, you move on to a new project where you are helping a consumer electronics MNC develop a new marketing campaign to raise customer acquisition rates. And on and on...

Why People with Technical backgrounds can fit the job as well

Management consulting is after all nothing but problem solving for your clients. It does require consultants to be intellectually curious, capable, structured and the list goes on. But it definitely isn't just the domain of business undergrads of MBAs. As long as you are a structured problem solver, you are halfway there, really. As with things in general, practice makes perfect and you can train your way to getting a management consulting job even if you have never worked in one of the traditional business functions (e.g. marketing, sales, etc.) roles.

I am taking a shot in the dark but I'm hypothesizing that each year, less than 20% of the graduates from NUS, NTU, SMU and other universities in Singapore are aware of such a career option. Just the exciting nature of its work should raise that statistic considerably although there are other pros and cons of the job that will entice or weed out would-be applicants...to be covered in the next post...