Reflections from an early career professional: Maximizing my present career for my long-term journey
February marks the beginning of my second year at my job, and like most millennials, this is a time when I start getting questions on my next steps.
There are two typical answers for people who work in consulting: Pursue the path to partnership or use it as a stepping stone for something else. Most consultants (myself included) aim for the latter, which is why it has become one of the most generic “Why consulting?” interview answers for fresh graduates entering the field. Theoretically, the job promises an opportunity to gain strategy and problem-solving capabilities in a short time, which in turn promises its employees an abundance of high-profile exit opportunities in multiple sectors. Realistically, the intention of learning often gets diluted in the process of crunching numbers on Excel and formatting slides, with almost no way to measure how “strategic” or how much of a “problem-solver” you’ve become other than your performance review results.
Performance reviews measure your usefulness in a real project situation and benchmark you against the ideal analyst/associate role that is best fit to complete specific tasks. These usually translate into very tactical capabilities (like making slides) but rarely address the big picture “strategic thinking” that most people hope to learn about. To put it into perspective, some of the most common feedback I’ve received include: Remembering to sense check Excel numbers before presenting, paying more attention to details in slide-making, and ensuring that my deliverables are client-ready. Granted, the day-to-day work of first/second-year consultants typically revolves around translating and crystallizing insights from the broader team into pages rather than taking the reins of the thinking process itself. Real, reflective problem-solving experience tends to take the backseat in the midst of the constant hecticness of day-to-day work.
While reviews are valuable feedback that will help make a great consultant; they are usually indeterminate of one’s big picture problem-solving skills. I realized that reviews alone are not sufficient to become my “end-all-be-all” — especially when I don’t intend to stay in the field forever. As I no longer saw conventional performance ratings as an ultimate target, I started asking : how do I maximize the present for my long-term career journey?
There is nothing wrong with how companies conduct performance reviews and consulting itself is not at all the issue. My point is; as early career professionals, reviews help measure our general tactical abilities but may not fully capture the more personal, “slow burn” knowledge development that often plays out uniquely for each individual.
Before answering this question, we need to acknowledge that long-term career journey is ever-changing and cannot be fully predicted. This is true for people like me who don’t yet see a single light at the end of the tunnel. I have a friend who knows that he belongs in the VC world and and plans his life accordingly, and another who knows the she wants to code forever. On the other hand, I don’t even know what I will be doing next year.
And rightfully so, given the rate at which the Indonesian work landscape is changing. Coming into college, I had never heard about product management, venture capital, or UI/UX researchers. When I graduated, tech jobs were all that people talked about. So much had changed over four years that the country was then home to 1 decacorn and 4 unicorns. We know that this trend will only accelerate in the future especially taking into account recent developments in crypto and AI — research by Dell Technologies found that 85% of jobs in 2030 will likely be entirely new jobs that do not yet exist today.
In this light, maximizing my time at my current job doesn’t necessarily mean zeroing in on a specific type of activity or industry, but rather choosing the most applicable lessons that will likely give me the most benefits in the long run.
There are three frameworks that I have found to answer the question “how do I maximize the present for my long-term career journey”? :
- Relative NorthStar vs. “the dream job”
- Finding my 20% subset
- Staying grounded while developing unique assets
Let’s begin.
- Relative NorthStar vs. “the dream job”
Like any maximization problem, I need to know my objective function and budget constraints. The objective function symbolizes my personal NorthStar. Budget constraints symbolize the limitations to which someone is subject to currently, as a direct implication of their current responsibilities — e.g., working in business implies that I am relatively more constrained from doing creative work.
I used to think that I could only have a singular NorthStar. After all, growing up we were used to having just one cita-cita at a time. You either want to be a pilot, a doctor, or a movie star.
While it is true for some people, I realized that a NorthStar can also be a group of things with shared characteristics, analogous to a set of elements on a Venn diagram (see below). To put it simply, it is a relative group of things that I’d like to do with respect to the future job market (the “Universal set”), and personal ambitions/preferences (sets A, B, n).
In simple terms, I settled for less specific targets over more general, vague goals. And that has its merits.
- Relative NorthStar prevents precision bias.
In mathematics and data science, precision bias occurs when over-precise statistics are used to provide certainty under the impression that greater precision implies greater accuracy. However, precision is actually a limit to accuracy according to ISO definitions. People are biased towards decisions backed by highly precise numbers (say, a 3 decimal point figure) versus vague ranges, although this confidence is untrue.
Having a super-specific, highly detailed 5-year plan will trick our minds into believing that it is indeed the perfect choice without leaving room for experimentation/iteration. This is both misleading and stress-inducing because no choice is hardly ever perfect in reality. Making them more specific doesn’t increase their chances of being correct. In Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwarz says that being content with good enough is more satisfying than seeking perfection. For me, “good enough” means accepting a certain margin of error in my career choices.
A study by professors at the University of Leeds and NTU found that people were, on average, 22% more likely to choose the objectively best option when they viewed options together rather than one at a time. Keeping our options open by having relative instead of determinative career goals will help us identify the most optimal choices.
This means looking beyond the specific career paths that are usually taken by your typical successful peers (e.g., the popular consulting -> MBA -> unicorn track). Instead, exploring different non-interdependent possibilities that lie within the scope of my personal interests (e.g., policy, sustainability-related tech, MSME solutions). This approach has opened my eyes to a variety of career choices that I can achieve far beyond what I would typically accept as a definition of success. Furthermore, letting myself have more than one dream has significantly reduced the amount of anxiety and time wasted in meticulous, straight-line career planning. Nowadays, I hardly do that.
- Relative NorthStar helps avoid irrational choices
In Paradox of Choice, Schwartz talks about being a “chooser”, not a “picker”. Selecting among many options is cognitively and psychologically taxing. To limit our choices, we must embrace constructive constraints.
Having a relative NorthStar doesn’t mean allowing myself to have infinite choices. On the contrary, it helps me set limits (“Circles”) that are calibrated to my personal preferences — preventing me from picking options only look great temporarily. Human beings are irrational decision-makers who tend to overvalue short-term pleasures versus long-term gains. This has happened to me more often than I’d like to admit. Recently, I had a phase when I thought that VC jobs were the coolest. After taking the time to reflect, I realized that the main reason behind this impression was that I saw a bunch of my peers exiting into the VC world. I had irrationally overvalued my interest in VC due to its short-term rewards rather than its long-term benefits to what I really wanted to do (getting a job at Sequoia sounded like the most “hip” next best milestone). In fact, being a VC investor didn’t really fit my interests.
By taking regular audits of my personal ambitions and preferences, I find myself avoiding career FOMO. In the long run, this framework will help steer us towards the right opportunities that are aligned with our endgame ambitions rather than stroking our ego for temporary hype.
2. Finding my 20% subset
I used to say I got into consulting for the learning. Recently, however, I’ve started to feel diminishing marginal learnings from the job. When I first started, every day gave me a new problem to solve with a new way of solving them. Nowadays, it’s not very clear how much new knowledge I can gain if I make that extra page edit or memorize that extra PPT shortcut.
For the longest time, ‘being a good consultant’ was the goal. But being a good consultant meant that I had to check a lot of boxes in parallel; designing impactful pages with aligned textboxes, writing actionable slide titles, building correct Excel models, taking notes extra quickly, presenting something in one minute or less, diffusing an angry client, managing a busy partner, editing pages while half-sleeping, finding reliable sources from a plethora of random stuff on Google, and so on — all the while navigating new business jargons and memorizing names of my new colleagues.
It wasn’t long until I became completely overwhelmed. Every month felt like I was this close to losing my job (perhaps a familiar feeling for many other millennials). I was blindly scrambling to check all the boxes that I thought were required for me not to get kicked out in the next cycle. Soon enough, I started comparing myself to others who had everything under their belt, which led me into a never-ending spiral of impostor syndrome.
Earlier this year, I started to re-think my strategy (or lack thereof). Was attempting to check all the boxes altogether really the optimal thing to do? Sure, completing all these nitty-gritty requirements guarantee a straight line to becoming a manager —but was getting designated ASAP all that mattered? Obviously, some people find checking these boxes very easy. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of them; and as a ‘b aja’ employee, I had to come up with a smarter strategy for my own sanity. Instead of blindly meeting all of these benchmarks, I started rephrasing the question: What does it mean for me, to be a good consultant? Surely, there were things in my day-to-day that mattered or excited me more than others.
Almost like a hot yoga session — I decided to set an intention for my learning. I stopped chasing vanity metrics, slowly accepted that it’s OK not to be good at everything, and began to prioritize the few that I really, really deem important and applicable in the long-term.
In consulting terms, I 80/20-ed it.
Out of all the things I do and observe at my job, I decided that there were several skills that I wanted to master. One of them I found extremely impressive and worthwhile, which I mostly noticed from a particular person. It led to me writing them this email:
One skill I really want to gain is how you do “empathetic” problem solving (I made up this term but I feel that it captures my point). What I mean by this is your way of working with client. You have a tendency to do these to diffuse confusion: 1) diagnose /break down the vague/unclear thoughts of a client; 2) offer answers in a way that client understands; and 3) build ‘mental connections’ of our idea to existing client context; these always end up inspiring the client not only to buy into our recommendation, but with additional topics/initiatives to think about.
Sometimes, discussions with clients end up gak nyambung where both parties have different expectations in content. Your method almost always succeeded avoiding this.
As you know, I am genuinely inspired by this and have never seen this done more efficiently by anyone else. I honestly have no idea how to learn this step-by-step as its not really something technical like making a model or memorizing PPT shortcut. However, would like to continue working with you more in the future so I can at least learn by observation :)
To choose the 20% skills I wanted to prioritize over the many others, I had to reflect on what things would still be matter even if I exit my job. The “empathetic problem-solving” skill described in the email can potentially help me out a lot if I ever want to dabble in policy, where I need to work with multiple and very different stakeholders. Mastering it would make me a resilient resource in any industry I choose to enter later on.
Once we find the 20% subset of things that we want to master, we need to double down on our efforts in pursuing them. For me, it meant writing that email and trying to find opportunities to work with that person again. For others, it could mean new responsibilities that would expose them to the selected skills. What is important is remembering to follow through on the intention that is set, and understanding that things will remain the same (i.e., we will not get increased exposure/chances to learn those skills) if no action is taken to break the status quo.
3. Staying grounded while developing unique assets
One thing that people frequently forget is that having great credentials doesn’t actually prepare you for anything. It’s all too common to see ex-consultants/ex-bankers force their old “best practices” into their new jobs, eventually causing their teams to become inefficient and exhausted.
Let me borrow an excerpt I found on my friend Nate’s article:
Many ambitious people, especially out of prestige paths (e.g. top universities), are seeking one of a kind outcomes but are limiting themselves to picking prestigious paths that everyone goes down on. Winner Takes All by Anand Giriharadas tells the real-life story of Cohen, who joins McKinsey right out of her undergraduate studies at Georgetown University with a passion for public policy and community organizing:
“She joined McKinsey by reassuring herself: “Now that I’ve been trained to structure, break down, and solve business problems, I can apply those same skills to any issue or challenge I chose.” Once inside, though, she realized that while this way of thinking was indeed useful for helping a tire company shave costs or a solar panel maker select a promising market for global expansion, it didn’t deserve its status as a cure-all among domains. Accountancy, medicine, education, espionage, and seafaring all have their own tools and modes of analysis, but none of those approaches was widely promoted as the solution to virtually everything else. Cohen began to worry that this idea of business training as a way station to world-changing was just a recruiter’s ruse.”
Different problems require different solutions. Being in prestigious jobs surrounded by high-profile individuals do not necessarily make you a better problem solver in all situations. In fact, it may become a constraint to self-improvement and success in the long run. To be clear, I don’t think that consulting itself is the issue and I genuinely believe that it does prepare professionals to take on other business roles. The issue is in the over-generalizing mindset and “halo effect” usually associated with this kind of space.
Behavioral Economist Daniel Kahneman describes humans as being made up of 2 brain systems: System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional — typically used for humans to generate quick answers, identify threats and take mental ‘shortcuts’ while system 2 is slower, more deliberative, and logical — the kind we use to solve complex math problems or write essays in college. System 1 is always active, while system 2 requires effort and energy to activate.
When encountering problems, System 1 tends to “draw conclusions based on the readily available, sometimes misleading information and then, once made, to believe in those conclusions fervently.” It is susceptible to biases, one of them being the confirmation bias — where people tend to find evidence that supports their beliefs instead of those that challenge them, and the halo effect — the tendency of overvaluing one’s actions or opinions due to their positive impressions (e.g., from their credentials). Consultants who supposedly spend their days “solving business problems” will have extremely strong intuition (System 1) when encountering new kinds of problems in new areas. This becomes a problem when they don’t have their biases in check — creating a halo effect on themselves and accepting only evidence or input that aligns with their existing beliefs/ways obtained from their past lives. This phenomenon can be further exacerbated when the only points of view we are surrounded by are ones that are similar to our own — creating an echo chamber of potentially wrong answers.
I find it important to be mindful of my own thoughts and the factors that affect them. This also means taking stock of who we are surrounding ourselves with: are we surrounded by a diverse enough set of perspectives? Are we exposing ourselves to different types of activities and practices other than the one we typically do at work? Like Nate said in his article, McKinsey doesn’t churn out executives — it’s the ex-consultants who differentiated themselves in other ways and built up their own unique credentials.
Which makes sense. There is not a shortage of Big 4/MBB/banking “alumni” wherever you go. Having a prestigious corporate job experience under your belt doesn’t necessarily churn out a unique success story. It sure can make it easier, but it doesn’t guarantee that outcome.
Being purposely mindful of our thoughts and biases while taking action to mitigate them will help us find the key differentiators — unique assets — that can separate us from the dozens of similar talent floating around Linkedin. More importantly, they provide us with a distinctive, proprietary problem-solving approach that only we can do — making us indispensable on any team.
If you’re still reading up to this point, thank you for sticking around!
When all is said and done, I find that being honest with who I am — knowing which parts I’m only FOMO on vs. which ones I actually want, giving myself the grace to fail, accepting that things may change — is ultimately more important than having a detailed 5-year plan.