I was just at a university recruiting event (been going to these for over 3 years now) and I realized the students don't seem as enthusiastic about joining the company as before. Anyone else notice this? Is it just a factor of how our employer brand is compared to competitors or the industry perception as a whole just isn't that great anymore?
Consulting has a reputation for long work hours, bad work life balance and cutthroat management. Meanwhile, it pays less than tech and finance. It's no surprise that new grads are losing interest in consulting. My friend is a software engineer with 3 years of experience and gets paid $85k at Accenture to work 60 hours per week. Sounds like a cruel joke, but it's reality
Consulting firms are definitely trying their best to change their image / perception to students.
How did you measure enthusiasm? I have heard that generally students are leaning more towards tech companies given the perks (e.g., onsite gym, large signing bonuses, generally better lifestyle balance) and higher salaries compared to consulting. I've heard that this is especially true for grad students with a larger percentage of students pivoting away from banking/consulting and going into tech firms directly. I do think that relatively consulting is still a pretty popular route that students want to take! :)
All the kids want to do tech nowadays... until they learn they don’t actually have a skill or a passion for coding, machine learning or whatever the latest buzzword is.
...and then those of us who do have a passion for those things have a blast and earn good money with 40-45 hour work weeks at most companies. Longer hours are only required when studying for interviews, which admittedly is necessary in order to level up quickly and maximize compensation.
Well you guys definitely don’t have the sexy brand of MBB. I think a lot of people at my school who wanted to do consulting were gunning for MBB and would be ok with settling for Accenture/Big4 strategy arms if they didn’t make it
This doesn’t make sense. The type interested in consulting want MBB and the type interested in tech want FAANG. Nobody was ever enthusiastic about Accenture (or Deloitte or OW or ATK)
Are you talking about all 3? I don’t think kids would be excited about joining any company unless it was FAANG or a tech startup cause it has that “hotness” factor going for it. I don’t think kids even know that much about consulting firms these days