A happy path of failures

Many people, especially university students, ask me 'how' I got into consulting as a new graduate. I tend to jump straight to citing resume tips and networking tricks, but in reality so many other important, minute events came together with the right timing to culminate with an offer letter from a Big4 firm. In writing this post, I realized that it actually wasn't what developers and business analysts would refer to as 'the happy path' - in other words, the straight-forward, exception-free, smooth-sailing sequence of events. In fact, I made a number of genuine mistakes and failed a lot, which I am happy to reflect on here. I hope you enjoy my story of how I became a consultant and even more so, I hope will be able to look more lovingly at your mistakes and failings as part of how you got to where you are now.

After just having had come to terms to the fact that I was going to become a weather reporter instead of a business owner, I received a call from the University's Admissions Office two days before classes were scheduled to begin. "Drop all your courses before 2:00 pm today, so I can assign you to one of the seven School of Business cohorts," she said to me. Stunned by the urgent request, I pulled over in my Jeep. "Umm... okay...I'll go home right now and do that, but are you sure?" I asked her, without in the moment realizing that was a stupid question. I detected a hint of frustration in her voice as she reassured me it would be fine and that I needed to go to the University the next day to finalize everything. 'At least my parents would be excited,' I anxiously thought to myself. Only a few weeks ago, I had mentally prepared myself to accept the consequences of a GPA only passable to the sciences faculty and not when it came to minimum business faculty entry requirements. I had gotten in under the wire and it was my lucky day.

With a stack of signed papers in my hand that I had printed off the night before, I meekly handed them over to an administrator. "You're missing all the odd numbered pages..." she noted with what seemed to be a lack of confidence in my abilities. I hadn't even started Business School and was already falling short of expectations. With a few small tears in my eyes, I followed her instructions, running across campus to seek out the School of Business administration office before it closed. I kicked myself for deciding a week earlier to skip the campus tour to be 'cool' in front of my high-school friends. Recognizing the familiar voice from the other day, I poked my head into a woman's office on the third floor; she was on the phone, but waved me to sit down with a smile on her face. After filling in the literal gaps in my application, she asked me what my major was going to be. My surprised expression prompted her to hand me a list of majors and comfort me that I could change my mind later. Pretending to have already put some thought into it, I confidently told her that a major in accounting would be the best fit based on my high-school scores in math.

Let me cut to the chase on this one. I was disinterested and quite honestly terrible at financial accounting, walking into my first midterm exam with basic questions about assets and liabilities. Before my second midterm (misleading name for a test, I agree), a girl wished me luck in the bathroom when I asked her if she had a spare calculator she could lend me. With a well-deserved 'D' in accounting and a personal plea to pass me to my professor written at the top of my exam paper, a career as number cruncher quickly drove me back to the career centre to run my finger down their list to another major.

"I like the idea of protecting the environment, but our economy is driven by oil and gas companies. These companies pay well and maybe I can find a position working in one of their sustainability and corporate responsibility divisions." Seems reasonable, right? Without checking the requirements of the 'Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment' major, I realized after some laughter from a fellow NREE major that I had taken the wrong pre-requisite course (apparently it was the 'easier' one that 'didn't count'). I reminded myself that I hated economics anyways, having spent every class of introductory economics on my iPhone playing 'Plants versus Zombies' anyways.

I got a C in introductory Finance. With reason to believe that was an early indicator of my potential as a future Investment Banker or Financial Advisor, I swapped to a Finance major. This is superficial, but wearing pencil skirts and dress shirts was probably part of my attraction to the field. It would be difficult career path at Goldman Sach's, but the late nights and golden hand-cuffs would become a badge of honour. I took four senior level courses in Finance - from derivatives to investments to financial theory - I would go on to methodically grind away until my B transformed into A's. Tired and uninspired by both my classes and the idea of spending many lonely nights in an office staring at stock prices, by the end of my third year I found myself retreating to the career office again - except this time, it was for the last time.

"Human Resources Management." That was the last time I spoke with someone from career services. I was aware that to my peers in Finance, this major was seen as an embarrassment. It was commonly referred to as a "fluff" major that was easy and involved a lot of group projects with little analysis or effort required. I could tell even my family was a bit disappointed too, which didn't make the change an easy choice. But I loved my courses and learning the content came easy to me being someone who loves people and working in teams. The problem was, I couldn't see myself working as an HR professional; I quickly realized that HR wasn't a role that supported employees... they exist to support management first and foremost.

By happenstance, I made friends with a kind, brilliant student by the name of Ella who I met in one of my senior level finance courses. One day after class, she convinced me to sign up for something called a 'case competition.' I quickly found out what that meant... it meant giving up my Saturday to analyze a business 'case' or problem with three other strangers who had incredibly unique and interesting backgrounds. We crammed ourselves in a room for five hours, where we read and discussed about 30 pages of simulated information on a company and the challenges facing it. We pulled together a PowerPoint presentation and practiced our speaking points we would talk to in front of a room of a half dozen judges and 30-40 other observers. When it was my time to speak, I made it my personal mission to look every judge in the eye and convince them of our ideas and approach to solving their fake company's problem. We managed to bring home a third place win and respectable $400 each. "Wow, that was intense!" I remember toting to my teammates at the end of the presentation. I was hooked. Addicted to the competition. Infatuated with the public speaking.

Like a drug addict, I needed my next fix. Within the week, I had applied for a position on a prominent case competition club. Timing was impeccable. I made friends with like-minded people, who I traveled with to competitions all over the country. Citing myself as fortunate to have such high-performing peers on my team in each case (pun intended), I never left one without hardware - and a Spirit Award from partying [too] hard with the competition's organizing committee still counts in my opinion. It wasn't long before I learned from my peers - now life-long friends - that our track record made us top candidates for entry-level consultants at a Big4 firm.

By the time I had hit my stride with case competitions, I was 2-3 months away from graduating. While I had been off gallivanting at conferences and competitions, the serious students had been submitting their applications and the window of opportunity had closed for "September starts." I definitely remember this as one of those classic "oh shit" moments. I graduated without a job and did what any middle-class-young-adult-in-early-life-crisis person does and I backpacked across 17 countries in Europe before coming back to reality in August.

Unashamed of my temporary office job and eager to start my career, I did what some would consider to be sneaky and went to a bunch of campus recruitment events for consulting companies that were hosted at my University. Dodging inquiries from other session-goers about my status as an alumni, I networked my way to an interview with each consulting firm in my city.

Despite hours upon hours of preparation, I still managed to stress myself out enough to bring tears to my eyes at 2 out of 3 of my most important interviews with the Big4. During the case interviews, my mind had gone blank and my ability to verbalize mental math was out of the question. At another interview with a boutique firm, I was however able to hold off crying until I was done my interview and walking to catch the subway afterwards. To me, that was at least a small win in a basket of failed attempts.

In the one other interview I managed to hold back the waterworks under pressure, I was able to leave a good impression. But, my reputation with this particular firm was also built on some groundwork I did earlier that year to connect with a Senior Manager from the firm. In an attempt to take the reins in my last year of university, I decided to enroll in a mentorship program with the campus' HR club, where they randomly pair students up with an HR professional working at a company in the area. I happened to have been randomly paired up with a gentleman from a local automotive services company who I quickly built a rapport with, asking him questions about his field and soaking in all the information I could about his experiences, so I could leverage those learnings at case competitions. I was honest and appreciative of his time, explaining that while I did not want to pursue a career in HR I was very passionate about helping organizations with their people. Out of our candid conversations, he decided to connect me with a consultant who works at the very firm I work at today; her and I hit it off quickly and I can't deny her influence on my application later that year. I promised myself I would pay it forward by helping other students find their way from university to the place at which they can feel passionate about kicking-off their career.

From the day I was accepted to the School of Business to my graduation day, I changed majors three times. I missed the boat all together on applications the year before graduating and was rejected from all except one second-round interview. A series of [un]fortunate events occurred between the day I was accepted to Business School and the day I received an offer firm from the consulting firm I have now been working at for the last 3.5 years. I learned from each and every single one of them. Even with the tears, I wouldn't change the happy path I followed to where I am today - failures and all.