Marquis' Weblog

Thank goodness for the weekend...

I'd planned to take it easy this weekend and chill, but that basically went out the window when one of my friends from college arranged a little reunion of sorts on Friday night. That turned into a really late night and was followed by another late night last night when I went out to go to a birthday gathering for my man Bruce (GSB'05)...not really a good way to have a relaxing weekend, huh? Today, I finally was able to get some rest and I feel great as a result. I just hung around and did not much productive at all...went to see a movie...took a walk around Time Square...hung out and had dinner with one of my friends who'll be starting at the GSB in the Fall (shout out to my girl "Yoda")...and just had a long conversation with my landlord about relationships and parenthood. I have a deliverable that I need to get done early tomorrow morning, but I haven't even sweated it at all today. I guess I just needed a day like this so I could get my mind right before heading back to Ohio in the morning. I need to start taking better advantage of these weekends before I drop from exhaustion.

By now, all of you have heard about the bombings in London earlier this week and although it went down an ocean away from here, it had me really shaken up when it happened. I had a bunch of classmates who were working in London this summer, but they've all been accounted for and are safe. That bombing had me really shaken up though. I don't understand why people think that anything productive can come from all of that violence. All it does is ruin lives and make the powers that be even angrier and make them want to fight even more. None of it is productive. I was really worried about taking the subway while I was here and wondered if one of those trains would blow up. And, even now that I have to fly back to Ohio in the morning, i have to wonder if I'll make it out there safely. This world is full of some really crazy people who don't seem to think through all of the decisions that they make. Also, the natural disasters like the one going on with the hurricane in Florida right now and wonder if this is just a time for the world to wake up and see that things need to change in a major way. One of my closest female friends from Stanford is working in Miami this summer and she didn't answer her phone when I called her to check in earlier so I hope she's alright. Man, this has been a really worry-filled week so far and, to be honest, I feel like some more major ish is going to go down before this summer ends.

In closing out this entry, I thought it'd be useful to post part of another reply to the reader that I mentioned in my last entry. I'm not posting his email to me, but I think the message gets through from the following text that I wrote:

------------------------------------------

While there are a lot of people who are thinking of Consulting or IBanking, I wouldn't say that those industries are the goal for the majority of people. There are folks focusing on Marketing, Sales, Entrepreneurship, Product Management, Nonprofits, and Policy, so there is definitely room for you to get into Consulting. One thing I found is that a lot of people say that they are looking at going into Consulting and IBanking in their b-school applications when they really don't know what they want to do because those areas are pretty concrete and would show them to be more decisive than they actually are when writing their apps. Many people don't end up figuring out what they want to do until they are more than halfway finished with their B-school experience.

Whatever you do, be as honest as possible about what your goals are when you write your essays because you'll have an easier time defending and explaining those goals during admissions interviews and your essays will come off as more genuine. If IT consulting is your goal, you may be one of many people who want to pursue that career track, but that isn't enough to knock you out of contention for acceptance at a school. The Adcomms take so many things into consideration when reading through applications that the relative popularity of your desired career path shouldn't be big concern to them. It's true that the point of your application is to differentiate yourself to show that you are a unique candidate, but I would never recommend stating professional goals/interests in your essays that aren't really what you're looking for. The Adcomms all know the game and I bet they'll be able to tell whether you're being real in your essays.

I checked on Google myself and found the same thing that you did...a bunch of listings of company sites and jobs that they had available. I didn't find much that listed what the responsibilities and job descriptions of technology consultants were, but you can still use the information that we both found. Try taking a look through the job listings at those company sites and they all should have a list of the sorts of things they're looking for in candidates for these jobs. From that, you should be able to get a sense for the sorts of skills that would be required of a successful technology consultant. A couple of links that I found which might be of extra interest were:

http://www.thevault.com/jobs/jobboard/industrySearchResult.jsp?function_id=36,37&hub_id=508&jbname=Technology+(IT)+Consulting
http://www.tech-centric.net/Information-technology-consulting.aspx

Posted by marquis930 at July 10, 2005 11:45 PM