MANAGER EXPLAINS: Career mistakes I regret UK

when i joined a lawyer i made tons of mistakes which i thought by the way i had locked away buried and shoved away but we are going to bring them all back up today because we're going to talk about some of the things that you definitely shouldn't do when you join a big4 consulting firm or in any job in fact okay so the first mistake i made was not understanding what really needs to be done to get promoted so just like you have your cv and you do extracurricular activities on your cv and basically helps you get screened i thought the same thing when i do side projects at deloitte and when i did extracurricular activities at deloitte it would really help me get promoted actually it did not affect it at all and let me get real with you all i did effect was my bonus so in consulting firms at deloitte we have a maximum threshold of a bonus the more side projects you do the more you give back to the firm the higher your bonus is likely to be and you're more likely to reach that maximum threshold what really affected my promotion in the junior grades was actually one utilization and that's how much time i spent on client work and then secondly basically how progressive my schools were and you know there's actual criteria that most consulting firms have so make sure you check that obey skills like communication skills financial skills presentation skills um you know being able to lead and so forth and that's why they actually ask you these questions in the interview because they actually do kind of grade you against them as you go along in the firm in the junior grades so basically i spent so much blood sweat and tears and i worked overtime till like 11 p.m most days doing some of the extracurricular side activities i was doing and it basically amounted to nothing did not affect my promotion at all maybe my bonus but did not affect my promotion at all so make sure you definitely check out what criteria that you need to do and need to hit when you are in consulting that should be one of the first things you do okay so the next one i'm not really sure i should be sharing with the whole world but hey i have signed off my soul to youtube anyway so i'm just gonna do it and the next mistake was that i went for promotion too early and i didn't get it so by deloitte we go from analyst to consultant in two years we go from consultant to senior consultant in another two years and basically i try to go from consultant to senior consultant in one year so try to you know get promoted a bit earlier from consultant to senior consultant and let me give you some context i was working my butt off and i was doing senior consultant roles as a consultant to show i was ready for it but really bad timing because i had moved from tech strategy to customer strategy and applied design they didn't really know me or the work i did they weren't you know i didn't have a strong brand in that area and basically they weren't convinced that i was ready to be promoted in hindsight if i had got it i would have gone from being one of the top consultants to one of the worst senior consultants and because when you compare me against my peers as a senior consultant i would have had the same experience or the knowledge that they had so actually i would have gone to the bottom of the pile though i think i was ready or i felt it but i guess the mistake here was twofold right so thinking that promotion is everything it really isn't learning is probably much more valuable and i realized that now you know four years in and then secondly also not speaking to people about you know me wanting to go for promotion and kind of like you know getting people on my side and convincing them and actually i would have felt so much more of an imposter if i did go for that promotion earlier because i have no clue what i was doing as a senior consultant and i am now a senior consultant and i still have no clue of what i'm doing i do think that if you want to get promoted early you need to be really comfortable with the fact that actually you probably are going to be at the bottom of the pile for a while or at least six good six months so just be happy with that and you know go for it if you really want to as well but just remember promotion isn't everything you know learning and taking that knowledge somewhere else is probably more valuable than having a higher rank in a farm the next mistake which i made was by putting all my eggs into one basket and basically there was a director i really vibed with and you know as part of his a team i basically went on to all his projects and kind of followed him around deloitte and i had spent three years of my time investing into him and one day after those three years he just left deloitte and left the job and basically doesn't sound like a big thing but basically all my projects everything that i was doing it just vanished and i had to basically start from scratch to you know networking onto some of the most interesting projects and i still am rebooting my network today and he was kind of my connector into the retail industry and basically there was no one there to do that now i you know love working on retail projects so basically diversify your risk make sure that you try and rotate the senior leadership that you work with because you're not putting all your luck into one basket like i did the next mistake was that i was probably just fake at work and i wasn't being who i was and being really inauthentic so i thought that my professional life was my professional life my personal life was my personal life and they would never overlap so i had this really stupid role at deloitte where no no one would know about my personal life and i've really broken that with youtube haven't i but this massively detached me from building real genuine friendships and i'm pretty sure people thought i was stuck up and i was up myself but reality was i was just scared and i probably wasn't comfortable with who i was do not feel that you cannot be authentic at work a partner once said to me that your professional brand is just an extension of your personal brand you should be comfortable with who you are and if you're not is that firm the right place for you is that firm giving an environment where you do where you can feel comfortable for me it came down to this whole uni mentality where basically like when i studied i worked independently when i was with my friends it was completely different we're going out for bars dinners and so forth at the end of the day to stand out to build relationships with clients you need to be authentic and you need to get them to like your personality and who you are so start feeling comfortable with who you are and feel like you can bring yourself to your work the fifth mistake was that i just took on too much i was a people pleaser and i did not say no and at one point i had one project and six extracurricular activities at the same time on the go my quality of work was dreadful it was so poor and you know you didn't want to know how bad because i spread myself to them what made it worse is i went silent on three of those activities so the ones i wasn't really enjoying as much i gave longer response times i you know kind of just let it die and fizzle out by itself and god i do not know was anything worse than that when you're struggling with the work speak up and let someone know because it's going to tarnish your brand and it's just plain rude i'm not gonna lie i probably didn't want to say that i was just giving up but it's fine if you're struggling and you know everyone goes through that also just make sure you don't say yes to everything because you get a reputation of being a person you can just throw things to and you'll just do it no matter what you know just focus on one or two things which are going to help your career these extracurricular activities and don't you know spend your time doing as many as you can do not do what i did the next mistake and i am going to be really brutally honest is that i really just try to impress seniors and i was networking upwards rather than building real genuine friendships with the people who were in my year and who joined with me and to this date now when i think of the people who helped me the most it was the people who joined with me they related to how i felt and also they were the ones who got me onto projects in different areas they gave me slight templates when i needed them they also answered all the dumb questions i had now it's really good to have a support network who you join with or you know who are going through the same things as you because at the end of the day your seniors are trying to close a deal they're trying to get revenue and they're not gonna obviously focus as much time on you know how you're feeling and what you're doing and you know trying to give you your next opportunities so having a support network and having real genuine friendships are what just makes life so much easier and so much more fun when you're at work next mistake i made was not having or voicing an opinion about something and i learned this really early on i was a few months in into deloitte and was making a presentation for the head of retail across all of europe and he basically asked me khadra what do you think and now this guy has 40 years of experience here's me with only like a few months and basically he was asking my opinion why does someone that senior care about my opinion you do matter your opinion does count no matter how many months of experience that you have so going into a discussion with an informed view of something having an opinion about something is really key as a consultant you need to have a viewpoint and reasons backing your opinion so always make sure you go into any room with that mistake number eight and it only took me four years to realize this mistake was that i didn't really put them as much importance on work-life balance and having mental health and it's really hit me during lockdown and quarantine and i'm sure it has with you as well i've been working overtime for most of my career at deloitte and i definitely do think that you know this past final month i have really been totally burnt out i've never really felt this in my life actually i think me just working long hours on projects has just built up and i've just kind of lost motivation over the last month and a half i'm not even giving it 50 and it's a really high visibility project and i should be you know obviously impressing the people i work with but right now i just can't find the motivation to even do a 9 to 6 p.m job kill me guys kill me anyway make sure that your career and having a job is sustainable so make sure you place some time outside of your work life and you know this really wise thing i've heard is that focus your work around your life and not your life around your work so i can continue with all my other mistakes which there is a lot but today i think this is all the pain i can take these are things i wish i did differently and if i had a clock i would go back in time and have handled these so much more differently i tell myself there was no one there to guide me so i'm not too hard on myself but that's why i really want to be here for all of you so that you don't make these mistakes that i made right i am off for dinner so i will see you next week is korean bbq tonight

Channel: Kajol Phadnis

Views: 94,096

Keywords: management consultant, big 4 career mistakes, management consulting, big 4 consulting, consulting, career mistakes to avoid in corporate job, career mistakes in consulting, biggest career mistakes i made, biggest career mistakes to avoid at work, career mistakes I regret, common mistakes at first job, career mistakes to avoid at work, biggest career mistakes to avoid, deloitte, career mistakes to avoid, mistakes I made in 9-5 job, Corporate job mistakes, manager, manager job

Id: Ea2fbBy0rjM

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020