Cultivating a Consultant | Knowing Yourself and Your Top 5 Strengths

We are pleased to share the first video in our Cultivating a Consultant series as well as some accompanying commentary from Alex.  Enjoy!

Before realizing that consulting might be the job that best fit my needs and strengths, I spent two years interning in wealth management at Goldman Sachs.  After my first internship, the decision to accept the offer for a second internship was a no brainer for me: I was working with a great team, at a very good bank, in a finance related job, in the city I wanted to live.  However, after the second internship, when I had to make the decision to join Goldman for full-time, I was confused because I felt that I wasn’t liking the job anymore even though my initial plan was to join full-time and become a wealth advisor at some point.

After reflecting on the situation, I realized that although I liked the company and the people who I was working with, I shouldn’t accept the offer because I wasn’t enjoying the actual job. After making that decision, I started to wonder what the right job was for me.

Meeting with Susan, and reviewing my StrengthsFinder assessment (https://bentley.gallup.com) was very useful since I was able to understand why wealth management at Goldman wasn’t a good fit for me. The characteristics of my top 5 strengths didn’t align with the characteristics of the job at Goldman. When Susan helped me dig deeper into my top strengths, I was convinced that consulting could be a good fit.

I believe that every freshman should leverage their strengths assessment to start learning more about what they like to do.  It would be impossible to figure out exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life after taking the assessment.  However, it serves as a starting point to help during the internship search process.  Moreover, I believe that before accepting an offer for an internship or full-time job, it is very important to reflect on the actual job and map the roles and responsibilities to your strengths and weaknesses to be honest with yourself before accepting an opportunity just because of the prestige of the company or the salary.

-Alex Aserraf

 

 

By Rachid Macer
Rachid Macer Student Director, CareerEdge and Think Tank Colleague Team