What a Senior Associate at Riveron Wishes They Had Known Before Entering the IT Consulting Industry
Hunter, a Senior Associate at Riveron, wished they had known the "variety and exposure" consulting offered, specifically the interaction with C-suite executives, before switching from accounting and auditing. A surprising aspect of the transition was encountering clients with "very outdated systems" and data significantly less refined than those encountered in their previous role, requiring more hands-on data cleaning and organization than anticipated.
Industry Realities, Data Analysis, Overcoming Challenges, Career Development, Workplace Challenges
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Hunter Haas
Senior Associate
Riveron
University of Texas at Austin; 2016 and 2017
University of Texas at Austin; UCLA Anderson
Business Management & Admin
Consulting & Related Professional Services
Consulting
Greek Life Member
Video Highlights
1. The variety and exposure in consulting roles can differ significantly from previous roles, such as accounting or auditing, involving interaction with senior management and C-suite levels.
2. The data and systems used for financial reporting can vary greatly between companies, even those of similar size. Some companies may have outdated systems, requiring more extensive data cleaning and organization.
3. Directly translatable skills from prior roles should be identified and further developed before making a career switch to consulting to ensure smoother transition and quicker learning curve.
Transcript
What have you learned about this role that you wish someone would have told you before you entered the industry?
I guess I wish I'd known before I entered the industry the variety and exposure I was getting. Before I entered consulting, I was doing accounting and auditing.
You would get exposure to senior managers or directors, but nothing about the C-suite level. I think it would have been nice to know that before I left my previous job.
I could have said, "Okay, these are the skills that are directly translatable, and maybe I could work on them a little more before I made the ultimate switch to IT consulting." This would have made me more cognizant when trying to learn.
Aside from that, the other surprise was the clients I worked with. In auditing, they were very clean, Fortune 500 companies. When I made the switch, a lot of the companies' data for financial reporting was light years behind the company I was coming from.
I found out one of my companies was on a very outdated system, which meant the data itself was going to be very hard to make neat, organized, and usable. It took a lot of rolling up the sleeves and getting in there.
I was definitely surprised that a company of that revenue amount was doing its financial reporting on that process. That was a big surprise that I had to adjust to.