Careers for Business Students (and what they pay) - YouTube

what's up everyone it's kenji here and in this  video i'm gonna be sharing five career paths for  

business students it obviously also applies  to other majors that are somewhat related or  

overlapped with business right so things like  management finance or economics are probably  

also going to be applicable to this video so the  five that i've picked are management consulting  

investment banking big tech obviously not  the software engineering side but more the  

business side of tech as well as accounting  and then lastly we'll look at entrepreneurship  

and basically i'm going to be rating these based  on five stars and the three main metrics that  

i'm going to be rating them by or number  one the difficulty to get the job number  

two the work life balance as in how many  hours they have to work for this job and  

then lastly the pay right and i'll be getting  into actual numbers of how much each one pays  

as well as bonuses and other things like that and  obviously these are just five career paths they're  

by no means the only ones it's just five that i  thought would be handy to you as they're fairly  

popular these days and if this video does well  um i will try to make a part two so make sure  

you hit that like and subscribe button so the  first career path is management consulting and  

if you don't know what management consulting  is it's basically just helping big companies  

improve their performance in exchange for a fee  right so at its core it's just problem solving  

and consultants are problem solvers in  that sense and some of the examples of say  

things that you might be assigned to do or your  firm might be assigned to do are for instance  

say bmw is considering entering a new market say  i don't know the bicycle market then you might be  

in charge of researching if the market's viable if  it's something that's worth bmw moving into right  

that's just an example obviously another one  could be something like hey we see our employees  

on facebook aren't very motivated is there a way  to change the compensation scheme so that they're  

going to be more motivated so you do research  on hey is a bonus a good idea to put in here  

are stock options a good idea are things like that  right and some examples of the biggest management  

consulting firms are mbb which stands for one's  mckinsey the other one is bain and the other one's  

bcg boston consulting group those are by far the  three biggest ones there's obviously some some  

other ones like oliver wyman or accenture and so  on but i'll be focusing on these big three for now  

all right so the first metric is work life balance  and management consultants are known to work a lot  

not as much as investment bankers which we'll get  into in another section but they still put in a  

good say 70 hours a week which is definitely a lot  more than say your average 40 hour work week right  

that said they also have to travel quite a bit  in that maybe they spend a couple weeks in a in  

a month outside their offices in a hotel somewhere  basically because they're at their clients office  

right so basically your client expects you to be  there throughout the week which is why they have  

to travel around so much now obviously this is  changing with remote work and other things like  

that but it's still fairly common for management  consultants to travel so for those reasons we'll  

give work-life balance a two-star for now as  for the pay it obviously varies by location but  

if you're looking at the big three mckinsey  bcg and bain they will pay around a hundred  

and ten thousand dollars a year if you're in  one of the big us cities right so basically  

90 000 would be the base salary you would have  a sign-in bonus of around 5 000 and another 15  

000 depending on how good your bonus is right in  terms of performance but something along the lines  

of 110 000 is not unrealistic to think of so it's  definitely a lot of money and here's a chart kind  

of comparing the different ones out there and here  it's also worth noting that the usp is a lot more  

than most other countries right like look at this  chart here where it says that the uk consultant  

made an average of 46 000 pounds which if you  convert it to us dollars that's around 65 thousand  

that said there's obviously cost of living tax  other things like that that probably are the  

reason for the differences but in order to  compare well to other career options let's  

break it down on a per hour basis instead of on  an absolute basis right so let's say that they  

work for 50 weeks a year so they get two weeks  of holiday 50 weeks a year and as we said earlier  

they work 70 hours a week 70 hours a week right so  basically gives you around 31 dollars per hour as  

a salary which i think is fairly reasonable so  let's put a four star out of five for that now  

in terms of difficulty management consulting is  definitely very very hard to get into especially  

the big three as i mentioned earlier mckenzie  bcg and bain they're very very competitive to  

get into they don't disclose acceptance rates but  i'd say it's well below the five percent mark out  

of the applicants that actually get the job right  as for locations typically those locations that  

don't just speak english so they have a local  language like say tokyo or shanghai are probably  

going to be a lot less competitive because not  that many people speak both in japanese and  

english or mandarin and english right as opposed  to new york or london where you only really need  

to speak one language right and the reason it's so  competitive is because a lot of people want this  

basically the job pays well the job leaves a lot  of options open in that consulting is quite a  

vague industry so you can obviously moving to  other areas if you want to later on those are  

the main reasons why it's so competitive and i'll  leave this free resource in the description which  

is basically going to give you a breakdown of  all the necessary steps to get into management  

consulting if that's the road you want to take so  in terms of difficulty we'll give that a 5 star  

alright so moving on to the second career path  which is investment banking and if you don't  

know what investment banking is at its core it's  two main things number one is financing meaning  

you help companies and governments raise money  in the financial markets and then number two it  

has to do with advisories so basically you help  them out and you consult them on things related  

to money so for instance hey how much money  should you have in your balance sheet where  

should you allocate your money other things like  that are what people typically pay them for and  

if that's not very clear still you can check out  this other video that i made which is basically  

walking through the differences between  a commercial bank and an investment monk  

and to give you some examples of investment  banks the most renowned out there are known as  

the bulge bracket which are basically the largest  investment banks in the world so think like hsbc  

morgan stanley goldman sachs jp morgan bank  of america and so on and so forth there's also  

some other more specialized one which specialized  ones which are known as boutique investment banks  

and these are centreview lazard and others which  just basically specialize in one specific thing  

now looking into the three main metrics when it  comes to work-life balance to be honest there  

isn't much of a work-life balance typically  investment bankers work around 80 hours a week  

which is even worse than management consultants  and if you want to see the details of that i'll  

put a video up here this is basically out of about  my time at goldman sachs where i put in a good  

80 hours a week more or less that also includes  weekends and as for travel there's typically not  

that much travel that's something fairly unusual  in investment banking so for those reasons we'll  

put the work-life balance at a one star in terms  of pay it's definitely very high and hence why you  

have to worry so much so typically it's around 85  000 as your base salary on top of that you get a  

signing bonus of around 10 000 and you also  get a performance bonus obviously dependent  

on performance but it's usually around the 50  000 range so it gives you a total of around 145  

000. as for whether that's a lot or not let's  break it down on a per hour basis to see  

so if you work for 80 hours a week for 50  weeks that gives you around 36 dollars per hour  

obviously it doesn't sound quite as nice as 145  000 but nonetheless it's a lot of money so we'll  

give it a 5 stars for now in terms of difficulty  investment banking is definitely very very hard  

to get into much like management consulting if you  look at this fun article by business insider which  

is called the 11 things that are harder to get  into than harvard it does include goldman sachs  

which is probably the most sought after investment  bank and it has an acceptance rate of three  

percent now i'd say most other investment banks  aren't quite as low but they're still between  

the three and five percent mark right so for those  reasons for difficulty we'll give that five stars  

and i'll leave another free resource in the  description for investment banking i found this  

one on the internet and it basically goes through  all of the different things that you need to know  

to recruit for an investment all the way from what  is an investment to the types of interviews there  

are out there so i think it might be useful to  you guys all right so next up we have big tech  

and obviously as business students you're probably  not going to be working as software engineers but  

rather more on the business side of tech right  so things like account management business  

development finance accounting marketing other  things along those lines right and as for examples  

i mean i don't think i need to give too many but  the big five or google amazon apple microsoft and  

facebook right those are regarded as the big five  but obviously there's other big tech companies  

that you probably use on your day-to-day like  snapchat or spotify others along those lines right  

so looking into the metrics when it comes to  work-life balance it's actually pretty good  

typically it sits around 40 to 60 hours that's at  least based on my experience at amazon as well as  

some some of my other colleagues working on google  and places like that so it's pretty good i'd say  

in that sense usually on weekends you don't have  to work unless you you've messed up or something  

so for those reasons also the dress code usually  there's no dress code the offices are fairly  

fancy because they're tech offices um sometimes  the food's even free so for those reasons we'll  

give it a five star for work-life balance so  the pay package is a bit confusing in tech and  

here's why it basically has three main areas  to it the first one is the base salary which  

in the big cities say in new york san francisco  seattle it's around 80 000 then secondly you get  

what's called the signing bonus which is actually  split into two two years which is i don't know  

why it's a bit confusing uh basically it's around  25 000 for a two years so 12.5 for one year right  

and then in addition to that you have shares but  obviously the shares are not fixed in value right  

they go up and down but it's typically around the  50 000 mark that said you don't actually get the  

shares on your day one instead they have what's  called a vesting period which essentially means  

that you can only get them after you've worked  for a set period of time at the company right  

so yeah even more confusing but anyways let's just  put a hundred thousand as your year one salary for  

now and basically if you're working 50 hours  a week say that's the average of the 40 hours  

and 60 that we've said before and then you work  for 50 hours that probably gives you around the  

40 mark per hour right which on a relative basis  is definitely a lot better than investment banking  

and management consulting so we'll put that  a five star for now in terms of difficulty  

obviously software engineering is very difficult  to get into at a big tech firm but on the other  

hand for more business oriented roles the truth is  that there's just not that much information on it  

i even worked at amazon myself and i wasn't able  to gather much information about it so um yeah i'm  

just gonna not be able to give you much data on  this so we'll just put a three star in terms of  

difficulty for now all right so the fourth career  option is accounting and if you don't know what  

accounting is it's basically the way for a company  to maintain accurate records of their financial  

position so if they want to look at things like  hey how much profit did we make last year or hey  

um how much do we have in sales how much do we  owe the bank again other questions like that can  

easily be solved with accounting right so role of  an accountant is basically two ways the first one  

is to find these figures so calculate them that's  accounting and then the other one is auditing  

which is basically verifying that these accounts  are actually true and that they make sense right  

so i personally worked at pwc as an intern as  an auditor and basically they would send me out  

to a client say to the volkswagen group with  my team obviously and we would get into their  

finance team and start to look at their accounting  rates so if everything makes sense or not and then  

we would create what's called an audi report and  based on that we would certify that their accounts  

are correct or their incorrect rate so when you  see big accounting scandals like those of wirecard  

that we saw recently in germany that's basically  got to do with accounting and auditing now some  

examples of the big accounting firms are known  as the big four which stand for pwc ey kpmg and  

deloitte those are a big four um they basically  have offices really all around the world if you  

uh live in a decent size city odds are they're  going to be there and they have around 200  

000 to 300 000 employees so they're really  really massive and they also have some other  

departments not just accounting right they also  do things like consulting they do things like  

legal services transactions and other things like  that now when it comes to work-life balance i'd  

say it's fairly similar to big tech in that  they probably work around 40 to 60-hour weeks  

it does get somewhat busy during say january to  to march during that spring season and the reasons  

that most companies are closing their accounts  and they're getting ready to file taxes and things  

like that right but overall uh the pricks are not  quite as good as big tech in that you still have  

to go in a suit because you're meeting clients  um the office is typically you know as cool or as  

fancy if you will as that of a tech firm but i'll  still give it out of work-life balance let's say  

a four-star is fairly reasonable so for the pay in  the big u.s cities like new york and san francisco  

there's usually two main parts to it the first  one is the base salary which is usually around  

the sixty thousand dollar mark and then you have  the bonus which obviously depends on performance  

right but it's usually on the around the five  thousand dollar mark so it's 65 000 in total  

if we put that on a relative basis to compare  to the other ones let's say they work for 50  

hours a week and they work for 50 weeks that  probably leaves you around 26 dollars per hour  

which is not bad as in you're probably not a star  from that but at the same time it's nowhere near  

some of the other industries right so for  those reasons we'll give it a three star rating  

now in terms of difficulty it's nowhere near as  competitive as investment banking or management  

consulting and basically the reasons that a lot  of people think that accounting is boring i'm not  

saying that's my case i'm not getting into that  but yeah a lot of people think that it's boring  

and hence why it's not as competitive right so  basically if you have a good degree and you have  

good grades odds are you'll at least get to the  interview stage so for those reasons when it comes  

to difficulty to getting the job we'll give it  a two star all right so the last option in this  

video is entrepreneurship and that's basically  just starting your own business right i don't  

think i need to give many examples but some of  the more recent startups that went mainstream  

include doordash that was founded in 2013 what  is there there's robin hood also founded in 2013  

as well as wework which is founded in 2010. so  looking at the three main metrics when it comes  

to work-life balance the reality is that as an  entrepreneur you're probably gonna have to work  

a lot a lot more than you would in your regular  job at least if you want your business to do well  

right um when looking at the successful companies  out there most of the founders said they did work  

over 80 hours a week weekends inclusive and at  the end of the day you're only giving yourself  

an advantage if you work longer right so for those  reasons um assuming that you want your business  

to do well we'll put the work hours of five stars  as for pay it's hard to say most businesses to be  

honest end up failing and so they obviously don't  generate any money right which is why they fail  

but on the other hand if you look at the forbes  list most of the billionaires up there are company  

founders i'm not saying that your company is  going to get to that level but there is the  

upside potential that say your regular job doesn't  have right so for pay for now i'm just gonna put  

two stars as it's probably more likely that it  goes uh bankrupt or that your business fails as  

opposed to it say becoming getting on the first  list right and lastly when it comes to difficulty  

entrepreneurship is one star mainly because you  don't need the permission from anyone to do it um  

it's not like you need to get into an interview  or anything like that you just go ahead and get  

started now i'm not saying that the business is  gonna do well obviously that depends on other  

factors but to start it you don't really need  anything so yeah those are five career options  

for business graduates um i do realize that for  salaries it's a bit of a rough guide in that if  

you live in other cities that are not say the big  ones in the us they're probably going to pay you a  

bit less especially because the cost of living is  going to be less right and the same applies if you  

live abroad probably the us pays the most compared  to other european cities or cities in asia right  

and also i do want to mention that if there's  any inaccuracies feel free to point them out  

in the comments right i'll try to pin them  if i think it's correct obviously i want the  

best information to be out there for you guys and  lastly i realized that most of the things that i  

analyzed are more numbers oriented if you will so  if you like me to do more letters oriented type of  

career options for business students so  those like that relate to say marketing hr  

advertising other things like that do hit  that like and subscribe if the video does  

well i'll consider doing it so hope you found it  useful and i'll hopefully catch on the next one