The choices we make

Angie has already written a bit about the core courses that have finally started. We are in the different groups, so I had Accounting and Finance. Those classes are less exciting and controversial than business ethics, but I liked professors a lot. I studied finance before and so far it’s quite straight forward, we’ll see what will happen later…
I had CV coaching in the morning, which defined topic of my post today. Career choices we need to make. You can say that we’re in the very beginning and it’s probably too early to make any choices, but the official job hunt (which is called milk round here) will begin in January and we’re strongly recommended to start networking now. Tremendous number of opportunities in the London Business School (which is good of cause) is driving me crazy – I want to try everything, at the same time I understand that in this case I may end up with nothing (I wish cloning was an option…). So, now I’m doing my own social research – today I was asking everybody, if they know what they want to do for the summer internship, to my great surprise I’m not the only one who is completely lost. As far as my friends are trying to escape when they see me – for some strange reasons they do not want to listen to my dilemma for 1000–th time and I’ m quite tired of discussing this with myself, I decided that you might be so kind to listen to me..
Here are my options:
Strategy consulting. One of the most popular options here and the one which I was thinking to pursue, when I was writing my application to the school. There are a lot of opportunities here with large and boutique consultancies and though I don’t have prior experience in the area, CV coach encouraged me to apply.
Investment banking. The only thing I was sure of, when I was applying to the school was that I don’t want to do IB and now I see that everybody wants to do it and I started to think: “Maybe it’s not a bad idea after all”. The problem is I don’t know anything about it – so now I’m a member of finance, IB and private equity clubs and half of the books on finance moved to my place from the library (so far I managed just to look them through, but I’m planning to read them all J). Again I don’t have experience in the area, but math was one of my majors at the university and CV coach told me I have a chance. Life style (which is basically no life, just work) is not very attractive to me, but compensation is very tempting. I wonder will we study this type of trade offs in the ethics class?
Industry. That’s the area where I have much experience and where I can succeed (otherwise they will not admit me to the school I suppose). By the way – industry is everything that is not included to IB and consulting – very wide area as you see. According to the school’s statistics, increasing number of people chooses industry for their summer internship. And for me opportunities in marketing, internal consulting and energy are very attractive. Guess what I’m a member of marketing and industry clubs as well.
Apart from this I have a well hidden dream to work either in media or in charitable organization, which is harder to find, but is definitely possible.
Now, do you see my dilemma? I’ll be happy to hear advise from you in this regard.
And finally, I wanted to make this blog as useful for you as it’s for me, so tomorrow I’ll post some CV writing tips from our career services