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I worked in Management Consulting at 2 top Big-4 Consulting firms and worked more late nights than I can count!Don’t get me wrong! Pivoting to a career in Consulting after my MBA was the best decision I made. But while Consulting is a very rewarding career in terms of how much you learn, grow and network, it is also a VERY demanding one.Let me highlight WHY consultants in top Consulting firms have to work long hours and late nights in the first place:1.) It’s the CultureAs soon as you join a top Consulting firm, the carrot of “making Partner” is dangled in front of you (metaphorically of course!). Everything that you do is then guided by the key question - “Will this help me get more sales/ more clients/ a better network? ” In short, will this get me closer to Partner level and eventually, at Partner level.People who join Consulting are typically ambitious, competitive, driven, mostly Type A and hence the culture is pretty much “race to the top”. In this environment, optics really matter and if you’re the single person leaving work at 5pm, it is automatically perceived that you don’t put in the work.2.) Partners oversell / over-commitThis happens WAY too often and is mostly unavoidable. At some point in your career ( and it’s happened WAY more than I liked in mine!) you’ll end up working with a Partner / Managing Director who will promise the moon to your client, i.e. sell the work and ask you to deliver 8 weeks worth of work in 4.The best way to get out of this dilemma? Try and get involved with potential projects right from the proposal/sales phase when your firm is still pitching woirk to the client. This way, when you win the project, you will be involved in drafting the Statement of Work that defines the exact deliverables and scope of the project to be delivered.3.) Scope creepEven when you can avoid the over-sell dilemma, there is a nasty thing called scope creep that can ruin the best laid out Statement of Work (a.k.a. the SOW). This is a situation when your client starts asking for more and more work that was not defined as part of the strategy/analysis/ operating model work that your team agreed to deliver in the SOW.I have worked with clients who thought it perfectly reasonable to call and discuss work at 11:30 pm, kept daily meetings and asked for a completely new analysis every day, rubbished great quality analysis etc. etc. The only way to avoid this is to set your boundaries with the client and put on paper/email the progress your team makes versus the milestones defined in the SOW.4.) Delays in getting inputs from clientsPicture this….you have a a well laid out project plan to deliver all your milestones by a certain date. You have enough time to analyse all inputs and prepare your strategy. And then….you get NO inputs from the client teams! “They’re too busy with day-to-day BAU activities” “They don’t have to prioritize your project”All you can do at this point is to document all email trails and escalate to your project sponsor when it takes more than a week to get inputs. Do this early on in the project or else it’ll look like you’re the one who’s been twiddling their thumbs all along.5.) Lack of proper relationship managementConsulting is full of big personalities and when personalities get bigger than the higher goal (of successfully completing a project), projects break. This happens usually when a team member clashes with another team member or even a client. The only way to get past this is to keep calm and carry on! Tomorrow’s another day.6.) Sell sell sell! proposals / salesThe harsh fact is that success in Consulting is all about meeting your numbers and targets. It starts at a BA level and doesn’t stop even at Senior Partner levels. And the primary driver for your metrics is how much revenue or sales have you generated.Yep…..if you want to succeed, you’ve gotta bring in the moolah. It is considered absolutely fair to ask a Consultant in a top Consulting firm to work on a sales proposal for hours into the night after putting in a a 12–14-hour workday at the client. There’s no getting around this one, unfortunately, unless you choose to stay at the same level.7.) Firm initiativesThis is another deadly time sucker. Firm initiatives are usually internal projects that develop talent and people, eminence (white papers and publications) in the market, tools built in-house that the firm can take to market, recruitment efforts etc. Basically, these are all the contributions you make to the development of the firm’s people, culture, reputation and eventually sales.Top Consulting firms expect their people to go “above and beyond” and in fact, this is an actual question at year-end reviews. “Yes, she/he saved the world but did he/she go above and beyond in serving our firm/clients/people?” True story.Nobody will say this out loud, but the bottom line is you will never get promoted unless you work on a firm initiative.There is no escaping the demands of Consulting, especially if you want to make Partner. Here are a few tips on staying balanced and healthy:1.) Eat rightIt's so easy to reach for comfort food when you’re panicked about that deadline….especially for us stress-eaters. This is why a LOT of Consultants are overweight. And it creeps up on you. With the travel and late nights at work and events, very soon its another 5–10–15 pounds.Be careful about what you put in your body. Many consultants turn to medication/ drugs to help cope with the pressure. Not only will that harm your health and sanity, it will also show up on drug tests that some clients mandate before consultants join their teams!2.) Working outA lot of people struggle with this and it can be difficult to maintain a workout schedule with the demanding timelines of Consulting and travel to top it all. What works for a lot of people is to get their workout done first thing in the morning.I’m a germophobe but if it’s ok by you, try gear that you can borrow for the duration of your stay at certain hotels. Beats carrying bulky running shoes in your carry-on any day.3.) Meditation/ mindfulnessThis made a tremendous difference in my stress levels, even after having 2 kids and still working in full-time consulting as one of the key leaders in Finance. Just 15 minutes a day made me more zen to the point people started asking me what I was doing to stay so balanced!In fact many Consulting firms encourage meditation, yoga and hold such sessions on the Fridays that people are expected to be in the local offices.4.) Stay positive and optimisticTake time out to keep yourself happy - whether it is spending time with loved ones, taking up a hobby or playing with your pet.Consultants live a very fast-paced life constantly meeting deadlines, traveling and keeping clients / Partners happy. This can affect their psychology in the long run and in fact consulting firms have now started investing in mental health tools and coaches to support their people.Hope this helps! For more tips on Consulting, check out my profile.

Extract requirements - Requirements play a key part in engineering IT systems. Incomplete or improper requirements usually lead to project failure. A business analyst determines a project’s requirements by extracting them from business or government policies, as well as from current and future users, through interaction and research.Anticipate requirements - Skilled business analysts know how quickly things change in the dynamic world of IT. Baseline plans are subject to modification, and anticipating requirements that will be needed in the future or that have not yet been considered is essential to successful outcomes.Constrain requirements - While complete requirements are essential to project success, the focus must remain on core business needs, and not users’ personal preferences, functions related to trends or outdated processes, or other non-essential modifications.Organize requirements - Requirements often originate from disparate, sometimes opposing sources. The business analyst must organize requirements into related categories to effectively manage and communicate them. Requirements are sorted into types according to their source and applicability. Proper organization prevents project requirements from becoming overlooked, and leads to optimum use of time and budgets.Translate requirements - The business analyst must be adept at translating business requirements to technical requirements. This includes using powerful analysis and modeling tools to match strategic business objectives with practical technical solutions.Safeguard requirements - At regular intervals in the project life cycle, the business analyst safeguards or protects the business and user’s needs by verifying functionality, accuracy and completeness of the requirements against the original initiating documents. Safeguarding minimizes risk by ensuring requirements are being met before investing further in system development.Simplify requirements - The business analyst emphasizes simplicity and ease of use at all times, but especially in implementation. Meeting business objectives is the goal of every IT project; business analysts identify and avoid extraneous activities that do not solve the problem or help reach the objective.Verify requirements - The business analyst is most knowledgeable about use cases; therefore they continually verify the requirements and reject implementations that do not advance business objectives. Verifying requirements is accomplished through analysis, test, demonstration and inspection.Managing requirements - Typically, a formal requirements presentation, review and approval session occurs, where project schedules, costs and duration estimates are updated and the business objectives are revisited. Upon approval, the business analyst transitions into requirements management activities for the rest of the IT solution life cycle.System and operations maintenance - Once all requirements have been met and the IT solution delivered, the business analyst’s role shifts to maintenance, or preventing and correcting defects; enhancements, or making changes to increase the value provided by the system; and operations and maintenance, or providing system validation procedures, maintenance reports, deactivation plans, and other documents, plans and reports. The business analyst will also play a major role in analyzing the system to determine when deactivation or replacement is required.Get More Free Videos - Subscribe ➜ https://goo.gl/5ZqDML‌

I gave my UPSC interview while I was working in a High Frequency Trading Startup Estee Advisors [1][1][1][1]in Gurgaon. CSE 2014 result was declared on 4th July, 2015 and the training at LBSNAA was scheduled to commence from 7th September, 2015. So there was good 2 months of time between the result and the training. These days, the gap between the result and the training has further increased to more than 4 months.What did I do?It was business as usual. The office hours were typical 9 AM - 7 PM and since I was paid well (far more than what I get now after 4 years in service), therefore, continuing the job seemed to be a wiser and practical option. I worked till the end of August.Some notable changes during this period were as follows:The number of phone calls suddenly increased.I could now spend my weekend with my parents. Earlier I used to stay on weekends in Gurgaon as weekends were the most productive days for CSE preparation.Gave a few interviews for newspapers, magazines and took some motivating classes in Vision IAS and IMS.Started writing regularly on Quora. Bhavesh Mishra's answer to What type of questions are asked in UPSC CSE interviews? was the first CSE related question that I answered after the result.Relief from Books & NewspapersI was really mortified by the thought of appearing again for CSE 2015 in the month of August and to be frank I had not even touched my books after giving interview in June.My preparation was nowhere near the mark and I had made up my mind to skip CSE 2015 and appear for CSE 2016 instead.The initial few days after the result were blissful not because of the fact that I found my name in the PDF but because of the feeling of relief that I won’t have to study Laxmikanth, Environment, Art & Culture and make notes from newspaper again !Side-projectsDuring these two months, I also dabbled into how to make compilation of C++ code faster. The approach that we were using earlier used to take a couple of minutes for a full compile which was irritating.I decided to read and understand the entire Makefile Documentation https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.pdf. After investing a lot of time, I was successful in reducing the compilation time by 80% and therefore, increasing at least my productivity.Footnotes[1] Low Latency India Brokerage Service,Market Maker[1] Low Latency India Brokerage Service,Market Maker[1] Low Latency India Brokerage Service,Market Maker[1] Low Latency India Brokerage Service,Market Maker