Technical Consultant vs Software Developer: What's BETTER for YOU | Q&A w/ Tech Consultant

Key Takeaways

Hey Bara, how are you doing? Thank you so much for joining us here today. Hey Sad, I'm good. How are you doing? Great. Doing great. So I heard you're a technical consultant at Deote. A lot of my YouTube audience in computer science working on like technical skills. Consulting is an avenue that people could consider. So I just wanted to have a small conversation with you, ask you a couple questions about your work and all that. So how about you just start out with introducing yourself, your background a little bit and all that. Of course. So, Deoy Consulting, I've been here for about one and a half years now. I came here right out of college where I graduated from Georgia Tech with a bachelor's in computer science. Throughout Georgia Tech, I had like various internships with local startups doing web development. I was at Home Depot innovation center where I did more software engineering. Um, I worked with, you know, Google's dialogue flow. And then I got to work with City Bank in a technology leadership program which was like a combination of software development but also more leadership things like product management, tech strategy, things like that. I guess after that you eventually landed a full-time job at Deote. Could you talk a little bit about your experiences at Deote? What like a typical day is like any highlights any perks? Yeah, definitely. So with deote things are really different in corona days versus precoid days especially as a consultant because we travel a lot. So our day-to-day has changed a lot with the pandemic maybe more than most people before co because we're consultants and all of our work is client facing. We would have to typically fly to where our clients are. Typical week would be like wake up early Monday morning, hop onto a flight, fly out to your client and then Thursday evenings is usually when you would return back home. Now with Corona, just working from home just like most people are a typical day at Deote and most consulting companies. It just really depends on what your project is and who your client is, right? I had clients where they were on East Coast. My travel was the typical traditional Monday through Thursday and then like my current client is on the west coast. So I would actually fly out like Sunday evenings and then return like the next week. And then depending on like how long projects are, some may be very intense, some are more relaxed and some projects you're doing more technical work like coding things like that. In some projects you might be doing more presentations and strategy things like that. And so speaking of consulting a little more, you were a computer science major at Georgia Tech just like myself and many others. I guess consulting isn't the first thing that really comes to people's minds when it comes to the realm of computer science. Like a lot of people head in to like software engineering, machine learning, things like that. Could you break down a little bit of why you ultimately chose it over traditional software engineering like you've had past experiences with? So one thing is, you know, going to AI, going to coding, going into software development, you can do that in consulting. My current project is in big data. I'm coding literally all day. I think sometimes there's a misconception that when you go into consulting, you can't necessarily do the things you would do as a traditional software developer. That's actually something I was promised, right? Cuz I I didn't want to let go of like my coding ties. I came into consulting because I'd be able to code, but that's not all I'd be doing. I'd also be client facing. I'd also be getting a wide variety of experience because you get to work with so many different clients, projects. You get to work with different kind of technologies, different kinds of problems. For me, the pull in consulting was that I felt that I'd be able to do a lot more with my time, especially in the beginning of my career. Right out of college, I'll be able to work on just so much, work on a variety of things. I also just felt like consulting was pretty cool. You get to like travel a lot. You get to meet all kinds of different people. The whole overall lifestyle of consulting really appealed to me. Wow, that's really cool. So, I guess a company like Deote Consulting, a really prestigious company, a lot of people would like to head into that. Could you talk a little bit about the application to deote really the best way is about going that process? Obviously, there's like, you know, apply online, go to career fair. Specifically, I think what really helps people get far is when they attend recruiting sessions and networking sessions because that's when you actually get to have conversations with alumni, conversations with recruiters personally one-on-one, which is certainly what helped me set myself apart from other people is I got to go to various sessions, really talk to recruiters over and over again. So, they knew who I was. They knew that, okay, she really wants this. this is the kinds of things that bar is interested in consulting that's what it's all about is networking so already showing that and putting that effort in in during recruitment season tells a lot definitely yeah being a people's person right there could you talk a little bit about the interview and like the interview structure and what things people should be expecting and how they should prep for consulting interviews it's typically more case interviews which is really different from coding interviews with case interviews usually pitched a business case if you're doing technology consulting There will be technical aspects to that. You have to walk through solutions for whatever problems they pose to you. Like, oh, so and so company needs to increase their profits by this and this and this. And then you'll have to walk through solutions to them. Since it's technology consulting, they'll throw in technical questions and technical spin-offs too. So and so company wants to gather more data on their customers and increase their marketing capacities. How would you do that? is more thinking out loud, talking out loud, more discussion based. Depending on the role you're going into, you might still be asked coding questions. I'm personally in systems engineering and our first round is actually coding. It's only one round. After that, it is case reviews. Yeah. So, I guess slightly different from the traditional data structures and algorithms, leap code interviews and all that. Wrapping up slowly, do you have any like last bits of like advice for my audience out here? What I'm really targeting is what really helped you stand out in the whole process that you could convey to everyone else. What helped me particularly stand out, the conversations I would have with different alumni and recruiters, really focus on one-on-one conversations, talk to them about like my genuine interests, and I think that's what helped them cuz you know, I mean, at the end of the day, there's a lot of amazing people who are applying, but when they can remember your name from a stack of resumes, that's really helpful. And then also doing my research beforehand, really knowing what kinds of roles I'm into, what kinds of technologies I'm into, what kinds of experiences I'm into, it shows that I did my homework. I'm really interested. That's really awesome to hear. Thanks for those tips and advice and really thank you so much for being here and answering all these questions. I think it was really valuable for everyone who's watching this video. Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me.