Paul Griggs continues giving Business Insider his $0.02 with another article in a series of articles featuring the 30-year PwC veteran’s wisdom: The career advice PwC’s US CEO says he gives to his college-aged kids.
Although his firm has slashed the number of graduate roles, shed countless employees in the past few years, and even canceled the big yearly intern bash at Disney, and even though AI is transforming consulting like an HGTV renovation show host with a sledgehammer to a non-load bearing wall, he told BI that he’d be fine with his kids going into consulting:
The Big Four executive said he has three kids, one who has been in the workforce for about a year and two who are still in college. Two of them may go into consulting, he said, and he’s supportive of this plan.
Griggs said that anyone who has worked inside a professional services firm can see that the core work in accounting, consulting, and finance hasn’t fundamentally changed.
He goes on to give AI a big shout-out and says that he’s supportive of higher education:
While consultants and accountants aren’t disappearing, AI is reshaping the skills those jobs require. Griggs said PwC is hiring more people from nontraditional backgrounds and expects to see more liberal arts majors in consulting and other business roles because AI can amplify the need for “broad knowledge.”
With that in mind, the CEO said he’s a “big believer” in master’s degrees and would support his kids going to MBA programs.
Meanwhile, one of PwC’s own recent surveys says that 86% of financial services leaders agree that AI skills training is more valuable than an MBA.
Before we wrap this up we need to talk about the correction at the bottom:
Important distinction.
