From PhD to consultant, a brief history
In early 2020 I began to panic when I realized that I didn’t want to stay at the bench, and then the pandemic hit.
Over the next few years, I did significant soul searching, lots of failed experiments, tons of cases and finally landed my dream job at the consulting firm Simon Kucher. In this article I’d like to give a bit of background on my journey and offer 4 lessons I wish I had known before I went through the process.
Lesson #1: Know yourself
In 2017, I was a second year PhD student, I had just passed my qualifying exam and I was neck deep in my research. Late in the year an eminent microbiologist who was the founding chair of our department visit us and gave a presentation on his research. His talk was of course incredible, and I remember all of the students at the lunch session intently listening with big smiles as he told us the deep lessons he’s learned over the years from countless papers and assays. At one point, while talking about motivation, he paused and said:
“After all these years, what keeps me going is the feeling you get when you finally get the answer to a rigorous experiment, it’s orgasmic!”
We all laughed and many nodded their heads in agreement.
Except, I was left confused.
I started to think back to my own experiments. I realized that very seldom had I found any pleasure from their completion. More often the pleasure was relief that I didn’t have to do more western blots! If the answer to an experiment was the thing that keeps a great scientist going, how was I supposed to go on to become a professor, much less finish my PhD? I left the lunch feeling shaken, and I began to seriously doubt my future career as an academic. The next question then, was if I didn’t want to be a professor, what did I want to do?
I spent years afterwards thinking about this question and considered a variety of careers within biotech and pharma. I remember distinctly telling a friend that there’s “no way I’m gonna be a consultant, it just isn’t for me”.
However, understanding myself was critical to gaining the confidence to get started.
Ultimately I realized that consulting would be a great fit for me when I realized that I loved to think about both science and business. This was only possible through months of reading and self reflection where I dissected my motivations, goals, strengths, weaknesses, and desires. Once I was set on consulting, it made the path of next steps crystal clear and I was able to begin taking concrete steps to working towards consulting.
Lesson #2: Start preparing sooner than later
For most people, one of the first things you learn as you begin to prepare for consulting is how miserable you are at doing case interviews. I remember doing my second case interview with my girlfriend and completely failing at the very first question. Luckily, case interviewing is a trainable skill and over time I was able to learn the techniques and methods to ace the case interview.
To get to a strong level of confidence, it took me about a year of self-study including regular practice, reading and discussion. Luckily, I was in the business club, and I had friends who had prepared ahead of me direct me to great resources for self-study.
By the end of my preparation casing felt very natural to me, and I was able to confidently enter interviews. However, given the sheer amount of materials and knowledge I had to learn, it was important to get started earlier than later. I was regularly casing 3-4 times per week and reading or listening to materials almost every single day.
Most of the lost time came from reading the wrong sources and having to fix my own bad habits.
Finding the right case partner who was appropriate for my level was also a major challenge, and many times I was teaching the partner I had met how to case.
The year after I had completed my interviews and received an offer, I began coaching other grad students to get into consulting. With regular coaching, I was able to help them become proficient in 3-4 months instead of 1+ year. The rapid progress happened by targeting the right materials to read, lots of rounds of practice and established methods of preparation.
Below, you can find a short list of resources I used:
Case Interview Secrets by Victor Cheng
Management Consulted free resources
Cases from actual consultants
Many YouTube videos on how to case
20+ free casebooks from top MBA programs
Do NOT use the book Case in Point. Firms are actively screening out candidates who use these methods!
Lesson #3: Most candidates will burnout from practice
Early on during my self-study, I was learning from a graduate student who was also preparing a year ahead of me. One of the big lessons he pointed out is that most candidates will eventually become exhausted of casing and stop practicing all together. Like most people, I brushed off the idea. “Me? But I’ll just be more dedicated than everyone else, he’ll see!” How wrong I was.
Many novice candidates get the idea that you just need to do a certain number of cases until you are ready. The problem is that chasing after this number alone won’t make you good at casing, especially if you don’t thoroughly review the mistakes of each case and make implement the ways you’ll improve them.
After months of casing, many candidates begin to feel like all the cases they do are the same and begin to plateau in their ability.
If you are feeling burnt out, the best option is to stop casing completely for 1-2 weeks.
Afterwards, you should switch to doing a fewer number of cases, but being much more thorough with the mistakes. By the time most candidates are burnt out, the gains in performance will come from improving the details, not from the overall strategy.
Lesson #4: Networking is critical
Getting into a consulting firm is extremely competitive. When I was a consultant, I regularly reviewed stacks of resumes of elite candidates applying to our company. Often times, if a candidate is referred within a company they will be reviewed separately from regular applicants and in fact if a referred candidate is offered a job the person who made the referral can be compensated!
Many of the opportunities I received in training and applying were primarily driven by who I knew. Being associated with the business club, I was able to meet actual consultants who guided me through much more rigorous cases. Through informational interviews I was able to learn more about companies in significant detail and find out how they’re different from one another.
Developing genuine relationships with people who were in the industry allowed me to to get their perspectives on what’s important in the application process.
Networking isn’t about reaching out to random people on LinkedIn, but trying to leverage who you know, and who they might know by extension.
The first step is to assess who you may (or may not) already know in consulting and see who they can introduce you to.
For more practical tips on how to network, I will be writing an article in the future covering steps you can take.
I received my offer in 2021, a full year before I graduated.
The journey was difficult but it has been incredible to reflect and see how much I grew. I have coached many candidates through the entire process and I know that it’s possible for you too!
I hope this story had some helpful tips in your job search, if you have any questions or thoughts I’d love to hear from you!