From Chemistry to Consulting
April 23, 2010I just came across this article on Pia Götze, a woman who moved from Chemistry to working for the Boston Consulting Group. The article is a bit old (November 2002), but I think her arguments still apply today.
In this interview she describes well how was the process for her of moving from academia to consulting. She outlines what she liked and didn’t like about doing research and how she came to consider consulting as a viable option for her. Then she describes what the day-to-day job is like. She seems to enjoy it a lot and she appears very happy with the choices she has made.
I liked the article because I am a woman as well, I also started thinking about other options for my future in the last year of my PhD and I mostly share her reasons to do the transition. The hope is that, if someone who moved to consulting for the same reasons I am doing it is now happy with their job, I will be too.
I particularly enjoyed the part where she is asked “Many people are not really familiar with the term “consulting. Can you explain what a consultant actually does?”. Most people in academia have never heard of management consulting and I get this question all the time. Her answer, although precise, sounds a bit too technical. She says:
“At BCG, we support the management of companies as they try to develop innovative strategies that will give them an edge over their competitors, resulting in increased revenues. More precisely, in most projects, we work on accessing new markets, improving industrial processes, or the realignment of the companies’ business segments.”
In PhD workshops we are always told we should have a “party version” of our thesis topic to explain in simple terms what we are doing. Is there such a thing as a “party version” of what consulting is? Do you get this question a lot?
I wonder what Pia is doing now, almost eight years after this interview.
Good luck with the choices and thanks for posting your experiences – it’s all very interesting as there are very few ‘insider’ accounts.
The average career life of a consultant is 7 years, so if Pia represents the average, she’ll have jumped to a client by now (or be building mud huts for charity).
McKinsey have the #1 reputation amongst MBA graduates but actually come in #3 in client reports of performance (under BCG). The former have a more ‘managed’ culture expecting high levels of conformity whereas the latter appear more innovative.
Best wishes for the future,
Joe
Actually I was wondering about that. Why is it that there are no blogs by “insiders”? Is there some kind of implicit censorship? I know I will have to sign lots of documents when I join the firm in September, some of them related to not divulgating secrets, etc. I wonder how far this secrecy policy goes.
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I absolutely love your blog! Thanks a lot for writing it all down. I’m in exactly the same situation. I’ll finish my Ph.D. in the New York area at the end of this year and want to start a consulting career.
One issue I have is that I have nobody to train case studies with. My university has no business school and no consulting club, so I’m pretty much on my own. I bought the book “Case in Point” and got a lot out of it, but to become really good I need to practice with a partner. What did you do to find good training partners?
Hi Chris,
Yes, that was indeed a problem also for me. In fact, I only had 2 partners to train with. One was my boyfriend, who is also a scientist and thought it was interesting to read a bit about this things and give me some training. I got lucky with that one
. The other one was another friend who was also considering consulting and we paired up for a bit, although she lost interest in it and we just had a couple of sessions together.
I know that there are people who offer case practise for a (very high) fee. I did consider that when I found myself in that situation, but now I think it is probably not worth it. It is important to train the cases and to know what to say at the right time, but there is no need to obsess with the details. I would be interested though to hear from someone who has hired such services.
In my case, I feel that I managed to compensate the luck of a good partner to practise with by reading much much more case studies. Hope that helps,
Best of luck!