The Soul of Biotech

Of all the questions I’ve ever gotten, I think this one comes up among the most frequently. Just after, “How do you smell so good?” and just before, “When are you moving back to Boston already?” (My mom asks that one often enough to bump it near the top of the list.)

Anyway.

Strategy consulting is a particularly great way to transition from “generally brilliant but untrained and inexperienced” to “overworked but well-trained and fairly clueful.” Most firms don’t need you to know a ton of finance or business (although it helps a little). They realize that if you are thoughtful, ambitious and intelligent, then the rest is just training and experience. That’s why most consulting firms hire straight out of undergrad or business school. If you are trying to apply from industry, know that your industry experience might not be rewarded. Firms generally don’t bother to hire a 24-year-old who has two years of industry experience when they can get away with hiring a 22-year-old fresh out of school and pay him or her a bit less. (Unless that industry experience is closely related, such as investment banking.)

Most consulting firms are set up as pyramids, using the “up or out” model. That means you either make sure to get promoted to the next level in the time allotted to you, or you leave the firm. The layers, from bottom to top, are as follows. Although the exact titles vary from firm to firm, the role is about the same in each.

• Analyst / Business Analyst: Hired straight out of undergrad or master’s program usually. You aren’t expected to know much other than how to be very smart, and how to execute everything asked of you. You’ll get a small piece of the overall problem to consider. If you succeed with that, you get more work and more independence.
• Consultant / Associate: Once you’ve proven that you can handle a sizeable chunk of work successfully with virtually no supervision, you’ll be promoted to consultant. You’ll be expected to mentor the other Analysts to an extent, as a way of grooming you for management opportunities. MBAs are usually hired into an “Experienced Consultant” level.
• Manager / Engagement Manager: As a manager, you’ll be responsible for supervising projects of 2-4 people. Consensus is that this is absolutely the worst level. You have to balance your small amount of managerial control with developing the young men and women below you. You’re the first and last person the client sees, so you generally work the longest hours. If the people below you screw up and underdeliver, it’s on you to fix, and if the people above you overpromise, it’s up to you to make it happen anyway. While you’re at it, you need to develop a specialty to get promoted to Senior Manager. Sound like fun yet?
• Senior Manager: As a Senior Manager, you have specialized expertise and you’re probably involved in managing one large project or two small projects at a time, but you usually have Managers handling the day-to-day. You provide expertise and get to talk to more senior clients more often.
• Partner / Principal: Jackpot. The salary is great, of course (anywhere from 250k to well over 500k). But you had better like selling projects. You are now no longer a manager of people but a full-time salesman. On the plus side, you make a ton of money and spend very very little time on day-to-day. On the minus side, you do nothing but find projects to sell so that you can make your annual sales quota, which goes up every year.

Most people come to consulting for 2-3 years, do their turn, learn a variety of things from a variety of firms, and leave for greener pastures. Among my two best work friends and I, none of us made it to our second anniversary, and none of us regretted it. So don’t think that you have to build a career here if you don’t want to.

Many people are attracted to consulting because of the travel element. I certainly was. If you are single and aren’t leaving anyone behind, it can be a lot of fun. When the workload isn’t too heavy, you can explore new cities if you’re near anywhere worth visiting. And you can take weekends to places other than home and have other companies pay for it. At Accenture, this practice was referred to as the “flexible flyback” policy. In two years, I took weekends to Boston, Orlando, Seattle, Las Vegas, Puerto Vallarta, and other cities, just for fun.

If travel doesn’t interest you, know that not everyone has to travel every week. My coworker Jim worked almost exclusively with local clients for his entire time with the firm. The level of required travel depends on many things, including the geographical distribution of your company’s clients and of project opportunities within them. Your preferences will be considered to an extent, but business need almost always trumps that.

If you’re sure that you want to get in, start by reading on Vault.com about the companies you like, both in the snapshots and in the forums. Plus, begin studying case interviews, which are the most common format used in consulting interviews. In a case interview, you are given a broad business problem, and will show that you are capable of structured thinking, rigorous analysis, and proactive recommendations. Make sure to ask plenty of questions so that you have the data you need to solve the problem. You can buy practice books, much as you would for the SAT or GMAT.

Any questions or advice that I missed?