E62: Healthcare Strategy Consulting in the UK from a Hard Science Degree

[Music] hello and welcome I'm Patrick Curtis your host and chief monkey and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast join me as I talked to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general let's get to it in this episode remember the pharma guy shares his path from a hard science bio medical degree all the way to pivoting to a master's in management and eventually breaking into a top healthcare strategy consulting firm in the UK learn how much he makes now and why he chose to work in strategy consulting over investment banking enjoy Pharma guy or the farmer guy thanks for joining the wall street oasis podcast thank you first off thank you for being such an incredible member - on the site you've been around for a long time and have an incredible number of silver bananas so thanks for that so you'd be great before we kind of get started if you could just give the listeners a quick kind of summary bio yeah so my background is in biomedical sciences specifically pharmacology and genetics from I would have considered a UK medical target and then I pivoted to management again from a UK target so I think LPS at a C Oxbridge and then from there I kind of battled around some healthcare consulting internships some part time for from the did healthcare due diligence for private equity firms and then that kind of launched me into just full time healthcare consulting so strategy consulting within the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors predominately great really interesting so let's start back in undergrad so you kind of yeah well even further back kind of just family situation and life what made you think this is the school you have do you have family in healthcare so I so I have a father banking and I was always fascinated by Finance but it wasn't fully the path that I wanted to go down and I always had a passion for Sciences so I decided you know study something you'd like but from the very start of undergrad I had a pretty good idea that research and the corporate side of pharma is know something that I necessarily wanted to do so I already had it in my mind to go down the kind of consulting because I knew that that was a big sector and there are a lot of firms and there was a lot of work to do you'll be surprised how little business scientists you know and how little science consultants know so I figured combining the two would have been kind of you know that lethal combination that would have allowed me to have success in the sector so yeah yeah I know you're I know you're only a cup of Ford what's the punchline so a couple year only a couple years out of that your masters but has that been the case has it been helpful at all you feel like you can get by yeah no I mean just for mine that class I was the only one who that I know pivoted to business and even within my colleague let's say class a lot of people have PhDs or they have masters purely in science and they came straight into consulting obviously you know women health care having that scientific knowledge helps but the fact that they missed some of the basic you know Business and Finance kind of knowledge that you would get from a masters and business matters and management right I wouldn't think necessary puts them at a disadvantage but lets me see things in a kind of a myopic way got it okay so fair seer you're in undergrad you're studying kind of a very you know very science have a degree and do you feel at this point you were kind of interested in consulting you said like from the beginning but was it something that you always knew you were gonna pivot or what did that kind of change so I I was fascinated over by the science predominantly but there was an aspect of the strategy behind pharmaceutical companies or by tech companies that was also very interesting to me because it's kind of like knowing the science at a high level and then being able to implement that with subsequent business decisions quences and that's what drove me towards the consulting side you know you don't want to be too deep into the business or you don't want to be too deep into the science and you want to try and find that but was there some wet spot was there somebody at school or somebody that kind of influence you or someone of your friends that was like doing consulting or was it something like who expose you to it initially what kind of what made that light bulb will go up just your dis your following and banking was enough but it was also professor who I expressed his interest to and he said you know rather than do the typical masters PhD would finish your degree as fast as you can pivot to a business degree and just get consulting and so I started looking up firms and started getting an idea of what they do and that and that was really attractive because you wouldn't really leave either field 100% right you'd be there in the middle so I think it was a mixture of that family and that kind of epidemic environment yeah so did you feel like when you pivoted what was the most surprising thing like going from the hard science degree to think going to a master's business I have a guess but I want what you think I mean familiar was how how much you may do with incomplete information and I think you have you have a bias coming from science where you want to get all the facts and you want to have a super detailed understanding of the field or an area before you actually make a decision or a business a lot of the time this year if you have 60 percent of the information of a situation you're lucky and you have to make a decision based on that I think it was kind of you know reconciling the fact that you won't always have the full information but at the same time I think there's an element of synergy where both are very fact driven and you do kind of tend to drill down on you know the specific knowledge of an area and then you use that information to kind of go forward sure so you you're basically was it hard to actually get into this master's program was it competitive I mean I know it's a great you know it's a great school but was it something bad there are a lot of other people with science hard science backgrounds kind of going into business it's probably a little bit more rare so can you tell me about that and that data application process was it something you expect it in or did you kind of apply to a lot of different places how did you balance that yes so I applied to multiple places and I think that you know I tried to make as much of a case of me being interested in business and be cured by showing that I had it outside of my undergrad and I was reading business books and so forth but I think out of 120 in my intake class there were about four people that came from a biomed background so that's a pretty low low acceptance rate for scientists within my field obviously you have you know you're an engineer and there but I'd say STEM subjects as a whole we're probably within the 10 15 percent range do you think that's because just there's lots of them applying or do you feel like because the the actual yield is lower like the actual offer rate is lower to sign that I mean I would say I think it's a mix I think of the UK STEM subjects are highly valued but I think that a lot of stem stem people try to at least go down the masters group before pivoting rather than jumping straight from undergrad to a master's so I think yeah III think it's a combination of low number of applications and potentially just no offers okay so you were you know you put together a strong enough application that you got accepted to a really strong school you ended up going there for your masters and you were kind of shocked okay one of the things you know science versus business business you have to make decisions so was it a lot of like casework and stuff there like in clubs yeah Varian groups exactly yeah yeah so there was a lot of collaboration and there's a lot of kind of rapid-fire work and you know kind of case exercises even within a certain courses it was kind of designed of course work where in science I was used to doing maybe three four months long lab projects and in business you'd have you know one to week cases where you essentially have to come up with something so did I did did all the top consulting firms come to the school to recruit or how was the was it a one-year program a two-year program what was the kind of timeline so that you would have to get ready for recruiting because consulting case interviews are notoriously difficult so I'm curious how you prepared in terms of were you doing a lot of mock case interviews with your classmates were you did you have like a an internship in between your first and second year or was it straightaway recruiting and then your work after your first year yeah so my course was kind of an oddity within the school it was one of the few to your courses that's offered so it gives people a chance to kind of either have a summer internship between the two years or to try and get some sort of off cycle internship that's great so you do have heavy recruiting from the top banks and the consult consulting firms in both years but the majority of us ended up getting summer internships I ended up at a strategy boutique that focused on health care between my two years and then come the success of September that's one full-time recruitment started what was that / TQ ended up at was that like your first choice did you try applying it like the top consulting firms or what you know what do you think did you have any crazy interview experiences during that time yes I think you know I kind of like everyone in that position you apply to all the firms and kind of have interested hath not but I was very interested I think after my internship to focus on the healthcare sector so I was actively looking specifically for healthcare consulting firms and the firm that I applied to interestingly I applied through the summer before for an internship and I got I didn't make not even first-round interviews great and then I ended up getting the first run interview passing that second running interview and then right before Christmas an offer so that was now it's pretty I was pretty particular and tell me a little bit about like what the interview process was like was it a traditional case interview or was it different because it was so rich focused in healthcare so yeah so the fun they predominantly hired to the healthcare sector so we have a bunch of different practices and you get highest rating so you're not you don't start as a generalist even though it's quite a big firm about a thousand people around the world the interview process was I think potentially unusual and that you have the opposite to what you would have in normal cases so you have a super day at the beginning as a round one where you be in groups six seven people and you circulate around different exercises so a mixture of KS and extra behavioral and extra of competency questions and then wait you're you're in groups you're in groups of other candidates or you're in groups meeting you you're getting interviewed by six or seven other people know young groups of different candidates know you're having you the governor bitter like a group interview exactly so you have awkward interview and as you would essentially rotate not only so you would be with a fixed group of six seven people but then you've rotated with like five six different partners at the firm and they'd each ask you a different you know they'd each pose you a set of questions so again cases competence brain teasers and so forth and then if you pass that you move on to run to where it would be three rounds of one-on-ones where you would have two cases and one set of competency questions so let's go back to the super day that the group dynamics how did you navigate that what did you feel like was important to did you put were you able to prepare for that at all I guess some of the work you do in your masters probably helps with that but it's kind of a different dynamic when so much is on the line right yeah it is and I think you can prepare for the traditional cases you know as one would but at the same time you have various exercises that you would expect so one exercise was everyone was given a card with a word to do with a value so someone will get integrity someone would get honesty someone were to get weakness and strength and you'd have to kind of shred answer you know when was the time you showed on stickam the time you showed integrity and so forth I ended up getting the integrity card which turned out to be the hardest one out of the bunch by far but but yeah it was definitely an experience where it's tough to kind of navigate within a group of cuz what did you say for the intake say like you got the integrity card you had to come up with a story or a time that you showed integrity yeah where did you think of one on the spot or do you had you were you prepped were you ready so I kind of a winged it on the spot so I I used to work part-time in nightclub promotion and I was talking about how in that field you very often get clients taken from you and client strolling around and as a proof of integrity I would never seen other people's clients because I knew that down the line that would come back to bite me in the ass and those who did ended up getting fired by management pretty often three four months after they started doing that so I demonstrated that and evident key that resonated with people okay fair enough so so you're kind of you pull the the tough car you you survive it and then kind of you go through you make it to the other rounds which there's more traditional case interviews right those did anything throw you off was there any case you remember that was like surprisingly difficult no I don't think it was pretty difficult I think you know the case itself the first case was predominantly you know one of those profitability questioning company wants to open X activity inspector and they want to be profitable with within one year how would you go about doing so well island I think that is I think what threw me off a bit was that the market sizing was very abnormal in terms of the sector so I remember I got a case about the market size for ankle braces in the UK and that was something that I had never even remotely thought and different variations within that sector that he could think about kind of calculator market size so that was a bit that was a bit awkward ankle bracelets ankle braces Oh braces before Donna yes okay got it like yeah braces like Aircast and stuff like that correct yeah yeah very cool very cool so okay tell me a little bit about what happened so you you did the internship was it something worth it was expected after the internship you'd receive a full-time offer for once your masters degree was completed or how does it what we what was the retention or the offer rate on the interns that did did end up getting the the job yes so we I was with two other interns so they took three inside of I think a couple hundred applicants and the officer rate was essentially a hundred percent however the the firmer intern was a boutique which is not necessarily better in itself it's just that within the areas of strategy that they advertise they were heavily focused on one where 90 plus percent of the revenue was coming from which was a very interesting area however the repetitiveness you know down the line may be something that some people aren't attracted to and therefore I looked for a firm that had a more varied offering after a while that's fair and so did you feel like what you did receive an offer from them though to come back yeah at the time and so did you and so did you have to tell them right away like no or you say uh I need to think about it and then kind of go to the start yeah it was one of those things where you know the places there let's chat after the summer see how you feel about things and then I politely you know I thank you for the time I thank you for the opportunity because it was a very strong learning opportunity but then I mentioned that there was more that I wanted to achieve at this early stage in my career and I was looking for other opportunities did they seem upset or they would seem they were nice about it no I think that they were nice about it because I mean you know boutique that focuses on one sector the the churn rate was pretty high where you'd have people leave maybe every couple of years and they understand that the learning experience in the moment is very strong but then people want to bring value learning somewhere else and I kind of realized that straight out of the internship okay and so you kind of go into your second year you don't have a full-time offer lock down it's a little bit nerve-wracking did you have confidence that you could just get through the I mean you you obviously did a great job to get that first internship so was it that confidence to kind of turn now that offered that you felt like you were gonna gonna land something that they it's that kind of how you were what your mindset was I mean yeah I would never I never walked into any situation thinking I'm 100% gonna get this offer right but it was one of those situations where I said I have this experience I'm gonna leverage it as much as I can and especially within the sector if I can push it as hard as I can and try to sell myself as well as I can I can for sure get a first-run interview and then from there it's up to me so I tried to push as much experience that I could I tried to learn as much as I could from the internship but then how did you do that you got back onto campus and like had you been networking over the summer as well like had you been reasonable yeah I was pretty kind of isolated to the firmer I was interning but I was getting an idea of other firms within the sector that we're all parading and you know the similar strategy avenues and what they were doing got it so I had more names and then from there I could just do more applications through the website them selves I didn't network and visit and other areas yeah but I think it was mainly just applying straight up through the websites and the online application portal what was your hit rate on those like from let's say you so it sounds like you may be applied to I don't know 30 places yeah not that many so I like you apply it it's not like you applied to 300 places you were fairly targeted it was a specific niche it was in consulting so like you knew what you wanted right and you had the right resume for it right so you might say I have pure healthcare strategy firms I must have applied to about seven eight took and then from there about two interviews and one converted to a full-time position yeah see that's what I'm saying like you didn't have that much larger a universe right so know what would know that's what would you have done if you had gone 7 to 0 or 7 1 0 meaning seven interviews Oh what like what would you have done yeah so I mean I also applies to other you know other firms at the same time because I figured this is the sector that I want however I'm I'm not going to take that risk fully and I'm going on board let's go so I did apply to them in general it's firm and you were getting them right and you were getting some interviews there's alright you were getting interviews at the generalist firms as well at a decent rate yeah I got if you had the generalist firms they've got a couple of IV interviews for mainly healthcare firms so health care focused firms would say yeah but there again you know because my focus wasn't consulting I didn't necessarily put that much time and effort into developing those financial skills so some of those fell through at the interview stage with banks and also just the conveying of interest every time I discuss my interest it came across very strategy side rather than more finance side so people said you know you're a good candidate but you seem like you would first a long one consultant so do you feel like that was it's like you were hedging your bets with some of these investment banking applications but you weren't fully vested in prepping and doing the prep work because you really did want that strategy consulting well correct yeah like you weren't you weren't fully into because you probably could have done the research to know what it would take to do well and invest in back the interview right and said what you needed to say yeah so I just know that that's interesting to me because you're kind of dabbling like so it sounds like you're first obviously your first choice was strategy consulting healthcare your second choice was just consulting in your third choice was like I be yeah sort of so like you kind of had a better story product for the consulting firms obviously then for the IB IB was kind of like you just got flamed out like this they sniffed you out in the interview process sounds like it probably didn't help that it so like tell me a little bit about that like was it just something you apply just because you could and you came from a strong school so you figured I should do this like he was almost like I should just hedge my bets exactly it was kind of that and then you know when did you get to the interview stage it's one of those moments you're like oh I didn't even get get here and then when you're in the interview you try to convey yourself as much as you can for that interest of IB and so forth but a across on a more strategic level from a kind of a consultant perspective and people kind of just they figure it out there and then Mike is technical is where you know who are you dropping the ball and like the three statement models and said walk me through DCF that type of stuff was that no so some of those those things are kind of there because it within I mean based on my background whenever I approached interviews they wouldn't drill me as hard as they would someone with a finance background without it has been better medical sciences right then is that management so obviously a technical viewpoint okay so it's how your frame IIb yeah is okay why IB and it didn't come or it came across as important it sounded more like why scare Hawaii consulting strategy exactly it would always be muddled up with life strategy like yeah life strategy consulting they're like all right you're clearly not funny in this you should push for a consultant more yeah okay fair well they were right so so you okay say why why why consulting was did more just this this professor his influence on you kind of early on going back there too did you feel like it just fits you better personality wise I'd like to kind of unpack a little bit just for the listeners who maybe aren't really sure you know should I go invest banking should I go strategy consulting what was what do you think made you a better fit for that side yes I think it was it was part of my personality and and again you know for all for all the listeners out there my experience in my opinion is predominately based within the healthcare sector is that when I I do still follow a lot of these big deals that have an healthcare but from the investment banking side it can be a very iterative process within the realm of healthcare and biotech where similar strategies that are applied time and time again with M&A with fundraising and so forth but within the strategy there's so much detail within fun and biotech that is often overlooked that you tend to deep dive into when you just try to do consulting that the day-to-day nature projects on the day-to-day nature tasks is in my opinion more varied and it also you get to the level of granularity where you're not necessarily dealing with the c-suite of as I have very high level overview of this whole situation you're dealing with you know the head of market access for oncology you're dealing with the head of commercial planning for rheumatology so you're going deep within the strategy but also deeper than the science and someone who comes from a scientific background who can has managed to combine this with business on the day-to-day that is a more interesting and very kind of set of tasks compared to banking where you say it's more transactional and it's like a repetitive M&A process with where you're just you you come in you do a transaction you leave is that what you're in comparison is that what you're proposing to correct and again you know coming from a consulting background I I'm not incredibly familiar with the day-to-day of Investment Banking within the deal process but also based on you know research that we'll get from our clients where they've they've dealt with in transaction strategy teams or they've dealt with M&A teams from times a lot of the work is kind of more high-level where is that we keep dive into the strategy a bit more yep that's fair I don't think I don't think many people would argue with you on that so to me like looking back you know you've only been out a couple years what would you would you change anything would you still gone the the very hard science degree given that and the amount of work it it took to get because it can be tough I yeah because it gave me that that lets say entry level understanding of science that isn't necessary and we have a lot of people within the realm of strategy consulting that can go all the way to the PhD level and then pivot to consulting and realistically on a day to day basis you don't use all that knowledge and all that experience so there you spend a larger portion of your life on the science when you could have pivoted to the business and learned some more tangible skills that you're gonna use on your day-to-day so I think going back I would have I would have repeated the same path okay great and then what's next for you so I think right now I'm loving strategy consulting within healthcare I think I'm gonna stick to this I am fascinated by the you know the side of private equity and so forth and obviously coming from a non-financial background but being exposed to some commercial due diligence deals and and so on you know there is that potential to pivot but I need to try and market the angle from the more strategic side which other health companies or help PE friends understand that it rains the level of complexity within the strategic side of transactions and deals that needs to be addressed from a consultant perspective rather than a purely financial perspective then there's also operating partners as well in private equity right and you know I encourage you to look at that path as well because it can be very lucrative and interesting to you get more that little bit deeper with specific companies but do you mind sharing pay by any chance or a range of pay that you had kind of coming from well I guess just you had your internships but just coming out of school is it like a traditional there's a certain range that you're comfortable sharing yeah so the starting and my firm was a little bit above market I'd say for what one would expect from an entry-level consulting role the range was between let's say 47 and 53 okay so that's a pretty comfortable range considering London standards and considering that you know a background with a similar education background with me yet you know it's here too or an MDB would get within the 40 to 45 range yeah that's great so pretty solid first year out of school salary so it's awesome yeah that's so awesome in well first off and you know we're not first off but strap up Jesse and thank you for for taking the time and thank you for being such a valuable member to the community I really do appreciate it thank you I appreciate it thank you so much thanks for joining me and thanks to you my listeners at Wall Street Oasis if you have any suggestions whatsoever please don't hesitate to send them my way Patrick at Wall Street Oasis calm until next time [Music]

Channel: Wall Street Oasis

Views: 1,378

Keywords: wall street oasis, wallstreetoasis, finance interviews, networking advice, wall street interviews, finance careers

Id: y2iklnOpVew

Length: 29min 13sec (1753 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 19 2019