How to Break Into Management Consulting! (Tips From a BCG Consultant)

hey everyone and welcome to rare liquid careers today we're going to be talking about management consulting which is one of the most sought after industries in the business field i'll be interviewing my friend sarah who works at bcg which is one of the top three management consulting firms in the world and throughout our interview we'll be talking about how you can break into consulting what life that bcg is like and a whole lot more before i get started i did want to let you know that if you're watching this on youtube right now and want to listen to it on the go then i will be uploading all these interviews that i have on this channel as a podcast onto all the platforms like spotify and apple podcasts and with that said let's just jump straight into the interview um all right so sarah thank you so much for your time and being so willing to share with us your experiences and thoughts but could you just first start off by giving us a background about yourself yes so um well i grew up internationally uh in shanghai and then i moved to america to go to university i went to uc berkeley i studied molecular and cell biology and business when i graduated my first role was an associate at bcg which has been a wonderful experience um and then over the last couple of years one of the things that i've done is taken a year of my time from bcg and went to go work at gates ventures um in our global health branch that ended like about a week ago and since then i've been back at bcg and then through my time at bcg i've done a couple of different things like going on a leap of absence working on like a lot of different teams so happy to discuss all of that today um and then you know obviously i have time outside of work to do a couple of other things like i'm involved in a nonprofit called women in network and just have been enjoying really good weather lately um and that's pretty much it awesome and why don't we just dive straight into it because i think a lot of people will first be curious about how you chose to go into consulting especially given that you as you mentioned it's you had a degree also in molecular molecular cell biology so how did you end up going into consulting um so i think i went into consulting for the same reason that a lot of people go into consulting i was really attracted to the idea of never really doing the same thing more than once so um i wanted to do a lot of like industry exploration and there's also like other exciting aspects of being a consultant like getting to travel and both in terms of like the work that i was doing and the kind of work-life balance that i was having i think there's never really uh uh anything that feels quite the same so it's always quite exciting and that was what attracted me to go into consulting in the first place on your second question which was around okay but you did study something like pretty specific which was mcp or cell biology um that to me was it felt like a personal interest that i needed to explore during undergraduate but never something that i wanted to pursue like in terms of going to research or like higher education um to get a phd those were just not things that were on my mind uh in terms of career got it that's pretty intense to study on something just for fun but you also did mention something interesting about the work-life balance at consulting and so i think one question that a lot of people have is what is the work-life balance like at a consulting firm can you dive a little bit into that yeah i'd say um it's definitely more than your average nine to five i wouldn't say it's as much as some other roles in professional services like or financial services in particular um i think a pretty busy week for me will be very front loaded monday through thursday um and if we are traveling for work you know non-pandemic scenario scenario um uh we usually travel home on thursdays and then fridays will be in our home office or like working from home and that's a little bit more chill uh i have rarely if ever in my experience um consulting have had to work on the weekend which is huge pro and so on our busier weeks when it is front loaded to that monday to thursday um i'd say maybe you might work until just after dinner or around dinner time that would be like a good day and then working late or into the evening towards like getting creeping into your bedtime would be like on the worse end and i've definitely seen both maybe like it's like 60 good and 40 the bad days the worst days uh but overall like still better than other positions um who work a little bit harder in like similar-ish kind of roles got it so diving into uh you you kind of gave us an overview of what a week might kind of look like but diving into a more specific day i'm sure every single day kind of is different depending on the project and all of that but can you walk us to through what a typical day in the life of a consultant would look like yeah so i mean you are definitely correct in that days will really vary um but typically i'd say if you're going into the office um wake up get ready head to the office you'll usually have a team check-in where you talk about your priorities for the day what each of you are working on um and then you'll dive right in i think throughout the day there's a mix of two parts there's meetings uh with various stakeholders whether it's with your team or whether it's with the client or i don't know other people who are involved in the project that you're managing and the second part is actual more heads-down content so that would be uh like if you're doing market research you might need to read different research reports uh build a financial model or something along those lines interview different experts in different industries um and then typically at the end of the day we'll do a check out maybe like just before dinner um and we'll talk about what we learned from the day or what we did accomplish throughout the day and i think those are really very important times to sync with the rest of the team because uh a lot of the time you might be working in silos uh for the previous like i don't know a couple five six hours um and there's a lot of uh cross pollination of ideas and like synthesizing what we've learned so that's always a really fun and interesting uh intellectually interesting time um then uh we'll usually maybe if we're still working in the office uh we'll get dinner together um people have the option to like go home if they want for dinner and continue working from home or continue working in the office um you know just hang out together because we love to do so uh and uh to close out the day we might like start putting some of our findings onto slides prepare for meetings the following day um or set up our like work schedule um for for tomorrow um and basically get set up for success yeah got it so out of all the things that you mentioned um you know everyone has the parts of the jobs that they like and dislike what do you feel like you enjoyed the most as a consultant yeah haha i mostly like dinner i guess um but no um for me personally i really enjoy all the parts related to research i think it's very interesting um we might be testing like a really simple hypothesis like uh is this an attractive market for us to go into and that has like so many parts like understanding if a market is attractive includes getting like building a model on market size market growth rates includes reading industry reports on like headwinds and tailwinds it includes um like interviewing uh different experts that work in that industry to understand who the competitors are and how they differentiate you might have to run a customer survey to see how people are feeling about all the different competitors in that market so i think there are so many different ways you can look at the question and across the team each person will have like a little piece of it so that's why i mentioned that i really like these end of day checkouts where everyone brings what they've been working on and we kind of like figure out the answer together i think that's what's most exciting the research to really get to like is this the right answer on the topic of teams actually i think a lot of people don't know what team structure is like for each project you work on as a consultant and in general i know they're pretty lean but is it usually no more than like four people or like how are the teams structured for each project i've seen it range pretty widely i've worked on one-on-one projects before um i think maybe a four is probably it sounds maybe average to me um and then between like maybe three to five might be average and then you get but i have seen like much much larger teams like where there are i don't know four managers and each of them are managing like three people under them and those are for like the really big projects if we're doing a huge transformation for a large company or something along those lines but yeah i think uh four is a good number to anchor around got it okay and are there any personal characteristics that you think are good indications that consulting is actually not a good fit for you um yeah um so i think that there are a lot of qualities that consultants should have or be comfortable with one is if you like predictability i don't think that you'll like consulting um and the the nature of consulting is like i think the average length of project at least that i've worked on might be like three months uh so if you you don't want to like switch what you're doing every three months consulting is definitely not for you and then even that's like just when you switch between projects but then even within projects a lot of the times you don't have perfect predictability because um in professional services you are dealing with um so many different stakeholders like your team your mds your client and like all the various people on the client side um so and because we are um providing a service to our clients a lot of the time uh we might um like one client might need one thing and then all of a sudden another client might need you to run another piece of analysis and stuff like that so definitely predictability is not perfect um uh but i feel like everything else for the most part you can learn to work on there are things that consultants need to be successful like like being quick to produce output that's something you can work on over time um there are other things like i mentioned travel some people really might not like traveling but you don't have to travel you can definitely optimize for uh staying local and things like that um so i think that's like the biggest characteristic that i think would be difficult to change if you really want some stability okay then on the flip side having worked in consulting for a few years what do you think are the top qualities that the best consultants seem to have i feel like um it changes depending on what level you're at so if you're at the analyst associate consultant level um probably like the the best people that have impressed me the most have just been like intellectually like very quick um they drive insights and they understand information and they process it like incredibly fast um and accurately i think that's really amazing but then as you kind of get more senior and you start to manage people i think when you get to that role the people that i've seen do the best are really really good at just being team players um they like care a lot about their teams in a really genuine way um which i think is absolutely fantastic um but across both cohorts like if you are even between if you are like the analyst who's deep in the data or if you're like the team manager who's uh organizing everyone and all the people like i have seen the the thing that i've been most impressed by all consultants are very driven um there are lots of really and maybe we'll get to this later like consulting provides a lot of amazing exit opportunities and so like you could work somewhere else perhaps and make similar money um in a role like maybe where you work a little less but like the people who work at these consulting firms they're very driven they like the work that they do and they like producing good work and that's really awesome to see thinking about uh well as you were discussing it seems like you mentioned that a lot of the people enjoy their time at bcg and you know we live in a time where people are always hopping job from job to job and there's a lot of job dissatisfaction so how would you describe the aspects of bcg's culture that really make people want to stay because that's what it kind of seems like based on what you said yeah um so i love working at bcg and for me there are things that i can't like dive into the details of but it's like very foundational in the structure of bcg in terms of like their promotion and like financial incentives are built to inspire collaboration so it's more of a we culture than an eye culture if anything um the details of which i i can't disclose but like working at bcg i've always felt really strong commitment to my teams and i have always felt the same from them um like my managers that i've worked with um i know that they would support me and like no matter what i want to do if i want to work on a different team with a different managing director they will write me a glowing recommendation to that managing director and be like hey you need to staff this person on your case they're going to do amazing um if i want to like leave bcg for another role i know that they're also going to be really supportive and figure out like oh you said that you want to move into this industry like let me figure out who i know there and put you in contact with them and things of that nature even though like you would think maybe it's not in their best interest for them to lose someone from their team that's like not how they think about it at all i've always felt very very supported by my managers and like absolutely everyone that i work with which is really fantastic um yeah got it so out of it sounds like a lot of great positive experiences at bcg thinking a little bit more about the actual skills that you've built what are you most proud of having developed as either personally or professionally from your time at bcg um i think at my time at bcg there's like two parts there's me working on skills that probably i already had natural aptitude for um and the second is like working on things that perhaps i haven't been as naturally good at um so the second one is probably what i'm most proud of uh because i think i've improved in ways that i haven't expected um but they kind of tie together so basically like uh there are a set of like hard skills that i think ah like i said i i was probably more inclined to like um the ability to like build financial models and things like that and work really quickly and efficiently and those were things that like i thought i would spike on but what i found like in the feedback that i've gotten from my managers is actually like that i have like demonstrated really real strengths in things that i've always considered myself not to be as good at um which is more around like teaming and stuff like that um like one of the things that i love to do for my team is make sure that everyone eats lunch you'd be surprised or maybe not that surprised that consultants they're like so busy and sometimes they're like not the best at like making sure that they get lunch um at a reasonable time and like a lot of them are like oh my god it's 3 p.m i haven't eaten yet but i always want to make sure that everyone gets food and like getting feedback that people really appreciate things of that nature like making sure that i'm looking out for my team has actually been a spike for me that i wasn't expecting other people to notice and maybe i didn't notice myself god i got it okay and i want to transition now a little bit more to some kinds of tips for a lot of undergrad or people who are interested in breaking into consulting and um the first question is just based off of your own recruiting experience what are some of the resources that you would use for case interviews and are there any tips that you have for recruiting that most people don't know about and be really helpful from like an like an insider like you to uh provide some tips that most people don't know about um so first part of the question was around what tools are particularly helpful i really enjoyed what is it like look over my shoulder is that what it's called you know what i'm talking about yeah um and that's basically a set of audio recordings where someone walks through what a good case sounds like what a neutral okay case sounds like and what a bad case experience sounds like and i think that's really helpful because the concept of a case interview is just very foreign when you've never done one before you don't know what it's supposed to sound like you don't really know what you're supposed to do so i think that's like a really helpful place to start um definitely listen to the good ones as a kind of anchoring point and what's great is also the person who created those casts also points out like what was good about them um so really helpful to listen to uh other than that mostly just case books which have previous cases that various companies have used in their interview cycles um and just practicing casing like really diligently i think it's a skill that you should do several cases before your first interview uh before you're really at a place where it's not even that like [Music] you want to practice to the point where you're good at them i think you have to practice the point where you're comfortable with them because in an interview it's like your your nerves are so high um so getting a lot like racking up the numbers uh is is pretty helpful at least for me um and then the second question was like what are some key tips there are two things that i always tell people when i run case interviews with them the first is in any way possible try to engage your interviewer so they will probably have done the same case with like six people throughout the day um any way that you can like bring them into what you're talking about so what i really like to do is i draw out like my framework or my structure for how it would respond to the hypothetical case problem and i always turn it around and like use my pen to walk them through uh what i'm doing and that's just one way to to let them know that like i am trying to work with them on the problem um and then it doesn't feel as much of like it's a test for me it's more of like a collaboration between us and then the second thing uh which also doesn't sound like a huge unlock especially like if you're good at math i'm not like the fastest at mental math um but i think also putting numbers in scientific notation so you don't drop zeros is really really helpful when you're doing math and then i feel like that can also just simplify the problem instead of doing like 4 000 divided by i don't know 2500 you do like 4 divided by 2.5 and then you handle the 10 separately and i think that's like a really nice and easy way to make sure you get the math right got it thank you those are very specific um that's good that's good to have specific advice um and on the topic of recruiting how important is networking for consulting recruiting so that one is a interesting question i think it depends on the firm because i think when you get to larger firms they have very structured processes for how they pull resumes and things of that nature um and i think there's some room for networking but i think it's very difficult to build the required minimum baseline of repertoire to like get recommended or something along those lines through a networking event like at your university campus um but then i i definitely recruited also for like some smaller firms and they care a lot more because they are small um about i don't know if cara care more about but like they uh have maybe more room for recommendations or or for the analysts might be the ones who are pulling the resumes or something along those lines um and when there's like less of a structured process for how you get chosen or like funneled into the recruitment process i think networking can really help if you find someone that like you really click with it sounds like for networking then in a general sense for consulting it depends by the firm but do you have um any other tips in terms of when you're speaking with another like individual or um it's now that you've also been reached out to by so many students uh you kind of gave one tip so far of kind of thinking talking about things more conversationally but are there any other kind of tips that come to mind yeah definitely um trying to make a personal connection is great um and then what else would be helpful to know people who stand have stood out to me no definitely that's it like people who have stood out to me at networking sessions have all been the ones who i've never heard a question that made me go like wow that's really interesting like i haven't heard of that before like um well as it relates to work i think i've heard pretty much most standard questions i think when people are genuinely interested in knowing more about me and my experience uh in a non-superficial way that that is very easy to tell actually so got it and for those who are coming from undergraduate and non-target schools do you have any suggestions for them on how they can break into consulting yeah i think the definition of non-target will obviously be different by the consulting firms that you apply for i think there are tons of really amazing consulting firms maybe not like the biggest ones um available to apply to and they do very similar work um so that's one thing um the second thing maybe this relates to your previous question a little bit better i feel as though networking becomes a little bit more important um also related to what i said when there's less of a structured process because non-target schools they don't have that structured process of like this is when you apply et cetera et cetera so i think reaching out and networking and dropping your resume will become a little bit more important there and the third thing is there are a lot of associates that come in who don't come directly from undergraduate they may have come from they'll they'll have come from like their first or maybe second role out of school um so it's not something that you have to do right out of undergraduate if you need to build your resume or your work experience those are all things that are looked upon in a positive light when it comes to recruiting associates in not from undergraduate got it okay thank you i'm sure a lot of people find those tips very helpful um and i wanted to move away from the recruiting kind of topic and now a little bit more about um some a few things that people sometimes might find critical of consulting so for example a lot of consultants say that after a few years the travel is not as glamorous anymore and also there's might be a lack of getting your hands kind of dirty and operational execution and so the lifestyle and the work that you do might be two key reasons why consultants leave but do you think that these quote unquote criticisms have any merit or if not do you think there's anything about consulting that you think you'd be a little bit critical of right okay so i'll answer your first two specific criticisms first the first run around traveling i think it's kind of true and um like traveling can be very fun and very glamorous and like especially if the whole team goes together then you can do like nice dinners in a new city and explore it together if you have the time and you're not you know at your desk all day so i do think that that's fantastic um but you know for me also i i have enjoyed eating out less and eating in more so literally just now i was preparing lunch to bring to the office with me because i i just don't want to eat out anymore it's like simple things like that where the joys that you get from working at home or from in your home office may be more difficult especially not quite at my age but as you get up there you may have more and more responsibilities in your home base if you have um like a spouse or children uh that gets increasingly difficult so i do think that's true although traveling can be very very fun uh the second thing around operational execution i think it depends there are uh three comments i'll make the first is i don't particularly see that as something i'm missing from the work that i do i really enjoy very high level strategic work and that's where i'm comfortable sitting i think those are the questions that i find the most interesting so that's me personally the second is more generally yes i do think like there are times when you'll finish a project you'll move on to a new project and you won't have any idea on whether or not your strategy or what you worked on was actually executed within the company um and i do think that that is a point of frustration for a lot of people that you wouldn't get if you worked in industry you'd be able in one position to see how a project goes over its lifetime which has its own satisfactions as well um the third thing that i will say though is if you are really more interested in understanding the long-term impact of your work and like uh getting more of that hands-on execution experience you can get that in consulting perhaps you may need to stick with the same client for an extended period of time to get that so you need to kind of like make a home with a certain client or a certain partner group or things along those lines um but you will you will be able to find that hopefully if you make like the correct staffing choices or optimize for that in your staffing choices got it okay kind of as like another common criticism i guess of consulting is that a lot of the top firms that bcg i taught a lot of the top consulting firms like pcg they advise the largest companies in the world usually you're interacting with a lot of top level management c-suite executives and as a result those outside of consulting i don't think they always understand why these companies would take advice from consultants who have never operated a company themselves um also you know as you just come out of undergrad you're like a young 22 to 23 year old giving advice to these like huge companies and so how would you describe the value that consultants bring yeah um so consulting in general there's a couple things in in general like bringing in outside help can be helpful if one you need an external perspective let's say that your company like the board members or like the c-suite they're divided on something and they want an external opinion um to kind of be like the tiebreaker that can happen pretty often that's that's one thing uh second a lot of the time we help with things that are maybe not the company's core competency let's say it's a biopharma company that have done really well because they have like a product that's patented in it or like that other people can't create in the same way or like at the same price point or something along those lines they're really good at like the science um they'll bring us in because maybe they're not as good at the pricing or the management or the marketing or uh distribution channels things of that nature um so we're outsourced to kind of like fill in the blanks of what they may not have been good at historically in the past um and i was going to mention a third thing but it's like completely uh gone over my head so i'll just switch over to your comment around like okay well what about people who just come out of undergraduate um i definitely had that feeling when i was an associate i was kind of like whoa i'm advising very senior people um but the work itself always just made sense like i never felt out of place when i actually got into the work um like crunching numbers for them building a data backed model or data back decision making case those were all things that made sense and they didn't have dedicated support on their side for um and things that like i felt like i was contributing and pretty good at so i never i don't know one once you get into the numbers and the weeds i feel like that's not a feeling i ever had okay um and the last question for for our bcg related uh questions is what is your favorite memory from working at pcg man um i think there's like things that sound like nicer like um you know i had a colleague once who cooked dinner for the whole team and we like had it at his place and that was really fantastic they're like really fun things and activities that we've done like in new york and and like flying across the country things of that nature but like if i actually think about like some of my favorite times at bcg like i think maybe this is like stockholm syndrome but one of the things that i really like is like there was this one really late night um we were working like close to midnight if not past midnight um and we had been working on the same problem as a team like maybe four of us for a very long time and then we just decided to take a break and like eat snacks and we just like ate a bunch of snacks at like two in the morning and i was like this is fantastic which is funny because it was like super late i was like super exhausted and i wanted to go home but um that teaming aspect is really fantastic and what attracts me or like keeps me at bct got it i guess you're gonna need to ask for some more late nights then to have more of this i know i know really positive i don't know is that like type two fun isn't it like type two fun is the type of fun that's not fun in the moment but it's fun looking back on it yeah right exactly i guess i'm a fan of type 2 fun um and then we just have a few remaining questions that are kind of like miscellaneous but i think will be interesting for a lot of people and the first one i think is a really important topic for women i guess and you've been working in mostly male dominated industries and so what advice do you have for women who are trying to succeed in the professional world um i think i think one really important thing or to frame your mindset around is like you don't have to succeed in the same way that men do and i don't mean this like is stereotyping how women are and how men are um but like i don't like receiving feedback you know oh like you should speak up more i think there's a job of those around us to become better listeners um and things of that nature like i i will speak when i have something to say and when it's something important i think others will listen um but i don't think that i need to be someone who's like extremely extroverted extremely verbose because that's something that other people might be used to seeing um in the management room um so like there's that aspect and then also i think there's a rhetoric around like okay what does it mean to be a successful woman these days it feels like you have to be able to do it all like we already had these expectations of being like great family members great mothers and things of that nature and now there's this expectation added on to be like great career-driven women as well and then all of a sudden you're balancing both um and i don't think that's like the correct rhetoric either if you want to be successful by you know taking care of your kids at home you should definitely be able to step away from your career and do that so again not letting success be defined by uh external loci is really important like being successful is what it means to you um and i think that's like a really important thing to wrap your head around so on that note then how would you define success for yourself um [Music] i think being successful for me is making sure that i make choices that i'm proud of um and that's like a very very high level but like in the work that i do in how i treat my teams and how i treat myself i think just being proud of the choices that i make even if they're difficult um so it doesn't like i don't think of success as like oh i need to get promoted by this time or i need to like get this financial bonus or anything like that it's more around am i the kind of person that i am that i want to be no matter what i do i like that um but as you did also mention in that answer regarding finances i think people are always curious about how uh people who are in the kind of like professional world and consultants how they manage their money so is there anything in particular that you do yeah my answer is super not interesting um i just invest in general index funds uh and this is maybe helpful to know um you it's very difficult or you can't really invest in the companies that you consult for um or like obviously not acting you can't act on any like insider information that you might have but it's not even like the information that you have it's like information that your organization has and so when you work at like a larger firm where you have a very wide client base um trading individual stocks uh can be pretty difficult so mostly it just goes into funds and it uh grows at a very nice percentage and that's pretty much it got it got it and then last question is if you could rewind rewind back in time and if you could give yourself advice when you were back in college is there anything that you would tell yourself uh i would probably just be more confident as a person um which is like easy to be like you should be more confident um but definitely especially when i first started at bcg i wasn't very like i wasn't very uh confident in team discussions i'd always have to like double triple check before i said anything and when i said it i wouldn't necessarily convey the degree of confidence that i had in my work or how much effort i had put into my answer um and that's definitely something that uh i needed to learn how to do over time and i feel like other people might i don't know find easy but that was not as easy for me and i would have liked to have started building that confidence earlier so then how did you build that confidence now looking back like what were you able to do to build up that confidence i think um i've been really blessed to have managers that have really believed in me so one piece of feedback that i got uh very early on um i was working with my manager i was like oh i think that this works this way or i think that the uh answer should be this and he just cut me off and he was like sarah don't say i think before you tell me what you think just tell me what you think like just tell me the latter half of the sentence like and basically you know in our feedback sessions he's like you do such good work i know that you've double triple checked the numbers like you don't have to say it in such an unsure way um and so like really having people believe in me made me a lot it made it a lot easier i think to start coming to team meetings uh with the answer and being like this is my answer and this is why i believe in xyz and explaining all the rigor that i had done to get to that answer got it okay um all right well that kind of wraps up the whole conversation and i just wanted to say thank you again for spending time and giving such valuable information to everyone listening or watching and um yeah so thanks so much sarah yeah awesome thanks ben hope i was helpful yeah all right bye take care bye all right so that concludes the interview and i hope you all learned a lot from sarah's insights and from her time at pcg and i also wanted to give a quick reminder that if you want to listen to this on the go if you're watching right now on youtube we will have a podcast version called rare liquid careers you can just look it up on spotify apple podcasts wherever you get your podcasts and with that said thank you all so much for listening and hope to catch you on the next one thanks so much and peace out [Music] you

Channel: rareliquid careers

Views: 96,096

Keywords: management consulting, consulting, what is consulting, what is management consulting, mckinsey, bain, bcg, boston consulting group, how to get into consulting, how to break into consulting, how to get into management consulting, rareliquid, rareliquid careers, case interviews, case interview prep, consulting recruiting, recruiting for consulting, how to recruit for consulting, career advice, careers, deloitte, accenture, lek consulting, parthenon, oliver wyman, pwc consulting, pwc

Id: eI21L4cb-mo

Length: 41min 3sec (2463 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 28 2022