Consultant: How I got my job and where I'm going

I had no idea what consulting was. I sort of entered this field from my engineering background. Taking a step back from college, to high school, I was really interested in math, I liked calculus, and physics and different sciences, and so my college counselor said, "You should try engineering, give it a shot, "I think you'll be interested there." And so I figured, why not try out engineering, I can always take a step back and become like a math major, or something, if I'm not loving engineering. And I think freshman year, I took a chem 101 class, and hated it! I could not, I just did not understand what was going on, I did not like doing the labs, I'm sure if I dedicated the time, I could've learned the material, but I had no interest in the subject, and so I went to the engineering board and said, okay, what engineering major can I be that doesn't require chemistry? And I think it was either computer science or industrial engineering. And then I actually walked to the industrial engineering wing, and they had a sign that said, "Do you like systems and do you like optimizing things," and, "Are you organized? "You'd be a great industrial engineer!" And I said, okay, that kinda sounds like me, I'll give it a shot, and so, I sort of fell into the industrial engineering track, and a lot of people in that major will go to different finance jobs, will go to consulting, or will go figure out how we can optimize the flight routes, or we'll go to a factory, and figure out, how can we make our trucks faster? And so from my industrial engineering major, I actually also co, or I did a double major with econ, and a certificate through the Kellogg School of Management, and with the Kellogg Certificate, we had our separate career counselor that was dedicated to the 50 students in this program, and she helped a lot with interview practice, and resume prep, and hosted different companies to come to us for coffee chats, and sort of through all those different ways, I learned about consulting firms, and I had no idea what I wanted to do after college, and consulting seemed like a really great opportunity, because it was high paying, and I could learn about a lot of different industries, meet a lot of different, interesting people, and there were a lot of great exit opportunities after consulting, a lot of people might go to business school after, or will go to a startup, and I wanted to keep my doors open, because I didn't know which ones to close. I went to the career fairs, I talked to different companies, I tried to network as much as possible with people in these consulting firms to understand, what do they actually do? What is a day in the life? Which they can't ever describe, and I can't ever describe, because it's always changing. But, really meeting as many people as possible helped me understand some of the nuances between the different firms, and at the time, I was a junior, so I was looking for a summer internship between my junior and senior year, and I was fortunate enough to get an offer in our Chicago office. Like a full-time employee, I was traveling to my client in Hartford, and so every Monday morning, I would go to O'Hare Airport, and fly to Hartford and work there until Thursday night, and then fly back to Chicago. And then at the end of that summer, I was given an offer to return for full-time, and I decided, this is a great opportunity, I'm not sure exactly what I'm interested in, but I did like my summer in health, I was working for a large health insurance company, so I decided I'd stick with my consulting firm, specialize in healthcare early, which would give me sort of a leg up on some people who are more generalist. So one really great thing about consulting is that a lot of firms will hire from any major, and so, I've worked alongside English majors, French majors, global studies majors, but they definitely do like engineers, or people with the business background. Consulting firms are looking for students with the analytical mindset, but then also with their own creativity. If you are a graphic designer, or some sort of other traditional liberal arts major, you can definitely do well in a consulting firm. You might need to brush up on your Excel skills, because we end up doing a lot of sort of financial modeling, and so that's definitely important, but it's not a make-or-break decision for consulting firms. All consulting firms have an interview process that is pretty demanding, and in the first-round interview, typically we'll have a behavioral interview, so questions like, tell me about a time when you were challenged, or, tell me about a time when you had to convince some sort of leader that you're actually right and their sort of analysis was wrong. Different questions like that, and then there's a case interview portion, and so that's when the interviewer will present some sort of little puzzle, or longer case to you, sometimes there's slides that you have to go through, a graph that you might have to read, so I think in my interview, someone had just watched the movie We Bought a Zoo, and I was asked, "So you were given $1 million dollars and some land "to start a zoo. "How many animals do you have to have, "how much should you charge for ticket prices, "what are the costs of operating a zoo," and so really, the consulting firms wanna understand how you think, and how you problem-solve, and that's what the case interview is for. And then, if you can make it past the first round, there's a second round that's generally in the firm's office, so you can actually see what the office looks like, meet people, and then it'll be with a partner or director in the office. It is a long process, and it takes a lot of prep, and so, that's why the seniors who were in my major definitely were so, so helpful in doing these case interview practices and going through their experiences, and really learning from them, I think that's why I was fortunate enough to get an internship offer in my junior year. There are fewer internship positions available as a junior, and so, they do hire more seniors. So for consulting, since there are set rules at every level, it's pretty transparent, so as an associate, you're hoping to get promoted to senior associate, you're not gonna jump to manager. And you sort of follow that career path up till partner, if you decide to stay in consulting. Some people will leave to go to business school when they're in either an associate or a senior associate, and a lot of consulting firms will sponsor it, which is a really amazing perk. You do have to come back to the firm after business school, and they'll pay off your loans and everything, so a lot of people will do that, or, there's so many opportunities to exit from consulting firm, so, you could exit to be, if you're at a manager, director level, you could go to a VP of some sort of industry, a lot of people will start their own company, or go to more established startups. So I've always been interested in healthcare, and I think with a job in consulting, I was only barely touching the surface of the opportunities in the healthcare market, and I always wanted to work for a large hospital network, I had this dream a few years ago that'd I'd be like the COO, the head of operations of a hospital. I think I'm a little more interested in the strategy side of it now, but, because I had always worked for insurance companies, I was interested in working on the other side of the spectrum for a provider, so for a hospital network, and I'll be starting with a large hospital network in New York City pretty soon.