After the results came back from McKinsey, I was pretty bummed. I had pictured in my mind how it would be to move out to the West coast and start my consulting career. I was also pretty sold on all the cache of McKinsey too.
I spent a few days sulking and wondering what I was going to do with my life, but eventually decided not to give up on consulting...at least not yet. I was going to give it ONE more shot and if I was going to try again, I was going to try big.
I tried starting my own business, a company to advise biotech start-ups on funding, strategic alignments, and managerial decision making. I wrote the business plan and made a bunch of phone calls....while the company didn't ever really exist, the ideas were adopted by an incubator in North Carolina, which added another nice line to my resume.
Shortly after this, an email came circulating around from the Harvard Consulting Club president asking if anyone was interested in helping to run the club. I figured this was a golden opportunity to add another line to my CV that showed I was genuinely interested in consulting and that I would hopefully get to meet the people that make the hiring decisions...i.e. recruiters, recruiting consultants, etc.
The next day I met the president of the club at Starbucks, we talked about my resume...he was impressed and offered me the vice-president position which I accepted. Because I have an MBA, I thought I would try and add some value to the club by really bringing the non-scientists business accumen up to speed...but how could I do this?
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Ah, the Harvard GSAS consulting club...Still remember those days. It certainly helped to have a group of fellow PhD candidates to prepare for cases. That was a big part of how I got that M/B/B offer, and have been consulting ever since.
ReplyDeleteHi, do you know if outsiders that is people who absolutely have no relations with Harvard, could join the club and participate in the meetings?
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