| Topic Name: |
Ph.D. and Strategy Consulting |
| Message Name: |
I don't understand what you have written... |
| Date Posted: |
04/14/2003 |
| In Reply To: |
Re: "If strategy firms do not like non-business Ph.Ds, how come that many of the Accenture strat consultants were such Ph.D?
Or is this just the case for presigeous ones such as McK, BCG, Bain etc.
How did you end up in strat consulting with a PhD?"
Never said they do not like non-business PhDs or even Phds in general. What question I answreded was "is this a good strategy." They point was that entering a strat firm with a PhD and just one year experience is not the normal career path, and certainly different than entering with a top 10 MBA (which, because of B-school admission requirements has generally implied have 3-5 years business experience as well).
Your statement that many if the Accenture strategy consultants had a PhD is just wrong. It is less common there within the S&BA practice that at, say, Booz. Actually, PhDs are more common at MBB & Booz than at ACN, as a portion of the strategy team. (I know this because I spent time in ACN strategy).
I ended up in strat consulting with a PhD after teaching 10 years at two B-schools in the US. I was doing a strtagey project for a senior manager at a bank, and he had also hired a strat firm to do a different project. We all got along well, and later they recruited me out of academia.
Nothing I said should have indicated that PhDs are not commin in consulting ... they are probably more common there than in most other industries other than academia & research intensive areas like high tech & bio/pharma. The key think in consulting, can you get things done in the real world. Consequently, the key recruiting screen is "will this person help my firm get things done with real firms?" One year in business + PhD has never been, nor likely never will be a signal of the right things to a consulting firm.
That said, if you can convince the right people to talk with you, and when talking to them, if you can convince them you have an orientation toward getting things done and making a real-world impact, a PhD is not a hindrance either.
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| Message: |
Could you please rewite it so it makes sense?
I never said it was the ideal route to conultancy however it is not uncommon for undergraduates to gain a either a small amount of work experience (or none) before carrying on with post graduate studies and than entering consultancy.
In fact if you look at the websites of many strategy firms you will see how they say that graduates with no work experience but with post graduate degrees/doctorates can get on "fast-line" graduate programmes.
Obviously someone with no business experience is not going to be capable of project managing a stratgy project for a FTSE 100 company so comparing a PhD with little or no work experience to an MBA is pretty pointless.
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