Meet PHD_s

BCG provided me with the two things I was looking for after my PhD - variety and intellectual stimulation. Variety has been delivered, appropriately, through a variety of different ways: I have had the opportunity to travel to more than 20 different countries, I have worked for more than 40 different clients across virtually every industry, and the types of project have involved everything from creating a new carwash strategy for an oil major to developing a new segmentation for an insurer in post-apartheid South Africa. Intellectual stimulation is perhaps what you would expect working for a top consultancy firm, but with BCG I think that there is an added dimension - it is my BCG colleagues and the clients that I work with day-to-day that provide the real stimulation. At the end of the day it is the people - across the BCG system and within my clients - that have really made the difference.

When I decided to leave academia for a career in consulting, I chose to join BCG as a Junior Consultant. I was almost certain that I would one day regret at least aspects of my choice. Two years later, I can honestly say, that that day has not yet come. Although it might sound strange, life in academia and consulting turned out to be a lot more similar than expected. Both are about finding workable analytical approaches and solutions to complex problems, about working together as a team and about communicating your findings in a simple yet credible way. At BCG I feel I have found a career that combines what I liked most about science with the chance to get to work on exciting projects across a range of different companies – offering great variety of experience and the opportunity to learn more than I could have hoped for.

After eight years of study, I wanted a job that would challenge me, provide intensive development opportunities at the outset of my career, and allow me to have a tangible impact through my work. With the opportunity to work with clients in different locations, business sectors and functional areas, management consulting combines intellectual and professional challenge with a practical punch through the impact we have on our clients’ businesses – exactly the combination I was looking for. I knew that BCG was the right choice for me because of the company’s strong focus on development opportunities, from online tutorials, to on-the-job skills building and mentoring as well as local, European and even global training programmes. Of all the firms I considered, BCG promised to be the most conducive to my personal and intellectual growth, a value reflected not only in the firm’s training programmes but in all the people I met when I applied and joined.