Note on the Management Consulting day

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Is management consulting an option for a PhD

 

London Hub Co-ordinator Dr Fiona Denney commissioned London University’s C2 agency to run a one day training event to explore careers in Management Consultancy.

 

Lots of PhD students have vaguely heard of Management Consulting, but do they really know what it involves? Well some of them do now!

 

Dave Carter of C2 took on the brief, and put together an interesting and challenging programme. Apart from Terry Jones, King’s College’s Graduate School-based Careers Adviser,  all the speakers were current or former consultants. And half had entered consultancy after doing a Phd.

 

Top billing must go to Fiona Czerniawska of the Management Consultancies Association. Not least because the AV broke down in the middle of her Power Point presentation. More than one student observed that her talk got even better after this had happened. She calmly sat on the table and just talked. But what talk! Few will forget her description of what happens when you are working on a crucial project on the third straight day without sleep. Apparently your gums start to bleed.

 

Fiona was a great role model for this audience as she had entered consulting after doing a PhD in Art History in one of the University of London’s specialist Institutes.

 

Paul Chantry of Top Consultants gave a packed presentation of Consulting Facts and figures -  a fantastic overview of the industry.

 

In the panel session we had a couple of Biomedical Science PhDs who talked about why they had decided not to go down the postdoc rsearch route. Interestingly we also had a current PhDs student at Royal Holloway who had just left consulting to start a Doctorate in English Literature.

One of the characteristics of the day – commented on with approval by some of the students attending – was the impartial approach of the conference. The positives and the negatives of a consulting career were discussed freely and openly.

 

To quote Ina Lauinger a school of Pharmacy student

“The most surprising thing I have learned is that I really think this career path mught be an option for me …. anmd that it can be, like a PhD, a way to follow your career without being 100% sure what to do next. “

For Ina the highlight of the day was the case study – the ‘hands-on” experience and what she felt she needed more of was an undersatanding of the different options within consultancy which were briefly mentioend – strategy, finance, supply chain etc.

 

So, all in all a successful day. And for us success was measured not by the numbers deciding to apply for a consulting after they have finished writing up. We wanted some students to make a postive decision that this career was not for them. Better to find out now than later.

 

The question now is what other career areas would merit this spotlight tratement.

Cancer Research Postdocs

Sally Leevers Academic Director of the London Research Institute came to give a talk to our PhD students. Real breath of Fresh air- lots of sound common sense and students obviously got a lot out of it. There was something that she said that struck me. Employers of scientists find it hard to get good postdocs. This is at variance with the general view that many PhDs will need to look elesewhere for jobs once they graduate. Perhaps need to temper my approach in the induction phase. Got about 26 students along.