My journey from doing a PhD in Economics to joining Bain has been an interesting one. Once I decided that I did not want to work in academia after graduating, management consulting was really the only interesting choice out there for me.
I initially decided to do a PhD because I wanted to be intellectually stimulated and challenged. To work on brand new research and help advance our knowledge and understanding of economics.
As a PhD grad, formulating hypotheses and an A1 is no different from thinking of a research idea after reading a few research papers. Afterward, you go test it out, look for any piece of data or information that can confirm or reject it. And you get the excitement of working on a new project every few weeks (in PEG anyway!). I am used to rapidly reading, absorbing, and synthesising large amounts of information and drawing insights and conclusion from it for my research. Doing the same thing on a case is like second nature.
The biggest differences are that you don’t have to do everything by yourself, and you need to learn when to call it a day and be 80/20. Academia sometimes felt like it was always up to me alone, but here you have your team to support you. In my experience, people will make time to help you, no matter how busy they might be.
As a management consultant at Bain, I get to work on fascinating problems, for incredible organisations, alongside people I like and respect. I wouldn’t change it for anything (although I sometimes wish I could work on a tough maths problem every once in a while…).