Thanks for registering for our conversation with Dan Corless, former OW Principal.
Enjoy this conversation, where Dan touches on:
- His winding path through consulting (Deloitte, IMS Health, LEK, Oliver Wyman)
- What he's learned along the way
- Tips for recruiting as an experienced hire
- The skills consulting firms are looking for
Enjoy the recording, and write to us with any follow-up questions!
Video Transcription:
Jenny Rae:
In this episode, we interviewed Dan Corless about his experience going through multiple consulting firms, starting with Deloitte and ending most recently as a principal at Oliver Wyman. We hear about his career challenges, mistakes and opportunities that he both took and took advantage of, and finally we hear about some personal fun things about his life and career. So our interaction with Dan began – I actually am hesitant to say the number of years because I think it was five years ago, but may have been even longer.
Dan:
More than that, six or seven at this point, yeah, I know.
Jenny Rae:
Okay. Yeah. So we worked with Dan as he was beginning to take a look at consulting as an experienced hire moving in, and were super excited to hear about his background, it was incredibly relevant for consulting, we felt like he had a great shot. I actually had a chance to work with him directly, which was really fun and a very humbling experience because Dan, as you will hear, is kind of an All-Star and has been throughout his career. But his move into consulting was also really compelling, so we worked not just on cases, but also on building his story. And have remained friends and colleagues as Dan has come to speak really actively at our different seminars that we hold in New York City. He has joined us on calls. So Dan, welcome back. We’re really glad to have you, and thank you for staying in touch over the years. We really enjoy our relationship with you.
Dan:
No problem at all.
Jenny Rae:
My first question in my pre-planned questions here is just what you wanted – tell me what you wanted to be when you grow up professionally. So as early as you knew that in a way that it was semi-relevant to what you began with, it would just be helpful to have a little personal context about the beginning of your career.
Dan:
Right. I mean, from a – when you think about consulting, there was just kind of a non-direct path. I mean a lot of folks you know they go in undergrad and they come out, go into consulting, or they just know, or they come out of B-school and it’s just an obvious thing for them, or whatever their career path may be. For me it wasn’t so direct, but you know even early on, pre-business school I was a sales rep for a very large company and it’s kind of a Walmart for the biotech industry, just sold lots of stuff that they use for research and development purposes, and consumables equipment and whatnot. It was just a could giant catalog of stuff, and had a very large account that we had all locked in agreement with, and I had to find ways to grow the business and just going door to door wasn’t going to work.
So I was reading the Harvard Business Review, and I was reading about strategies that Proctor and Gamble used at Walmart, or somebody did at Target, or some giant corporation did somewhere to enter a market, and I started like you know, sketching it out on paper like huh, maybe I could do that here.
And, you know, things like that were early, for me, when I think about it, how can I strategically attack a problem and like pull it apart into its elements, etc. And that led me to business school. Then business school led me to GE, and I was with GE a long time. But my first interest in consulting at GE was I was in a leadership program. So it’s four six-month rotations (unintelligible) business and you got to solve a problem in six months. So you, by yourself basically, and you’re giving a one pager and you have to figure out something complex, boil it down, you need the people, the process, the technology, and get a solution done. And then get the people to buy in on your solution and kind of start the ball rolling on implementation. So I did that for two years just like four of these rotations, and I really enjoyed that. And then in my roles at GE, I was like a business builder, I restructured businesses. I would kind of go into the burning building and fix it.
So again, it was like okay, figure out what’s wrong, kind of build out the frameworks, build out the solution plan and start rolling it out. Some of the things you might do in consulting. But the pivotal moment for me was one of my last roles at GE – and by then I had worked my way up to director, my boss was the executive general manager. My boss’s boss is the CEO, a guy by the name of Kieran Murphy who now runs all of GE healthcare. They wanted me to solve a very large strategic problem for a billion-dollar business, and I was being mentored by my boss who is ex-McKinsey. And just – I would go to him and we would be like hashing things out, and he’d say you know, when I was at McKinsey, this is how we would think through this problem. He would draw out like a nice framework, or it was a cliché, just kind of a way of thinking about a problem and I said wow, this is really cool. I’d really like to learn more about this. And I realized that I had been solving problems strategically, but I also had been kind of brute forcing things and hitting things with a sledgehammer, maybe not the greatest data analysis, etc. because I didn’t really understand how to do it yet.
So I said you know, where can I learn more about this, and where can I attack more problems with this rapid-fire kind of turnover of projects etc. And consulting was something that seemed important to me. So throughout my career, there was like elements of consulting, or me being drawn to a consultin-type solution for a real problem, but it was really that last project – not project, but last role at GE where my boss was this ex-consulting guy, an elite consultant, went to Wharton, went to McKinsey, and here he was as a senior leader at GE and he’s like walking me through stuff on his whiteboard on how to set things up, frame things, and even setting up the final deck, this is how we would lay it out, etc. Socializing it, just all these things that I probably wouldn’t have known, and that’s what kinda made me think about moving into consulting as a career choice, or at least a part of my career to add tools into the toolbox of who I am as a professional.
Jenny Rae:
Amazing. So question for you, you – I know a little bit about your background so as a spoiler, I know you where you went, but when you are surveying the landscape of firms, the first place that you joined was Deloitte. How did you decide that Deloitte would be a good fit and a good place to go after GE?
Dan:
Yeah, you know, that’s a question I get a lot and I was, you know, there was this boutique consulting firms that may focus on niche areas where they may be very focused firms that do like one thing, like economics research, or something like that. But I was at a big like conglomerate type company and I kind of was drawn to the big conglomerate like consulting model like I like the idea of solving really big problems and the idea of like navigating a large organization wasn’t daunting to me. Going to the world’s largest professional service organization, trying to figure it out seem to me totally fine. Global clients, global projects, I worked on a lot of cross quarter projects so that to me just seemed totally normal given I used to run global businesses and I had people working for me around the world at GE. So this was fine.
So Deloitte seemed like a really great place, and the nature of the work that they were doing at the time, and still do to a certain degree is kind of strategic implementation, so they do a lot of strategy and they do a lot of strategic just kind of that middle ground between like pure implantation and pure strategy, and they do pure strategy and they do here implementation, but a lot of the work in strategy and operations, which is the service area that I joined at Deloitte within Deloitte consulting was really focused on how do we refine the strategy and make it real. So like really rolling out that stretch. Kind of like I’d call it 20,000 feet, not 30,000, 40,000 feet and not like getting new ground, but kind of middle ground so there’s a lot of meat on the bone. So the engagements were maybe not like your typical short 4 to 6 weeks strategy,y and they weren’t necessarily six, nine, 12 month like implementations. They were usually like 8 to 12 weeks, so, you know, 2 to 3 months. So they’re kind of middle ground between pure strategy and pure implementation where you’re doing a little bit of both and you’re getting involved with some operating elements but some strategic elements. So that was really what was interesting to me.
And they have a big life science practice as well, so I joined Monitor Deloitte. So Monitor used to be a standalone firm that was acquired by Deloitte. You’re seeing that with like Booz Allen being acquired by PWC, to create Strategy&, Parthenon being acquired by EY so now you have EY Parthenon. So they have these like pure play strategy houses within their larger consulting organizations and it gives them kind of a broader range of services. So that’s where I was and where I landed and why I selected Deloitte.
Jenny Rae:
Now I’m going to linger on Deloitte just a little bit because it was your first place that you landed, so it was the freshest consulting experience that you had. Can you just talk a little bit about your application process and your interview process to get into Deloitte, and how easy you felt that was compared to what you needed to do to get into GE and how your experience had been in a large conglomerate.
Dan:
They came to campus. I had a very specific background for GE. GE required five years of commercial experience, either consulting or some kind of sales marketing kind of commercial background. So the five years, which most B-school students don’t have. A lot of B-school students have three, maybe four years experience so you wouldn’t even be considered unless you had five. So I had 5 ¼ years. So you needed have experience and progression in the career, so you had maybe sales rep and then senior sales rep, or consultancy, senior consultant, etc. And you needed to be at one of the target schools. So there was like a pretty high bar just to like start the conversation, and they only recruited at like 15 or so schools, so that was another area there. And then there was just it was a lot of fit interviews, and then, which for some people is easy and some people it’s hard. It depends on your background.
And then I remember they had like a super day which was like after several rounds of in person and phone, and there was an on campus dinner, and you’re being watched during the dinner, right? So like it wasn’t just let’s go have fun, it was like they wanted to see how you behaved with each other, what kind of questions did you ask, were you polite, did you like hold the door open for somebody, you know it was like are you somebody things about others, or you just think about yourself. So like your – a lot of people didn’t even realize that they were being interviewed at the dinner by just being observed. That kind of creeps people out, but I actually think it’s really good to see how people behave when they’re not sitting across an interview table. So that was one piece of it. In the final piece was like a super day where you were brought to Crotonville, which you know people can Google it, it is a legendary corporate training center outside New York City. This is like where a guy like Jack Welch, and this is like kind of the hallowed halls of GE leadership. Every senior leader has passed through here. They had our final-round interviews there.
So we did our interviews there, and again, more fit interviews, and then we had to do a presentation. And we had – I forgot what the time was on the presentation, but it was timed. It was like 10 minutes. We had 10 minutes to present something, Q&A, and if you weren’t done they would literally like pull you off the stage if you will. And obviously you failed if you didn’t finish your presentation. So I prepared something relevant, practiced, practiced, practiced practiced, and I gave my pitch. And coming from sales that was not hard for me. But there was a lot of people who really struggled. They either bit off something that was way too complex to discuss in 10 minutes, or they weren’t clear and concise so they couldn’t convey or be persuasive, and all the stuff. And it was pretty rough day for a lot of people. And I went through that, and again, that also finished with a dinner and cocktail hour and everything, and again you are sitting with executives and they all were taking notes after the fact. You didn’t really know this taking notes observation thing until afterwards, but that was all part of the process. So in one way it was very difficult and in one way it was easy. Where is consulting interviews were very much about the case, it’s very analytical, it’s very structured, you know you crush the case or you don’t, and the fit piece is important, but less so than say the corporate gig. So that was the GE process.
Jenny Rae:
And then – yeah. Can you juxtapose what you did at Deloitte to what happened at GE, and again, you are an experienced hire so it wouldn’t have necessarily been exactly the same. So if there is anything in particular about that.
Dan:
Yep, right. It definitely wasn’t a campus hire, so Deloitte and all the consulting firms I interviewed with, I networked my way in. So I found someone either in my network or someone I was very close with that could make an introduction. You know, sometimes it was like you know we’d have an email and a phone call, and then I’d meet someone for coffee, and then they would okay, I feel comfortable introducing this person to recruiting. And then you know hey, I heard we’re hiring, let me connect the dots right now. And, you know, there is usually several work on my part to build the network in. And then so networking your way in is very much the way to get into most of these consulting firms. Now that there is the internet, there’s recruiters and stuff like that, but really the best way to do that is to find someone in your network and network your way in to whichever consulting firm that you can. And then when I was networked in two Deloitte, it was an ex-GE colleague. We had worked together in a part of GE. He was pre-MBA. He went through a very elite undergrad finance program and then he left after the program was over, went to Deloitte, and was doing well. So when he introduced me, it carried some weight because he was already pretty well respected before B-school.
And then I networked my way in, and I interviewed, and things like that. Very informational interviews. And then they put me into the process, and the experienced hire process, it’s a little more fit based. I still had a case interview, but I had like one, not six or seven. And it was a lot of fit, and then I did a case interview. My case interview lasted 20 minutes. The guy was going through the case, I was knocking out the here’s my framework, and here’s the structure, and here’s how I would set up this thing, whatever. And then the guy was just like you know what, I’ve heard enough. So, tell me more about your background. Yeah, he put away the laminating cards and I was like okay, I guess that’s a good thing because it was he had heard enough that he felt I could think my way through things. And then I got a phone call a few days later saying hey, we’d like to offer you a job.
Deloitte – it was funny though with the Deloitte experienced hires and off-cycle type of thing, it was right before my interview it was like end of year, so they had to pause and then I had to follow up with them, and there was a little back-and-forth, and over the course of, actually a couple of months for them to get an actual offer offer, get it signed, done, and join Deloitte.
But you could see the juxtaposition that instead of like a very traditional kind of formulaic campus hire, there is the campus presentation, you do some networking, you go to a coffee chat, you do a resume drop, you hit the phone screen, you do this, you do this, do this, do this and it’s very kind of structured. The experienced hire route is very unstructured and it’s very candidate driven. It’s not them coming to you, you have to go to them, you have to follow up, you have to stay on top of recruiting. Recruiting says oh, I’ll email you in a week, you have to follow up with them in a week. They probably will be busy. So it’s very expected that you will be networking your way in. You’re not bothering them, you’re not a trouble, they expect that. And if you do that, they actually like that. They like the fact that you’re tenacious, you’re following up, your diligent, you’re concise, etc. etc. So very different process with these. But I, the way I got in wasn’t my father was on the board of some company and was a client, and they are doing me a favor. Definitely much my own generation. I generated that myself. So that’s how I – how I got into Deloitte.
Jenny Rae:
Awesome. Okay. Well, I have one more Deloitte question, and then were going to take some questions from the listeners, and then we’ll dive back into the next stage in your career. But my final question about Deloitte is what was one key skill that you are glad you already had when you joined Deloitte. You mentioned it was a large organization, there was a lot to navigate. So what’s one key skill that help to do that and help to do well there. And what is one that you wished you would have been better at when you joined Deloitte.
Dan:
So I would say the first thing I would say is one thing that really helped me is that at GE you, you have to like there’s a lot of stakeholders. There’s a lot of moving parts with everything you do. So if you want to get one thing done, there may be five or six people that have to weigh in. So you have to be able to quickly identify your stakeholder map and how they influence the decision. That’s one thing that I had. Another thing was that, you know, really understanding that not only the stakeholder map, but what are the pieces and parts. There’s a lot of noise, you know. At GE there’s a lot of noise and you had to be able to like get rid of the noise and get down to those couple of things.
And when you’re in such a large global organization, there’s a lot of things that influence what you are doing, except – for example, I almost missed my number one quarter because of the Russian incursion into Crimea. I don’t of your member that from five or six years ago. And then there was US government sanctions I think against Russia. So we had product and services basically sitting on the loading dock somewhere in Europe that weren’t moving until things got kind of sorted. So I was sitting in front of like finance later saying I might miss my quarter and they said what’s going on. Last month everything was great. Well, you know you’re basically telling them like a dog ate your homework kind of story, but it’s global politics and global conflicts. You know, these things weigh on your mind, or like when Fukushima, the earthquakes happened there and the nuclear power plant erupted, GE had a factory there.
So, and we have people there, so you having to make sure your people are okay, and make sure everyone is taking care of, families are all right, you know. These are things you have to deal with. So when I went to Deloitte, I already went in knowing that it isn’t just this point solution between me and this person I’m sitting across, there may be others involved, maybe other processes at work, so that was helpful when I was doing like say a cross quarter merger and acquisition deal where there is a lot of people, a lot of moving parts, a lot of opinions, a lot of people that need to be influenced, a lot of people who needed to be massaged. It’s going to be touchy with this person, and that person’s a yes, and this person’s a no. So that was very helpful. The things I wish I had, which is why went through this whole thing was that kind of rigor of analyses, the depth of how you kind of quickly analyze and structure, and work through problems. Slide building, my slides got really good.
Jenny Rae:
Yes.
Dan:
My spreadsheets and my slides you know, even after a year of consulting, where like you know way better. And even now, I think back, it would be like struggling early on in consulting and it would be like that was so easy, how was I having a hard time with that stuff come compared to the challenges I deal with now. And so I think those are some of the things like and then, you know, the things that I struggled with, I wish I had more of was the reason why I went there in the first place. So, you know, there was a lot of that you know classic things that you learn in consulting, why went there, and I said yep, I’m missing this stuff. So this is great. Getting my butt kicked but learning a ton.
Jenny Rae:
Yeah, exactly. Well, Dan, we have a really good question about your Deloitte time specifically, and some of the questions we might save until a little bit later when we’re talking about the recruiting environment right now, but this one is around moving from commercial experience, five years or so, into a consulting environment. Because consulting firms often look for something that’s relevant, you had healthcare. But some other people have different things, like IT, project management, or even entrepreneurial experience. So from the other side when you are sitting in the recruiting side at Deloitte, what were some ways that people made their prior experiences compelling for you. If somebody’s thinking about either taking what they already have or pursuing their next job as a steppingstone to consulting, what would you recommend.
Dan:
Right. So when I say – well, so I’ll focus on an experienced hire, most firms don’t hire a lot of experienced hires that don’t have consulting already. So that’s the bad news. The good news is there aren’t a lot of people who are say in some form of industry who are able to say – like me and want to go into consulting. So there aren’t as many. And a lot of firms are looking to say bolster some of that, right. They have their pipeline of people coming out of college, coming out of B-school, and they need like subject matter experts, or they need people with deep domain expertise. And I think a lot of firms are also trying to get a little more specialized in certain areas where there could be healthcare or life science, or certain financial service industries, or something like that. So you know, the specialization is becoming more important, even at big firms that have to be able to not just be a jack of all trades, but also be able to be really good at a few things that clients really need. So that’s good news.
And I think that when looking at it, you know it had to be something – well, the thing is I would recruit just for kind of the areas that I was looking at. So for me, I would want to be looking for is very specific sets of experiences, or specific companies’ types of experience, you know. And I think, so for example, if I have an IT background, I would – like you would look at a company like that has a big IT practice, like Accenture, huge in that area. Even Deloitte has some of the stuff as well. Or Tata, or one of these companies that does a lot of – Cognizant, these kind of big, big IT consulting companies. I would first look for the companies that do these sorts of things that. So if I see a resume, if I was at, you know, Deloitte in life science M&A, and someone sends me oh here’s a friend of my looking to get into consulting, they get it’s like IT project management, well, that’s not what I do and I’m not even sure where in our organization who would do that. I would – if the person had great set of experience, like let’s say they had relevant experience and say project management, client delivery, client management, things that like are tangential or overlap with what we do, I could say oh, this person’s – they’ve worked their way up, they’ve done some of the things that we do.
So I would, you know, maybe forward this on to recruiting and say I don’t know where this goes, but maybe we can take a look at this person, someone could look at this who knows more than I do. So really from anyone that’s looking to get in, the most important thing is to identify the firms, so the whole thing I said is you have to network your way in. So identify the firms that do the things that have overlap with your background. So project management – there are firms that just do project management and they kind of will project manage anything and if that’s your thing, if you have a PMP designation there could be opportunities there. IT is obviously a huge space, it’s always big, there’s always a lot of work in IT. If you have healthcare experience, very specific healthcare experience, there are firms that just do – that work with insurance companies come. There are firms that work with just payer providers like hospitals. And I’m speaking from my experience.
People who do regulatory work with like the FDA, or government consulting. There’s all kind of niches and I would say look for the firms that focus on the niche or the industry that you are strong in and make sure that you have experience like project management, client management, strategic problem solving. You know oh, here was a problem, I was on a team, we had a project problem, and we worked past it, solving it, and here’s what we did, and I lead this part of it, or what have you. Sometimes it sounds like a consulting project. So those are the things I would suggest if you have it great, if you don’t have it, this stuff exists in every company. You know, you find stuff like side projects and things that people are working on. You know, look around. You know, ask your boss, ask your boss’s boss what kind of side project you can work on. It might just be an extra hour a day, but those kind of extra projects could give you the experience that make you more compelling to move into consulting. Because they’re going to want to see something in you that says that you’re already kind of doing stuff that we do, and you can make the transition. So I think that that’s important.
Jenny Rae:
Well Dan, speaking of niche firms that are more focused on specific things, I want to talk now about your transition out of Deloitte. The next place that you went was to Quintiles IMS, which does have a very specific focus. Can you explain why you went there and what your favorite thing was about working there.
Dan:
Yeah. I mean, one of the interesting things about Quintiles IMS is they just do pharmaceutical forecasting consulting work. So helping big pharmaceutical companies figure out where to place their bets. So they’ll – should I invest in this drug area, this type of therapy, invest in this company, and they need to kind of forecast the revenues into the future. So if we pay X amount of dollars, what kind of a return will we get, and over how long, how competitive is the space, all that kind of good stuff. And IMS Consulting, which I joined, had just merged with a company called Quintiles, which is a contract research organization, which also did some consulting as well. IMS Consulting was part of IMS Health, and IMS Health was a big aggregator of data. They were probably one of the earlier big data companies, and they would aggregate all kinds of pharmaceutical sales data volume, sales numbers, at very granular levels that a pharmaceutical company can slice and dice and analyze. Even sales rep activity and territory density.
All this kind of stuff that they held, and is a consulting arm, we had access to this huge mine of data and we would pull on that data and analyzed it, and provide answers to our clients. I got a lot of great M&A experience at Deloitte, and I wanted to get more into the how do pharmaceutical companies think through placing bets and making decisions on where to invest and why, and whatnot. And basically that’s all IMS Consulting was doing at the time. They’ve moved into some other stuff now, but basically I was just doing project after project after project like this, whereas if you are at a big consulting firm, you would be doing pharma projects, or you would be doing device projects, you’d be doing all this other stuff. And at this point, I wanted to just learn about this, and I just got one rep after the other, whether it may be an M&A work, it could be an investment decision, whether to say yes or no, it could be product launch so we would help the company think through the final phase of clinical trials as well as launching the product, and, you know, what kind of return they were going to get on their investment.
So all kinds of projects around that. A lot of M&A deals as well. And yes, so that was a great experience because by the end of that year, I had a much deeper understanding than I had before joining, but also a deeper understanding that if I spent several years at another firm just because of the velocity and density of the amount of reps I was getting it was just all one area. So it was a great experience for me.
Jenny Rae:
So Dan, great. So another transition after that, after you had that velocity of reps was that you moved over to L.E.K., and so similar question. What about L.E.K. did they do really well. What was compelling to move over to L.E.K.?
Dan:
Well, L.E.K. reached out to me. They said hey, you know, you’re at IMS and we’d really like to expand our capabilities to understanding big data and data analysis, and you obviously understand IMS data, and I said yep. And they said we also do a lot of M&A work and we got a lot of M&A work coming in, and you obviously have done that. So would you like to do some of that, and I said of course, so that would be great. So I went in, I joined them, and they are very well known in life science as well. Like, they are very well respected. They are very well known in early clinical R&D-type supporting consulting, understanding what to do with your early development products, as well as stuff that in the early parts of the FDA clinical trials. They are very good at that. They’re also very good at rare disease. L.E.K. really understands these like small oddball diseases that a lot of people are investing in, and it just takes a special toolkit really to think through these problems. So they are very – just excellent at some of these things.
And they also did medical devices, they did equipment and diagnostics. They did all kinds of services and contract manufacturing, all kinds of things. So I said wow, so I could take this to a bigger platform. So also, the other piece of that was that as an engagement manager at L.E.K., you did more than engagement manager at other firms. You are really taking on what would be considered more of a senior manager type role, so most managers manage one project, one set of team doing their work streams. At L.E.K. you manage two projects, and underneath that was a post MBA consultant that ran the team day-to-day. So you are getting much more senior level experience. And you got more involved in the selling process, so it was actually a great opportunity to kind of, even though my title didn’t change, I actually was taking more of an elevated role. So it was exciting to be able to just – you know, just do tons and tons of M&A work and get more exposure to leading multiple projects at the same time.
Jenny Rae:
Well, speaking of more senior roles and partner, I want to spend about five minutes talking about your time at Oliver Wyman and then we’re going to open up to more of the career oriented questions, which I know a lot of people have. And there are questions ranging from how has COVID affecting what you perceive as the current recruiting environment to very specific, like what about me, what can I do in this particular situation. So we’ll cover as many of those as we can. But I do think that it’s really interesting that the most recent stop on your tour to consulting was at Oliver Wyman, and I would just love to hear a little bit about how specifically, you know, the type of work that you were selling, how it was different in the way that you do use data, and problem solved compared to the other firms that you had worked at up until that time.
Dan:
Yeah, no, that’s great. So I’ll start with kind of the L.E.K. data analysis. So, well actually go back. IMS was their own proprietary, they were the database. Like people would buy the data, other consulting firms, pharma companies would buy IMS data, it’s kind of the industry standard to understanding everything. So people would buy memberships to the data or they would buy cuts of data from IMS. So that was my first set of data analytics. And they had their own proprietary analysis tools to analyze data. So it was actually quite interesting to be like the owner and manipulator of the data at L.E.K.
Jenny Rae:
Quite convenient in some ways, right Dan?
Dan:
Yeah, it’s kind of like not a monopoly, but it’s kind of like, you know, it’s like you’ve got the water in the middle of the desert, it’s like come to me. But at L.E.K., what was interesting there was that you – they were really thinking forward about data analytics being an important part of the future of consulting. So classically, the best place to be was like corporate business unit for strategy, 4 to 6 week projects, sitting at the right hand of the chief strategy officer in the C suite, and everyone wanted to be there. There were as a few firms that did it and everyone else was like knocking at the door. But the reality is today it’s more about like total value that you can bring to client, so it’s some of these pure strategy firms are doing implementation work, they’re doing pricing work, they’re doing supply-chain work, they’re doing all kinds of stuff. And informing that through different types of tools. You’re seeing digital practices, you’re seeing more implementation work on operations and consulting groups within strategy firms, you’re seeing all this stuff. L.E.K. doesn’t have the scale really to do like big implementation projects. It wasn’t their interest anyway. But what they did see was opportunity around analytics.
So while I was there, everybody went through training to use Alteryx, which is a data crunching platform. So there’s a whole bunch of them out there, but Alteryx is one of them where you can, instead of trying to hand build like really crazy spreadsheets, this is a platform that helps you bring lots of data, disparate data together and helped you pull it together, organize it, and then start analyzing it. And I may not be doing fully justice to Alteryx. I got the engagement manager level training which is very sparse, but it is a powerful tool. And the point there is that your clients are cranking out more and more data. Everybody is collecting so much more data than 10 years ago, so – or even five, 10, 15 years ago. They want to make it – they want to analyze, but it’s coming from different systems so you have to find ways to pull it all together and analyze it. So they chose to invest in Alteryx and then Tableau, which is a data visualization tool. So you would pull all this data in, crunch it in Alteryx, visualize it through Tableau, and then you’d create output that you could give to your client. And the magic in it was what data to analyze, how to analyze it, what’s that analytic work plan which is something I would help defies and my team would implement. They would do all the programming and crunching and all that stuff.
But then it was like okay, how would we want to visualize it in a way that’s compelling. You know, so the that would be another piece right there. So what I’m thinking as an output would be this, or that, and the team would kind of start running through it and we’d iterate it. We had a client who had a market entry plan that wasn’t – we didn’t think was the right market entry plan and they had all this data to support it. And then we did our whole data crunching and visualization thing, I will spare you all the details. We spent like a week or two doing all this, just had our whole team working on it. And what we developed was a map of the United States, here the markets you are in, and then a county by county heat map of basically red, yellow, green, like here’s where you are, here’s where you’re not, here’s where the opportunities are, and just highlighted and said just focus here, here and here and, you know, you could double your business basically. Or something like that – I’m just paraphrasing. But it was a powerful one pager that showed the C-suite investors, anyone could say oh, here’s where they are, here’s the opportunity where they are, they are barely scratching the surface.
They don’t need to go into different countries and different markets, they could just stay where they are and, you know, ramp up considerably. So the these are ways – this is how we were thinking about differentiating ourselves is really through this data analytics, visualization of the data to provide insights that helped drive and generate decisions, or support recommendations that we were making. So that’s the difference between those two firms. And then at OW, they had really done – they do a lot of work with – OW does a lot of work with airlines and banks, and that’s not my area at all, but as you know, airlines generate a lot of data, banks generate a lot of data and –
Jenny Rae:
Definitely.
Dan:
And they want it analyzed as well. A lot of it is consumer facing data, sometimes it’s operational data. So you had people programming, you know, consultants just generalist consultants programming in C, programming very complex cell models, and you know all these different programming SQL, etc., and generating these very complex models that would provide output that would generate insight. And this wasn’t like an analytics group, this is just how we were on projects. So what I’m driving at here is that data is becoming very important to be able to manipulate and analyze it in a very sophisticated manner. You used to be able to just crunch a few of your numbers and put some stack bar charts up there and it would be great. Maybe 15 years ago, before my time. But now your clients are ex-consultants and they want – they have very detailed asks and they really want them to follow the trail of how you get to where you got to it, and it has to obviously tick-and-tie, and being very sharp with data analytics is kind of where things are going.
So very different approach to data analysis at different firms. My group, we are private equity due diligence and we do a lot of consumer work, do a lot of TMT work, and the work that our group does, we do a lot of consumer surveys, so there is a lot of work that that group does in consumer focused B to C surveys, B to B, B to C type surveys so you’re doing like net promoter score, and values stream mapping, and things like that. So that’s where you are building very detailed quantitative consumer surveys, so that’s a whole magic in itself and how do you structure a survey so it follows the right data paths, how do you crunch the numbers in data and visualize it as well. So the kind of point here is that three different firms, several different approaches to data analysis, but the kind of theme running through that is the data analysis is incredibly, incredibly important today. And everyone is trying to differentiate by being able to show this in their own special way. So that’s very important.
Jenny Rae:
Amazing. Thank you. Well, I know that people have some very specific questions about recruiting and performance at consulting firms, and I know that you are involved at in both of those at many of the firms that you are in. I’m going to start with some of the performance ones. One of the questions was what are some traits you see from those who promote quickly inside an organization. And if you want to refer to Oliver Wyman, your most recent experience as the key baseline for that, that’s great. Or you can draw on other experience too.
Dan:
Yeah, I mean as far as who kind of really stands out being a top performer?
Jenny Rae:
Yes. And Dan, just in light of your last question around data, I think one of the questions right now that people are asking is how should we be upscaling, how should we use a little bit of the time that we have right now, and if our summer is disrupted in all the ways that it could potentially be, how do we spend our time right now focusing on skills that actually matter. So if I were to paraphrase it, is it data, is it soft skills, is it some combination? What is it specifically that you would use to focus this time to build the skills that make that difference for people?
Dan:
Yeah. I mean I would just feel – I mean, this is just my point of view, so don’t go too crazy with this, but I would say learning some data analytics where it’s some programming, being able to program something is great. You have to be a master programmer, but understanding the basics of SQL, the basics and how that’s used in data. Because SQL is used in like a ton of places, but how is that used in data analysis. There’s different – C, and I think C Sharp, I think which version or flavor of C is being used in programming analytics. Python. There’s all kinds of tools, and then there’s obviously Alteryx and other platforms like that. And then Tableau, obviously. There’s different data visualization tools. You know, you don’t have to know all of them, but I would understand that data analysis is like massively important. It won’t be in a consulting interview. Consulting interviews are just cases. But, you know, telling someone like oh yeah, I took some online courses in you know how to program C for building into an Excel model, or doing data analysis, you know, I actually studied Python and actually, I don’t know I’m just making stuff up, and I got a certificate in how to use Alteryx – Alteryx.
That can’t hurt because it shows you’re thinking about the kind of work that they’re doing and getting more into. Being able to crush case interview, obviously, that’s like the most important thing. But like if you can also show that like hey, I’ve talked to – talk to your friends in consulting as well. This is like huge. You gotta have someone who can crunch data like that and build a good model that doesn’t blow up at 2:00 in the morning the day before it’s due, or all that stuff. Knowing how to write and build models, cell models first. If you’re not good at building cell models, figure out how to build Excel models. And then that next layer, you know, like learning languages, data manipulation tools, data crunch tools. Pick one or two and just learn about them, learn how to do some basic stuff. Because if you can show – I think if you can show that in an interview saying, you know, going into a non-tech consulting role and say hey, you know, I learned – while we had some down time I learned how to program this, and I learned how to build those models and I’d be happy to walk you through a model I’ve built, or something – something like that, that just shows that you’re trying – you’re thinking ahead and how to position yourself for that future space.
Jenny Rae:
Now, Dan, somebody had a really interesting question just about you and your future. Now that you have this experience in consulting, do you foresee herself going back to a large organization like GE at a senior level, or doing something else as your next step?
Dan:
My next step, it’s an interesting one. You know, I don’t know that I’d want to go into a very large place like a GE, but I wouldn’t say no to things. You know, I can really think about – I have to be coy, because I mean I’m working on a couple of things right now.
Jenny Rae:
Fair. You don’t have to disclose anything, but just tell us where your mindset is in terms of what you would and wouldn’t do, sometimes you know too much, Dan, so we are interested in –
Dan:
Yeah, so I’m looking at very senior consulting role, helping lead a practice area at a fairly well-known consulting firm. I’m just going to be vague there. And also looking at a very interesting role in industry, so just to give you an idea of what I’m looking at just – I’ll leave those there.
Jenny Rae:
Well great. And let –
Dan:
But yeah, I guess there’s – there’s definitely things – things that I’m pursuing these opportunities.
Jenny Rae:
Let me ask another question related to that because I’m sure it may affect what you’re thinking about doing now. From a macro economy perspective, you can see a lot of things the consulting world. What do you expect to see in recruiting in the consulting realm, and sales, project sales in the consulting realm, in the next 6 to 12 months, versus some of the problems that you think industry will be solving in that same period of time.
Dan:
Yeah, I mean, you know there’s area like health care and life science and other types of things that are just booming right now from a sales – project sales perspective. There are certain industries that are doing really well, there are areas where I mean I don’t know anyone in like say aviation or travel and leisure consulting, but I can imagine that’s a terrible place to be right now. However, there are probably firms that have a good reputation for crisis management in their respective industries. They are probably busy. So they probably canceled all their projects, or they put some on hold, but, but they are probably saying okay, we need to figure out how to get through this, and then how do we, you know, build, is going to be a big thing. But to be honest, a lot of companies are saying like we don’t know what the next 3 to 6 months are going to be like, but, you know, we didn’t have the economy didn’t crater because we built the economies’ growth on a house of cards. It’s built on solid quarter-over-quarter earnings, profits, growth, new product introductions, successfully competing in marketplaces. I mean it’s built on good stuff.
And I think the market will get back to that, but it’s going to take some time. So I think some companies are saying listen, we may freeze hiring, we may slow down a few of our projects, but we need to keep staying the course because the fear is that this isn’t like a, right now, that if this isn’t something that’s going to be sustained for multiple years, that it’s going to be a problem where if you are not ready to go, the market’s going to leave you behind. Every market, every industry is hypercompetitive. If you take your foot off the gas because you are afraid of some great depression that’s coming and it doesn’t happen, and your competitors, you know, maybe took their foot off the gas a tiny bit, so instead of going 100 miles an hour, they stayed at like 70 – 75, and you went down to 25 miles an hour, or stopped, they are going to be that much farther down the road. So the work is still happening, and I think people are going to say okay, how do we adapt and plan for crises in the future. Maybe not a pandemic virus, but maybe there’s, I don’t know, some weather event, or something. Some massive tornadoes that knock out Texas oil refineries and sends the global oil market through the ceiling. Or, you know, there could be some other kind of dislocation.
How do we plan for that, how do we plan for this for the future. What’s business going to look like in the future. So I think those are where you’re going to see opportunities. So I think, you know, the consulting industry hasn’t stopped, and I think it may have paused in some areas, but I think some other areas are heating up and I think it’s actually a great time for consulting because nobody saw this coming, you know, so I think they’re going to say okay, how do we plan for – to keep going during a crisis. How do we keep our teams working, how do we keep our businesses running, how do we keep things going. And they may be able to needing solving for that as well. So I kind of see like there may be a lot of pausing going on and people hiring obviously pausing on hiring, things like that. Maybe they’re not going to move into the new office that they were were going to to. But as far as servicing their clients, they’re going to do everything they can. So some of the nature of the work may have changed a little bit, there may be a pause in some projects, but some clients are saying listen, I’m trying to – I’m planning the next 3 to 5 years. This may slow down a little bit, but we’re still doing that big merger with that company. We are still launching those products. We’re still doing things. So they have to keep moving. There’s only so much pausing they can do. Hopefully that answers the question.
Jenny Rae:
That’s great. Dan, I have one final question for you, just to honor your time. And thank you so much for joining us today and sharing from your experience.
Dan:
Yeah.
Jenny Rae:
This is a two-parter question because people asked two different versions of really the same question. One is I come largely entrepreneurial experience, not that kind of like perfect corporate experience that you are talking about before. And one is I came from a PhD background, so an advanced degree candidate. What are the skills or experiences that they should be focusing on when networking with or pushing in for their first roles in consulting.
Dan:
Right, right. So kind of my earlier point around niche – niching. There’s something that I tell entrepreneurs that you want to like, you can’t be everything to everybody. You have to figure out what, you know, what is your brand if you will. And I think people need to think about what their brand is. If you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve built businesses up, you know, and if you’re going to say Deloitte, going to their – working on Fortune 100 or Fortune 50 clients, there may be a challenge there. But if, I would say if you identify, or an entrepreneur could identify as practices or firms that have practice areas that focus on growth and innovation, you know, that’s – that’s compelling for someone with the entrepreneurial mindset. It says you know, I’ve built companies, I started this company. Ideally, you’d be doing it in the same industry that you are already in, that states, so whatever it is you’re an entrepreneur in, find the firms that have some innovation side to it in the industry you are in. Make it a path of least resistance is kind of my coaching there.
Jenny Rae:
Amazing.
Dan:
You know, don’t say you know, I’ve been doing digital marketing and run my own digital marketing business and now I want to do like IT and supply chain, you know, or something, like this – what’s the connection point, right? So there’s like these growth areas in a lot of consulting firms, innovation areas, etc. Some firms that’s all they do is innovation and stuff like that. So try to find a place that – that hits your – hits your sweet spot in like the industry as well as your experience set from an entrepreneurial standpoint. The entrepreneurial one is a little bit tougher because it’s – it’s a harder one to put like put a box around and consultants like things that are, you know, you can put in like a 2 x 2 or something like that.
Jenny Rae:
Yes we do.
Dan:
That’s – that’s, but that’s the thing is that you again, find a firm that does – has like in innovation mindset. No – startups in innovative companies don’t hire – I mean like small innovative – not large innovative, the small companies they don’t have a budget for consulting firms, startups don’t have consulting budgets, so where you this startup says like – companies that like hey, we help companies innovate and grow, and things like that and as an entrepreneur that’s what you are doing. So if you’ve done it in like a very organized way, you know, the kind of like the way I used to do things by brute force isn’t like probably the way a consulting firm is going to do it, so I would say here’s how I thought about the problems, here’s how I broke them down, here’s how I solved the problem and then implemented it, I think that’s very compelling. Companies of all sizes sometimes need help cracking the nut on innovation and growth. So the second part was around PhD’s. This is actually – a PhD is actually a great entry point.
Now assuming the PhD is from 15 years ago and you’re not doing anything with the PhD, but if you have a technical PhD, there’s a lot of firms that have entry points for people with a technical PhD. So say you got a PhD and you’ve done postdoc work, or have done a PhD level job somewhere, most firms have an entry point for people with PhD’s. Some kind of technical track that intersects with the generalist consulting track. So, for example, Deloitte and L.E.K. both had what was called life science specialist – I forgot, actually can’t remember what the Deloitte term was, but at L.E.K. they had a life science specialist. They would take someone who was PhD plus postdoc, or whatever experience, or med school plus maybe they been a practicing physician, or not, someone who’s right out of med school or research and they would go into a life science specialist program. So you had to have a PhD or a medical degree. That was their requirement. And you spent two years as a subject matter expert on life science projects, and you were the person they went to to help you figure out the technical parts of the project. Speak to physicians, etc.
And then after two years, you are promoted to consultant, which is actually the first job you get out of B-school is a consultant at L.E.K. So then they be a consultant for two years, and then become in EM. Once they become a consultant now there on the consulting track. But those two years are used by them to one, and tons of value as the PhD, but also have them learn consulting. So after the two years, you know, they can basically run projects on their own, and they know how to build really good PowerPoint slides and all that kind of stuff. But they still have that science set. So if you are a PhD and listening to this, based on you know, what you’re doing, if you’re in a role that doesn’t really lend itself to kind of consulting kind of work, see if you can get into projects where you are doing project work, like you know, we want to analyze something and we need to solve something, maybe the executive team wanted to help with something so I joined this team. Again, side projects. Doesn’t have to be a full-time job, but I would say side projects help, so after the course of a year you do two or three projects, that gives some meat on the bone. And identify firms that have that PhD track, or and a lot of the career pages will say this, so find a firm that does work in your space that you think might hire PhD’s. They are always looking for people like this because there’s just not a lot of people who come out of like PhD – strong PhD programs and then want to do consulting work right out of PhD program because up to this point they’ve already been in school so long they want to do other things. They don’t want to maybe go into consulting or do other stuff. So definitely a track. We just have to make sure finding the firm or the practice area. Make sure that your background is calibrated for that, but it’s not – it’s not harder at all, I don’t think so. I just think you gotta make sure you’re finding the right home for you to be able to do that work. So hopefully that answers that part of the question.
Jenny Rae:
Dan, one final question for you. In 30 seconds or less, what is your top career advice for people who are may be a couple of years behind where you are at the moment.
Dan:
Okay, so first thing is understand why you want to be a consultant, why you want to do consulting. Is it because consulting looks glamorous or cool, or prestigious? Or is it you really like the idea of, you know, that kind of solving client problems and changing projects every few months, and just that kind of that because it is a – it’s a challenging road. So I always tell people like think about why you want to do this. Is it – does it make sense for your career because if you’re not in consulting you’d be building your career somewhere else, right? So you could in say five years, you do five years of consulting, or three years of consulting, you could be building that skill set in industry, or somewhere else. So you don’t actually have to be in consulting. Is it going to help you get to the next wrong in the latter, or wherever place you want to be. So first try to really think deeply around that. Is this the right move for me. Is it the right move now. What will I – what am I going to be able to add, what am I going to contribute, right? Because you’re going to have to contribute something to these firms.
And then what is the – how am I going to get some benefit out and will that get me to where I want to be. So, you know, some people will be doing like digital work and then they go to a consulting firm that has a name brand in digital consulting, and then they leave that and they go to, I don’t know, Google or Facebook or something like that, or a tech firm in more of a strategic product management role. In the answer – if the answer was I would have never have gotten there without consulting, then that’s great. That’s why I went to B-school. The role I got at GE I would never have even known about the job and less I went to B-school. Answer that question. And then the next thing is like do I have the right skill set, what do I need to do. And if the yes is all across the board to this point, now it’s targeting firms where you will be successful getting into, you know, don’t just look at the glossy fancy names. Just find places where you know if this is something you want to do, find the firms that do what you want to do. Start building that plan to get in, right? So day one the job, I would have to have a job offer. You have to work backwards. I would have to pass through interviews which means case interviews, which is hiring Jenny and her firm. Getting to the interview process, getting into recruiting, getting introduced. Networking my way into people who will get me introduced. So follow that process. Build that process map out. It’s going to take six months to a year, but, you know, building yourself up, making sure you’re doing this for the right reasons, gathering experience set, tailoring your background story so that it fits, and then the networking plan, and then obviously the prep plan.
And I’ll be – I want – and my selling piece here for Jenny and her team is obviously I’m not making any commission for this call, just you really do not want to underestimate case interviews. They are very weird. They are hard. I was a biology major in undergrad, and I went through organic chemistry and physics and all that nasty stuff. They are very hard in their own way and they are very unique. You don’t do case interviews anywhere else in your life, so if you’re going to do this and you find out you’re going to start interviewing, you need to – I prepped for like a couple of months because I was way out of school at this point. You know, if you’re right out of school, these aren’t that hard. They are hard. So really, really be just have these absolutely nailed because if you do not nail these interviews, you’re going to have a hard time. So you come in as an experienced hire, with this background, I don’t know, I don’t know. You crush the case interviews, you, your you know, you’ve got a very good shot at getting it. So that’s my final piece there. Make sure it’s right for you, make sure you tell yourself to fit that experiences that you may need that overlap, set that plan in motion, identify the firms and really structure your approach to getting in, and be persistent and you will get in. I’m not special, like I said. I don’t know board members of consulting firms, my father is in the CEO of a client, I had no special nepotistic favors. It was just my own diligence and hard work. So anyone can do it, just make sure it’s right for you and then just go get it.
Jenny Rae:
Amazing. Dan, with that, I will thank you so much for joining us today and we appreciate you Dan, we appreciate the journey that you’ve been through, and we’re so grateful for the wisdom that you shared today. Thanks again.
Dan:
Hey, no problem. And thank you so much, Jenny, for having me on. You guys do great work and I would not have – not be where I am without you guys. So thanks again and always happy to help, and hope all of you have a great day and stay safe, everyone.