our culture

our people: Saurabh

Saurabh, Associate

Why Consulting?

After completing my PhD, consulting as a career was interesting to me as it promised to provide me with an opportunity to understand and solve complex business issues, exposure to multiple industries, opportunities to lead and interact with smart and motivated people, and a fast paced environment.

Experiences at Dean

Since joining Dean & Company in 2006, my experience has ranged across multiple industries (financial services, media, and consumer) and across a broad range of issues (pricing, market entry, campaign improvements, customer acquisition, and retention and adaptive in-market testing, investment opportunity analysis, etc.). The small company structure of Dean & Company, along with some very attractive opportunities that it provided, has been essential for my professional and personal development. My cases have involved global travel (e.g., a stint in London for 3 months), great client exposure (worked directly with CEO and CFO level executives) and have provided me with the utmost intellectual satisfaction in the solutions that I have arrived at as a team and individually. Some of the modules (e.g., business development) have not been very different from my doctoral studies, where I had maximum freedom and flexibility to explore all different aspects of the problem. Most of the cases have been just the opposite, where I had to come up solutions to problems in a very deadline based environment. I think most of my learning has come from these modules, in which I had to work outside of my comfort zone.

Transition from PhD to Consulting

Consulting is a business for people who are thinkers as well as doers, and that is why it lends itself well to PhDs. The skills polished and practiced during doctoral studies take you far in consulting as well.

In retrospect, my PhD experience at MIT was useful in inculcating some of the skills that I have utilized in consulting. These include teamwork, analytical and critical thinking and ability to borrow from various disciplines (and of course the “never say die” spirit).

However, a PhD does not take you all the way. I found that my first six months in consulting were extremely challenging, reflecting on the gaps in skills required for consulting and for academia. The key skill that a PhD has to learn is the ability to form amorphous hypotheses quickly, and then keep stress testing them as new data is received. Similarly, the time available for developing a new skill may be very short and intimidating for a PhD.

Apart from the hard skills, a PhD considering consulting should realize that the job requires strong motivation and commitment, an ability to put in long hours and work according to the team requirements.

Overall, I feel that the key to transitioning into consulting for a PhD is understanding the 80/20 rule. After all, one of the key skills that we bring to the client is our ability to go over mountains of data and arrive at key issues.