career options in consulting for a physics grad
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http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/create_your_path/career_pathways/career… http://adc.bcg.com/ http://www.joinbain.com/apply-to-bain/other-advanced-degrees/default.asp
MBB regularly conduct campus recruiting for advanced degree candidates. Many go in as generalists (same as post-MBA), however some elect to take an "expert" role. Research, figure out if anyone in your network works at any of them, check on-campus recruiting dates (there might be a few still this year), figure out if yours is a target school, register for their recruiting email blasts, search WSO for "ADC" and "APD."
This will give you some background and information about specific roles, as well as let you view the related questions that others on this site have asked before.
I'm a physicist (PhD in particle physics, worked at CERN) who is now a consultant at an MBB firm. Just in my office there are 3 more (another particle physicist, an astroparticle guy and a condensed matter theorist). There are a lot of us. The recruiting process is actually very structured, and you get the first pass of everything you need to know on the websites the poster above linked to.
I know that some other firms (LEK) hire PhDs as consultants in a specialist role, and others don't hire PhDs at all or hire them at the same level as an undergrad (OW). At MBB a PhD is functionally equivalent to an MBA after you are hired.
Awesome. Thanks so much for all this information.
Devildog2067 - what is your everyday work like? how did you find the transition from research to consulting? what factors drove you to do this, may I ask?
There's a ton of information out there about the transition from PhD to consulting generally. Have you looked at what's out there?
Yes, you'd be very qualified for consulting.
Assuming you're still in the UK, you'd be eligible to apply to McKinsey as a Junior Associate. They recruit quite a few PhDs from all backgrounds and you sound like you have a profile that would give you a good shot. I wrote about this here: http://www.theconsultingcoach.com/1/post/2014/04/whats-the-right-level-… (apologies for the shameless plug)
Not all firms offer a Junior Associate equivalent position (e.g., I don't think Bain do but I might be wrong) so it's worth looking into this before you apply.
OP, I'm not a PhD, but I am doing my bachelors in applied math & computer science and am working in consulting this summer so I may be able to provide some insight. In some cases, strategy consulting are looking into using machine learning and artificial intelligence (read "Big Data") to help better inform their clients. I'm just an undergrad so I don't know too much, but I honestly think a lot of what is thought to be subjective or impossible for a computer to understand is now being automated using artificial intelligence techniques. If you don't have any experience in machine learning, I highly suggest reading through "Machine Learning: An Algorithmic Perspective" by Chapman & Hall. Given your background, the math behind machine learning should be pretty easy. I'm not familiar with PhD recruiting at MBB, but I'm almost certain that they would place you into some type of quantitative analytics role.
Also, have you considered going into quantitative finance at all? High frequency trading firms are all looking for people who have exceptional math and programming skills. Your parallel computing skills would be especially helpful as latency is basically the principal issue in HFT. If you're not familiar with the space, I highly suggest reading up on it. Also, the $$$ for PhDs in the quant world can be huge. Usually, starting salaries are 250k + performance bonus.
You could not be more wrong.
Sorry for the misinfo. @"devildog2067", what type of work would a STEM PhD do at MBB?
Might also take a look at econ consulting firms (Charles River Associates, Analysis Group, Cornerstone etc.). They tend to hire a lot of quant backgrounds, and you'll likely learn to model better than at MBB (depending on the case type), which is a useful skill to have for other exit opps down the road. Offices tend to be very "academic" culturally, likely because the expert witnesses are typically active faculty at unis.
If you want a tutorial on phds in consulting, look through my previous responses to posts
http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/user/42013/track
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