Does school pedigree matter after getting the job?
I read that firms are considering hiring more and more consultants from different backgrounds and non-target schools. However, does being from a non-target background affect your opportunities to advance after getting hired? I'm asking because I notice that most of the highlighted employees you see in the marketing material always have their backgrounds highlighted and they tend to be from targets.
Would love to hear your thoughts.
From my short experience, I'd confirm target vs non-target certainly affects career development and I'll explain you why. Promotions and general career progression is 80% based on perception, and previous jobs and education play a key role on this aspect both with clients and coworkers. (ofc how you treat others, how you react under pressure and your work ethic are also going to be fundamental)
When introducing new members of the team to clients it is common to state where these people studied at and, as you can imagine, mentioning an Ivy league or any other top business school is always better perceived and has an element of "trust, smart and hard working" component attached to it. Consequently, clients will usually prefer that their consultants are these kind of people.
Additionally, having attended a top school might cause your coworkers to perceive you as a "Star" (if they come from normal schools), and stars are usually promoted earlier.
Ofc if your performance or your attitude is shit you're not going to get promoted but it is def smth that helps. That just happened to me this month, I just got an early promotion while the other juniors have to wait for one more year (me coming from target and the others from semi to non target). It is a fact that I was better prepared, knew more finance than them and interacted well with clients, but I am sure that my school was relevant when managers decided promotion.
I completely disagree. Especially in consulting. Pictet How long have you been a consultant for? And at what type of firm? I'd be interested in understand what part of the world runs this way.
From what I've seen, to contrast, there are so many target profiles running around that having gone to a top school frankly loses its luster internally. People are much more interested in how you think and how you work. I've worked with plenty of folks from top schools who just don't get consulting, and plenty of people from non-targets who crush it. That's all that matters once you're in the role.
Consulting firms don't parade your pedigree in front of their clients, especially as junior staff. It is expected that everyone at the firm belongs there.
In marketing materials, sure, they put target profiles out there - why wouldn't they? But those folks are being rated vs their peers on job performance, not on what cafeteria they ate in for four years.
It doesn't impact promotions at all. Consulting is a meritocracy. Nobody is going to promote someone over a peer that outperformed them just because they went to a better school.
For the record, I went to a target MBA (M7).
It will only matter to those clients that went to the same school. There is a network effect.
In the grown up world, people care about what you've done professionally, not where you studied 20 years ago. No client is going to vet consulting partners based on where they went to school. They're going to vet them based on whether they done similar work for similar clients.
In terms of making partner - no. There are threads on this here. But similar concept to above. Grown ups care about grown up things - like what you've actually accomplished. Graduating from Princeton is an accomplishment at 22. It is not treated like an accomplishment once you are 40.
I think the answer to this is a bit more nuanced than some of the earlier posters have stated. While it's absolutely true that the quality of your work once you're inside a firm matters a great deal more than the pedigree of your school, you'll probably always face questions about your pedigree when leaving the firm. Internally, people know you and know your work. If you exit to a client, they'll know you and they'll know your work. If you remain within the firm, it shouldn't matter much at all, but if you ever have to look for competitive jobs outside the firm, I think it's pretty natural to question why you went to a particular school (especially early in your career).
To be clear, I don't think people will sneer at your reasoning for going to John's Hopkins, Vanderbilt or Tulane, but if you're holding yourself out as a generic 'smart guy', the question is: Why didn't you go to Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Yale, Princeton, Wharton, Stanford, etc? The reason (almost always) is that you didn't get in which raises a couple questions about your raw intellectual horsepower or work ethic. While a lot of people get raw deals in the admissions process and there are plenty of people who choose cheaper education options for a variety of reasons, for a certain subset of very competitive jobs, I wouldn't believe you got into Harvard and chose to go to StateU for reasons of cost. And even if you did make that choice, I'd then question your decision-making which is a bigger problem for strategy-focused roles.
None of this is insurmountable--and it certainly plays far less of a role than the quality of your work, the nature of your projects, your role on those projects, your exposure to clients, and their corresponding perception of you--but pretending it plays no role at all is inaccurate. I have a call later today with the CEO of a large portfolio company for one of the MF PE shops, and his bio absolutely mentions his HBS MBA. The man is worth high 8 figures and still lists his pedigree. If it didn't matter to certain people, it wouldn't be listed.
If you don't buy that argument, why do you think Donald Trump talks about going to Wharton all the time? Some people really like pedigree even into their old age. I don't think it should matter much, but it matters a bit more than some of the earlier posters may have led you to believe. And for the record, I used to work directly for the CEO of a major consulting firm doing corporate development and strategy for the firm. Anecdotally, he cared about pedigree. I think it's unlikely he's the only CEO who thinks that way.