I'm (will soon be) a science PhD who recently received an offer from two MBB firms. I was able to postpone my start date for about a year to wrap up some projects that I've been working on and defend my dissertation. This represents a pretty drastic career change for me, and I'm wondering how I should prepare myself for my new career. Does anybody have any suggestions of online courses or books or other resources that I could use to prepare myself? I'm pretty competitive and would like to excel in my new position dispute my non traditional background.
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A few threads on reddit/consulting on this, cant post links as im a new user. There is also a decent wiki.
Well if you have a pure science background with no business skills whatsoever you can beef up on the basics of accounting/finance/economics via CFA L1 curriculum if you have time for it. If you master it you're likely going to be even ahead of the curve on these. You're probably already proficient with data analysis/stats so no point in wasting time on that - even if you haven't really used Excel you're going to be trained during your couple weeks, and someone like you with a science PhD and at least rudimentary coding skills can master it in no time.
These combined are a technical overkill, you will learn everything else on the job. Maybe start reading a lot of WSJ/Bloomberg/Economist etc to learn the lingo/get up to date on current events. Start networking within your new firm/office in the meanwhile to figure out which project leaders/partners you want to work with and what types of projects/practice area you might be interested in - this is hugely important and most people underestimate it. I'm assuming you're hired into a post-MBA role? Those guys are under substantial pressure to make project leader within couple years, and fit/relationships/politics within practice areas play a large role in that.
I agree with Qayin on the reading WSJ/Bloomberg/FT to start understanding terminology and just the way people in this world talk and write, because it's a different language than science. Science writing is a lot of passive reporting: "in this study, these things were combined under these circumstances and the following was observed..." whereas business writing is "here's the point, here's what it means for you, and here's the analysis that answers the next three questions you're about to ask."
I quit an engineering PhD program to work in a pre-MBA role for a strategy boutique, and just about drowned. I can still see the look on the associate's face when I asked him what "YoY" stood for. I didn't know what anyone was talking about for about two months.
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