Quarter life crisis picking ER vs Consulting in Healthcare/Lifesci
Hello all, I'm a student with two internship offers in ER and Consulting in the healthcare/life sciences sector - both at firms which are more or less the best ones in their area outside of BB/MBB. Struggling to decide between the two so would love any thoughts. My considerations are about stability/progression, exits, and work style;
- I care about the mid to long term, not about early comp differences - more worried about progression and exits. Ideally I'd grind it out for about 10-15 years, then exit into a more WLB role (eg corpdev) for having a family, and then at age ~45-50 switch to part time/very low hours while benefitting from some passive income from savings. After building rep, I imagine that consulting has the option of freelancing and ER also has the option of setting up like a 2 man boutique. At the junior level, ER would have better wlb and comp, but worse progression it seems. I want to minimise risk of getting fired or getting stuck for many years at one level. The end positions in both careers (ER Analyst v Partner) also seem equally good to me, as well as the end positions of exits (SM HF PM v Partner) but chances are so slim.
- Both can exit to corpdev and beyond that the difference is being in private or public markets (PE vs SM HF or a stab at LO AM). Ignoring the edge case earners in HF, it seems to me that career comp would be similar (or is this not the case?) and so I'm thinking about the long term job security in the exits. The best would be healthcare PC but neither of these really translate to that (?)
- In terms of work - obviously healthcare is my passion and in both careers I could work with pharma which I love. Here's what I think of the options
- Consulting pros: it works hands-on with the businesses rather than just watching, there is a project nature and variety between projects, there is a bigger range of workflows to do, problem solving nature
- Consulting cons: lot of menial work like expert interviews, kind of a bs industry, DD is quite repetitive, sales at partner level, don't see end results of projects
- ER pros: more independent, more analytical, more self directed and flexible in HF/AM, still see and analyse strategy without setting it, have continuity with companies
- ER cons: menial work with earnings reports/updates, less range of workflows, more accounting involved, similar thing all year round, high volume of reading and writing
- These are just internships and I need to also consider the value they provide as standalone experiences for other careers in the healthcare sector like IB, or switching between the two. The conversion in ER is maybe 50-50 and because of the rotation style I would be able to do only half the summer in healthcare there - for consulting, conversion is almost guaranteed and I'd spend the whole summer in healthcare and also be more hands on.
Would love to hear any thoughts from people who are further into their careers or have done serious research on mid-late career (many analysts/associates I've talked to haven't, surprisingly) - this is probably the most pivotal decision of my life so far and struggling heavily to decide
At the junior level (in fact, any level), there's a 90% chance your WLB is not better under ER lmao
For consulting it'd be ~70hr weeks at the firm, in ER I don't know the firm that well but I would think 60-65h is fair?
Research (like consulting) tend to be weekday heavy jobs. Sure you're rarely working a weekend, but during the week could easily get to 70-80 hours.
Maybe some teams work 70-80 hours consistently, but Ive never seen it. More common in my experience is 50-60, with 60 being a pretty big week. Im in at 7 and out by 5 most days outside of earnings and thats pretty normal
What sector do you work in? From what I've seen, most healthcare/biotech teams tend to work longer hours.
I'm in healthcare and average around 60 for a normal week.
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