What are the prerequisites needed for a bachelors in medicine students transitioning to a career in consulting?

Question

1.What are the firms that actively hire about to be doctors (bachelors in medicine,MBBS)?

2.what would be the ambience and the competence of the work for doctors in the healthcare consulting space?

3.what are the skills and knowledge that are expected in the top tier consulting firms?

4.how would the hiring process for the doctors in consulting firms?

Answer 1

Hi,

I was working on healthcare projects at Mckinsey for 2 years and I know the folks who came to McKinsey with a pure medical background.

Application process: While medical background + MBA is a good fit, non-top school may be a problem. Big 3 companies are hiring most of the guys from the Top schools. Two hints here:

One hint that may help you - try to contact your classmates who worked at Big3 companies before MBA and ask them to recommend you. For example, at Harvard, McKinsey only invites for the interviews the guys who are recommended by classmates. It's not a referral in most of the cases. Big3 HRs are just in contact with their employees pursuing an MBA.

Alternatively, you can get a referral from current employees, but that only works if you are applying full-time (does not work with the summer internship). Tip: it will be easy to connect ex-doctors and current McKinsey employees on LinkedIn and get their advice and maybe even help. More on the referral here:

https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/what-is-a-referral-really-1103#a2129

Interview process: for these candidates interview process was the same as for other candidates, thus you should be well prepared for cases and fit

Work experience: While healthcare projects went for them pretty smooth, I saw the guys struggling with the other industries. Unfortunately, you have to make this transition to get exposure to other teams and partners. Thus I recommend you to have the first projects in healthcare, get all the necessary skills and then gradually and very accurately increase your exposure to other industries.

Exit opportunities:

Guys with medical and consulting background made probably the best exists from McKinsey I've heard of. Even though some of them were underperforming at McKinsey. On the contrary, if you are doing healthcare and have no medical background the exit opportunities will be limited

Best!

Vlad

Answer 2

Hi Anonymous,

reg 1.: I guess MBB would hire people with such a background, some of the strategy-oriented tier-2 consultancies (like goetzpartners for example) probably as well. These companies look not sooo much for a specific academic background.
I assume that there are some consultancies specialized in healthcare/pharma that would also hire professionals with a medical education.

reg 2: Don't know much about the space in particular. I have heard from MDs and other life science graduates (i.e. biologists), that they were more accepted by pharma / HC clients because the "spoke the same language". But that's anecdotal evidence.
Otherwise, I believe the ambience would be very similar to that of any other consultant with a non-business background. Also, don't expect to be put exclusively on pharma / HC projects. With MBB you will definitely do other projects in other industries (which is good!)

reg 3.: Expectations would be the same as for any other non-business graduate. So a bit lower expectations regarding "business stuff" (esp. finance) but obviously intelligence, problem-solving, personality and especially demonstratable ability to get a grasp of new things from other fields quickly (as you'll have to learn the business stuff)

reg. 4.: Same as for all other non-business graduates.

Hope this helps!

Cheers

Elias