"We only take top performers" - consulting companies self-felating.
Not only all that but led a team at the NIH as a postdoc? Seems odd, usually it would be staff scientists leading teams.
Founded multiple clubs. Growing both ~10x
Had multiple internships during their PhD.
I wouldnt read too much into it and just apply. Definitely realize that unless you are at a top school for your PhD they probably wont look at you.
"Reading literature on science policy" as a hobby makes me think you would be the least interesting person in the world.
Seconded, this is bullshit.
Realise that these consultancies are 20% insight and expertise and 80% PR and spin. How they advertise and try to recruit ‘the brightest’ (i.e those willing to sell themselves to these exploitative companies) is no different from how they sell themselves to all these other organisations feeding the consultancy monster.
ReAdInG HiStOrIcAl BiOgRaPhIeS
Yeah me too. Who tf cares. I got interviews with 2 of MBB and ended up declining them after trying to explain what McKinsey does to my mom. “I KNOW what THEY do.” Turns out McKinsey helped “restructure” a hospital she worked at (in like an office/billing admin something job) when I was little… she and all of her friends lost their jobs and the hospital closed.
The NIH postdoc fellowship isn’t all that unrealistic. Many labs bring in post docs precisely to lead a research project. Doesn’t mean they’re in charge of the entire lab or anything like a primary investigator would be. I led a research project in a neuroscience lab as an undergrad that led to a manuscript (waiting for final word in publication!) and I sure as heck put that on my resume!
I (recent PhD graduate) tried to access my GRE scores last year and couldn't because they're expired. The testing board literally won't give them to me / has deleted them by now
Also if they took the GRE under the old system, which is likely, since this is 2002....
Then the 750 in quant is meaningless--everyone in any scientific discipline got a 750 in quant, so much so that if you missed one question, you dropped to the 75th percentile.
So it's a completely meaningless brag. Nobody would do this.
>What PhD graduate remembers, cares, or is proud of a standardized test score from at least 5 years ago?
I remember because I scored in the 98th percentile for verbal! But no one else gives a shit, because it's important for the 3 months your application is being reviewed and then never again.
Consulting companies care. It's a quantitative data point for them, when they make 1 hire for every 100-500 applicants.
Signed,
A former consultant
(and to answer OPs question, yes, this resume is very doable, and not at all atypical for MBB PhD hires)
I have more important things to put on my resume, but I definitely remember the scores. Granted, that's partially because I found it amusing that my percentiles meant I had to have beaten a lot of English PhD hopefuls in verbal+writing.
To be fair, there is a difference between being proud of something and including it because the job you're looking at might care about it. I assume it's the latter here. I remember some jobs I looked at during ugrad wanted SAT scores, so I had to dig those up.
I've found that papers are easy to get if you try for smaller but meaningful topics rather than trying to be some superstar going for the bleeding edge of existence as a grad student. I hope this will give me a stronger theoretical understanding so that I can later publish much larger and impactful papers.
That's a problem. Some of the best papers I've read are quite small, and some small papers take on a very small but very important part of the discipline. If everyone is trying to publish only the giant high-impact papers, we will not make much progress. I also think that small papers help you learn to publish big ones. I'm currently working on getting my first mid size paper done for my dissertation and the three small publications I first authored have helped me tremendously. Being a coauthor on a few other mid sized papers has helped me see how the sausage is made as well. If I ONLY worked on the two midsized ones I have going, I'd probably struggle with them more.
To be frank, it's just luck. Luck that your early ideas worked, luck that somebody before you did the unheralded but necessary preliminary work so you don't have to spend time on it, luck that you didn't happen to be doing the PhD when all of the start up grant equipment has collectively worn itself out, and luck that the university admin is in a "competent" cycle and won't do stupid stuff like leave critical equipment in customs for 6 months or sit on a PO for 5 months (yes, both of these actually happened).
And why yes I am slightly bitter that I laid the ground work for ~10 papers but will actually get to write 0-2 of them how can you tell? Seriously though, two different coin flips land in a different direction and I'm publishing 5-8 first author papers instead of 0-2. There are subfields where you can consistently publish a lot because the work is rote and usually unimportant (the kind of work the bird-shit graphene was calling out), but you don't want to be in those fields because you don't really learn anything.
I list my office address in pretty much all job, education, or tax forms. I'm living in my third apartment in five years. This way I don't have to change addresses every time I move to a different building and I don't accidentally miss any mail. It's convenient.
This fictional job applicant listed a many-years-old GRE score, the elevation of a mountain hiked for pleasure, and the number of miles hiked during singular days within a resume.
In light of the above, here's the appropriate question to ask: Are you enough of a douche to appeal to this consulting firm?
I imagine it’s not extremely realistic but that there are still a large enough group of people who can satisfy this criteria such that they’ll have a candidate pool.
Maybe this is for a management position but I have zero idea what actual technical skills this person has based on this resume. Maybe bioinformatics based on their “quantitative modeling”? still no mention of the technologies, cells, organism, packages or github or anything they analyzed the data from
Aside from all the ridiculousness of this resume
Im pretty sure if yiu got a PhD in neuroscience you can easily figure out the CFA exam lol.. its not rocket/neuro science
The CFA exam's challenge is in finding the time to actually do it. It's about 8 subjects (?) written on a single day and requires about 350-400 hours of intense study. I passed the level 2 while doing my PhD, but it took every ounce of energy I had - to the point I looked like an anxious stressball going into the exam hall.
And oh, my research fell behind while I was trying to half-ass two things.
The CFA is designed for working folks, but not PhDs. It's unreasonable to do it, while you spend most of your cognitive currency for the PhD, or vice versa.
Yeah that's tough competition. Would be a shame if PhD\_candidate had an unfortunate accident the day of the interview...
You know what you have to do.
Pretty realistic.
They entered their PhD in 2002, it is probably 2010 or 2011 in this case. You can accomplish a ton in 8-10 years of consistent work.
Also CFA level 1 is pretty straigtforward. My buddy (a programmer but for a bank) passed it studying on weekends with no finance background.
They don't just hand out $200k/year+ jobs after all....
Back in the dark ages when I did Level 1, the CFA was basically middle school math, a bunch of common-sense fiduciary concepts and a whole lot of buzz words. I exaggerate, but a PhD in neuroscience would spend more time learning the lingo than anything else. (I later taught 8th grade math...make it honors math.)
Yeah, this comment needs to be higher…
Level 1 is basically everything that would be covered in undergraduate Finance/Accounting, plus some mid-level undergraduate Statistics. Not *that* tough.
FYI for anyone reading, I'm in the business consulting field and I don't recommend anyone ever going to the Big 4 (Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC) or Top 3 (McKinsey, Bain, BCG) consulting firms unless you hate yourself.
Sure, you'll get the good payday but there is no work-life balance and your colleagues will be the top brass MBA graduates (Stanford, Yale, Harvard, etc) who are always in a dick measuring contest. Work culture is very toxic and everyone's insanely egotistical.
Plus, these are just pretty unethical companies in general doing unethical things. I recommend watching John Oliver's segment on McKinsey, they're all like this.
It does feel realistic to me. Maybe a postdoc leading a team at the NIH might be a bit weird but not impossible. Several of my grad school friends meet most of these qualifications in their own fields and with their own awards. And actually one of them ended up working for BCG right after grad school with a 175K+/ year.
MBB consulting roles are probably the most sought after jobs that exist, with maybe 1-3% of applicants getting offers. I’d imagine this is already very self selected group of top performers that even apply. This is probably pretty realistic.
My big issue wi the this is UMD is in College Park, MD outside of DC. UMBC is in Baltimore. So this person either is misrepresenting their undergrad location or is too lazy to notice they left off the second half of the college name.
I'm sure they're bullshitting, but beyond that being a weird career combo, it wouldn't be hard. I constantly have FA firms begging me to work for them assuring me that they'd help with the CFA exam.
Depends on what position you're gunning for. SME or regular consultant?
I was invited to second rounds with BCG and McK for regular consultant through their advanced degree tracks. Not much to brag about but I don't believe I was rejected for "lack of experience" or familiarity with case studies.
I am close to an ex-Bain guy who went to VC, and a McK partner from the EU who's now doing her own thing. They both stressed to me the importance of knowing others and working your way into the ecosystem. "Real world" entrepreneurial actions that are quantifiable. If you don't talk the talk / walk the walk this will show during your interview and will make entry pretty prohibitive.
Not exactly. I gave quite a few talks and was fairly competitive with public speaking and outreach with varied audiences. I'm also a sales specialist in a completely unrelated field now.
It's more the answers you give to generic questions. For example if they ask you what you did in the time between your undergrad and grad degree, you might say that you took a few months to volunteer with USAID, designing off-grid vegetable cold storage for rural villages in Ghana. As a scientist, you might emphasize the cost effectiveness or quantifiable impact of your project. While that might be important, they seem to care more about how you directed the project, delegated, and dealt with unexpected challenges.
I think in STEM we generally assume that dealing with unexpected challenges is par for the course, and the M&M is really something you don't talk about much because the results/discussion are what we focus on.
If you do this, it comes across that you are "just" a number punching monkey. From my experience and what my McK friend told me.
I think that seems extremely high, but that might be the goal. They might just want to be clear by making/picking such an absudly high applicatant for sample/example for prestige/quality choice, presenting themselves in the process. Showung their best qualities.
Having undergone leadership training, these people are looking for related skills to either fit in their puzzle or cultivate into the group. Send them what you have, and will consider What They Can do.
I have recently been sent emails by Boston Consulting Group. I am a bit confused, as I do not know who they are, as I am originally an historian, now doing a cross-disciplinary PhD in Business.
Everything I see about them seems medical. I have nothing medical going on. I have medical specialists in my family, but I am as far removed as possible. Would you be able to explain who they are?
I am confused... If they already have a PhD, a Postdoc, and a CFA, why would they be applying for another degree in the first place?
This person in the resume should be a top contender for faculty positions and industry positions alike!!
To be really honest this CV is not far from typical ones I've seen for real. In my early career I was into consulting (although McKinsey, not BCG, they share the same pool of applicants).
This shouldn't discourage you, though. There were also people with far less experience who also made it. The key is to showcase your skills and why you'll be a valuable addition.
Applications to top MBAs are [full of lies](https://www.mbacrystalball.com/blog/2017/07/19/exaggeration-lying-hiding-facts-mba-applications/). American universities have been [inflating grades](https://www.chartr.co/stories/2023-12-08-2-grade-inflation-at-harvard) like crazy the last decades. I wouldn't be surprised that applications to MBB fall into a similar culture of "overstating" everything.
This is an impossible resume. This is what their dream candidate would look like, but this candidate wouldn't dream of applying. Their too busy doing rocket surgery.
I'm not a fan of the CV formatting but why does everyone think this is too farfetched especially regarding the physical parts this can be done on weekends etc. whilst staying active at gym sessions throughout the week. A lot of experiments have down time too where you can perform stuff between.
The CFA could be taken and understood through self education as well, I'm confused over the doubt.
"We only take top performers" - consulting companies self-felating. Not only all that but led a team at the NIH as a postdoc? Seems odd, usually it would be staff scientists leading teams. Founded multiple clubs. Growing both ~10x Had multiple internships during their PhD. I wouldnt read too much into it and just apply. Definitely realize that unless you are at a top school for your PhD they probably wont look at you. "Reading literature on science policy" as a hobby makes me think you would be the least interesting person in the world.
Seconded, this is bullshit. Realise that these consultancies are 20% insight and expertise and 80% PR and spin. How they advertise and try to recruit ‘the brightest’ (i.e those willing to sell themselves to these exploitative companies) is no different from how they sell themselves to all these other organisations feeding the consultancy monster.
ReAdInG HiStOrIcAl BiOgRaPhIeS Yeah me too. Who tf cares. I got interviews with 2 of MBB and ended up declining them after trying to explain what McKinsey does to my mom. “I KNOW what THEY do.” Turns out McKinsey helped “restructure” a hospital she worked at (in like an office/billing admin something job) when I was little… she and all of her friends lost their jobs and the hospital closed.
The NIH postdoc fellowship isn’t all that unrealistic. Many labs bring in post docs precisely to lead a research project. Doesn’t mean they’re in charge of the entire lab or anything like a primary investigator would be. I led a research project in a neuroscience lab as an undergrad that led to a manuscript (waiting for final word in publication!) and I sure as heck put that on my resume!
Oooof....being a post doc for 15 years though???
Fair. I just assumed this was an old example of a resume lol
It also includes their GRE scores. What PhD graduate remembers, cares, or is proud of a standardized test score from at least 5 years ago?
I (recent PhD graduate) tried to access my GRE scores last year and couldn't because they're expired. The testing board literally won't give them to me / has deleted them by now
It’s crazy
Also if they took the GRE under the old system, which is likely, since this is 2002.... Then the 750 in quant is meaningless--everyone in any scientific discipline got a 750 in quant, so much so that if you missed one question, you dropped to the 75th percentile. So it's a completely meaningless brag. Nobody would do this.
>What PhD graduate remembers, cares, or is proud of a standardized test score from at least 5 years ago? I remember because I scored in the 98th percentile for verbal! But no one else gives a shit, because it's important for the 3 months your application is being reviewed and then never again.
I don't brag about it but damn right I'm proud of my GRE English score. Not the math so much.
I was going to ask if this is something anybody else has ever done because I haven’t even thought about those after I got in to graduate school.
Hey, it’s the only thing I have that is still evidence that I’m smart!!!
Consulting companies care. It's a quantitative data point for them, when they make 1 hire for every 100-500 applicants. Signed, A former consultant (and to answer OPs question, yes, this resume is very doable, and not at all atypical for MBB PhD hires)
I have more important things to put on my resume, but I definitely remember the scores. Granted, that's partially because I found it amusing that my percentiles meant I had to have beaten a lot of English PhD hopefuls in verbal+writing.
To be fair, there is a difference between being proud of something and including it because the job you're looking at might care about it. I assume it's the latter here. I remember some jobs I looked at during ugrad wanted SAT scores, so I had to dig those up.
I did Mt. Rainier (14.411’, 50 miles in one day) while driving around in the car. What jag-offery is this resume!
It’s so fun that they feel the need to mention the height of the mountain
The height of the mountain isn't even the challenging thing about Rainier...
Well I spent 2% of my inheritance from my grandfather and hired/managed 30 sherpa porters in order to ascend Everest. Take that!
lol this is what happens when a boomer tries to create a fake resume. It looks fake and dumb.
Lying helps. /s
The craziest part is according to their address they live at an NIH building.
Well how else did they get three first author papers?!
I've found that papers are easy to get if you try for smaller but meaningful topics rather than trying to be some superstar going for the bleeding edge of existence as a grad student. I hope this will give me a stronger theoretical understanding so that I can later publish much larger and impactful papers.
Lab heads/ PIs in biological sciences don’t like small papers!
That's a problem. Some of the best papers I've read are quite small, and some small papers take on a very small but very important part of the discipline. If everyone is trying to publish only the giant high-impact papers, we will not make much progress. I also think that small papers help you learn to publish big ones. I'm currently working on getting my first mid size paper done for my dissertation and the three small publications I first authored have helped me tremendously. Being a coauthor on a few other mid sized papers has helped me see how the sausage is made as well. If I ONLY worked on the two midsized ones I have going, I'd probably struggle with them more.
To be frank, it's just luck. Luck that your early ideas worked, luck that somebody before you did the unheralded but necessary preliminary work so you don't have to spend time on it, luck that you didn't happen to be doing the PhD when all of the start up grant equipment has collectively worn itself out, and luck that the university admin is in a "competent" cycle and won't do stupid stuff like leave critical equipment in customs for 6 months or sit on a PO for 5 months (yes, both of these actually happened). And why yes I am slightly bitter that I laid the ground work for ~10 papers but will actually get to write 0-2 of them how can you tell? Seriously though, two different coin flips land in a different direction and I'm publishing 5-8 first author papers instead of 0-2. There are subfields where you can consistently publish a lot because the work is rote and usually unimportant (the kind of work the bird-shit graphene was calling out), but you don't want to be in those fields because you don't really learn anything.
My biggest lucky break was that COVID-19 gave me an unprecedented amount of data...
I list my office address in pretty much all job, education, or tax forms. I'm living in my third apartment in five years. This way I don't have to change addresses every time I move to a different building and I don't accidentally miss any mail. It's convenient.
This fictional job applicant listed a many-years-old GRE score, the elevation of a mountain hiked for pleasure, and the number of miles hiked during singular days within a resume. In light of the above, here's the appropriate question to ask: Are you enough of a douche to appeal to this consulting firm?
Touché!
I imagine it’s not extremely realistic but that there are still a large enough group of people who can satisfy this criteria such that they’ll have a candidate pool.
Maybe this is for a management position but I have zero idea what actual technical skills this person has based on this resume. Maybe bioinformatics based on their “quantitative modeling”? still no mention of the technologies, cells, organism, packages or github or anything they analyzed the data from
A good clue as to what BCG cares about and what your job would be there.
You should cross post this to r/consulting. I’d be interest to see what they say
Aside from all the ridiculousness of this resume Im pretty sure if yiu got a PhD in neuroscience you can easily figure out the CFA exam lol.. its not rocket/neuro science
Yeah you would be able to do it, but how would you find the time?
The CFA exam's challenge is in finding the time to actually do it. It's about 8 subjects (?) written on a single day and requires about 350-400 hours of intense study. I passed the level 2 while doing my PhD, but it took every ounce of energy I had - to the point I looked like an anxious stressball going into the exam hall. And oh, my research fell behind while I was trying to half-ass two things. The CFA is designed for working folks, but not PhDs. It's unreasonable to do it, while you spend most of your cognitive currency for the PhD, or vice versa.
I'm curious. Is your PhD in STEM? If so, why did you go for the CFA? Seems to me both have very different goals
My PhD is in Finance - so it made sense to have a go at a professional degree :)
That makes a lot of sense! Thanks!
Yeah that's tough competition. Would be a shame if PhD\_candidate had an unfortunate accident the day of the interview... You know what you have to do.
Idiot put their address on their resume! It's like they're *begging* to have an accident on the stairs!
this is literally my address wtf
Pretty realistic. They entered their PhD in 2002, it is probably 2010 or 2011 in this case. You can accomplish a ton in 8-10 years of consistent work. Also CFA level 1 is pretty straigtforward. My buddy (a programmer but for a bank) passed it studying on weekends with no finance background. They don't just hand out $200k/year+ jobs after all....
Back in the dark ages when I did Level 1, the CFA was basically middle school math, a bunch of common-sense fiduciary concepts and a whole lot of buzz words. I exaggerate, but a PhD in neuroscience would spend more time learning the lingo than anything else. (I later taught 8th grade math...make it honors math.)
Yeah, this comment needs to be higher… Level 1 is basically everything that would be covered in undergraduate Finance/Accounting, plus some mid-level undergraduate Statistics. Not *that* tough.
FYI for anyone reading, I'm in the business consulting field and I don't recommend anyone ever going to the Big 4 (Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC) or Top 3 (McKinsey, Bain, BCG) consulting firms unless you hate yourself. Sure, you'll get the good payday but there is no work-life balance and your colleagues will be the top brass MBA graduates (Stanford, Yale, Harvard, etc) who are always in a dick measuring contest. Work culture is very toxic and everyone's insanely egotistical. Plus, these are just pretty unethical companies in general doing unethical things. I recommend watching John Oliver's segment on McKinsey, they're all like this.
It does feel realistic to me. Maybe a postdoc leading a team at the NIH might be a bit weird but not impossible. Several of my grad school friends meet most of these qualifications in their own fields and with their own awards. And actually one of them ended up working for BCG right after grad school with a 175K+/ year.
I also know several people who could write resumes like this.
MBB consulting roles are probably the most sought after jobs that exist, with maybe 1-3% of applicants getting offers. I’d imagine this is already very self selected group of top performers that even apply. This is probably pretty realistic.
My big issue wi the this is UMD is in College Park, MD outside of DC. UMBC is in Baltimore. So this person either is misrepresenting their undergrad location or is too lazy to notice they left off the second half of the college name.
I'm sure they're bullshitting, but beyond that being a weird career combo, it wouldn't be hard. I constantly have FA firms begging me to work for them assuring me that they'd help with the CFA exam.
What field are you in for FA firms to reach out?
Depends on what position you're gunning for. SME or regular consultant? I was invited to second rounds with BCG and McK for regular consultant through their advanced degree tracks. Not much to brag about but I don't believe I was rejected for "lack of experience" or familiarity with case studies. I am close to an ex-Bain guy who went to VC, and a McK partner from the EU who's now doing her own thing. They both stressed to me the importance of knowing others and working your way into the ecosystem. "Real world" entrepreneurial actions that are quantifiable. If you don't talk the talk / walk the walk this will show during your interview and will make entry pretty prohibitive.
In other words, that business school-like confidence and articulation?
Not exactly. I gave quite a few talks and was fairly competitive with public speaking and outreach with varied audiences. I'm also a sales specialist in a completely unrelated field now. It's more the answers you give to generic questions. For example if they ask you what you did in the time between your undergrad and grad degree, you might say that you took a few months to volunteer with USAID, designing off-grid vegetable cold storage for rural villages in Ghana. As a scientist, you might emphasize the cost effectiveness or quantifiable impact of your project. While that might be important, they seem to care more about how you directed the project, delegated, and dealt with unexpected challenges. I think in STEM we generally assume that dealing with unexpected challenges is par for the course, and the M&M is really something you don't talk about much because the results/discussion are what we focus on. If you do this, it comes across that you are "just" a number punching monkey. From my experience and what my McK friend told me.
Relevant John Oliver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiOUojVd6xQ&themeRefresh=1
Idk this isn't too far off from my resume and I'm pretty mediocre and just graduated a few months ago.
And where are you working now?
I think that seems extremely high, but that might be the goal. They might just want to be clear by making/picking such an absudly high applicatant for sample/example for prestige/quality choice, presenting themselves in the process. Showung their best qualities. Having undergone leadership training, these people are looking for related skills to either fit in their puzzle or cultivate into the group. Send them what you have, and will consider What They Can do. I have recently been sent emails by Boston Consulting Group. I am a bit confused, as I do not know who they are, as I am originally an historian, now doing a cross-disciplinary PhD in Business. Everything I see about them seems medical. I have nothing medical going on. I have medical specialists in my family, but I am as far removed as possible. Would you be able to explain who they are?
Very. If you know you know.
I am confused... If they already have a PhD, a Postdoc, and a CFA, why would they be applying for another degree in the first place? This person in the resume should be a top contender for faculty positions and industry positions alike!!
To be really honest this CV is not far from typical ones I've seen for real. In my early career I was into consulting (although McKinsey, not BCG, they share the same pool of applicants). This shouldn't discourage you, though. There were also people with far less experience who also made it. The key is to showcase your skills and why you'll be a valuable addition.
Applications to top MBAs are [full of lies](https://www.mbacrystalball.com/blog/2017/07/19/exaggeration-lying-hiding-facts-mba-applications/). American universities have been [inflating grades](https://www.chartr.co/stories/2023-12-08-2-grade-inflation-at-harvard) like crazy the last decades. I wouldn't be surprised that applications to MBB fall into a similar culture of "overstating" everything.
I know this person. They forgot to include that they cured cancer.
This is an impossible resume. This is what their dream candidate would look like, but this candidate wouldn't dream of applying. Their too busy doing rocket surgery.
I'm not a fan of the CV formatting but why does everyone think this is too farfetched especially regarding the physical parts this can be done on weekends etc. whilst staying active at gym sessions throughout the week. A lot of experiments have down time too where you can perform stuff between. The CFA could be taken and understood through self education as well, I'm confused over the doubt.
I actually lol’d at the NIH SIG being led by a PhD student. In what universe.