Rethinking a Consulting Career

I took some time the other day to clean out the piles of papers that had slowly accumulated on the floor by my desk over the last few months. I had been working furiously on my thesis project, which was nearly derailed by a few key results that suggested that all of my experiments during the last year may have been wrong. I had already resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t graduate this June, but this setback made it unclear whether I would graduate at all. I have been spending very little time at home these days, instead investing my energy on rescuing my thesis and starting new research projects. As a doctoral student in the biological sciences, I have been chronicling my search for a nonacademic job on this site. Needless to say, job hunting could not be further from my mind right now.

As I dug through inch after inch of magazines, unopened mail, and documents, I felt like an archaeologist on a dig, uncovering alternating layers of trash and treasure. Much of the junk mail went straight into the recycling bin while the magazines went into yet another pile to be looked at later. Then I came across a stash of management-consulting case interviews I had dragged out in preparation for an interview I had with a company a few months ago.

A homebody at heart, I had been looking for smaller consulting firms that don’t require too much of a travel commitment from their employees. Few new companies were coming to campus this year, following the events of September 11. However, one newcomer showed up this year, and not only was it recruiting Ph.D.'s in the life sciences, but the company’s consultants did the majority of their work at the home office and traveled an average of only one or two days a month. The position sounded like a really good match for me.

The company’s client roster consisted mostly of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and they were specifically searching for candidates with Ph.D.'s who were interested in applying their scientific knowledge and expertise toward solving business problems. As a consultant at one of the larger firms, where I had I interviewed the previous year, I could have ended up working on projects ranging from appliance manufacturing to international finance. I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t possess a dime’s worth of knowledge about those industries, and therefore it would be difficult for me to be of immediate value to the clients. However, I do know a lot about the biopharmaceutical industry, both from an internship in a biotech company early during graduate school and from over a decade’s worth of experience working in biological research. I submitted a résumé and was granted an interview.

People react differently when they are nervous. Instead of the proverbial cold feet, I get cold hands, which then become clammy. As I sat in the lobby waiting for my first interview, I literally sat on my hands to keep them warm. You get only one chance to make a first impression. Since it all starts with that important first handshake, I wanted to make sure that my hands were as warm and dry as possible. This was a vast improvement from the previous year, when I was so nervous for my first interview that I didn’t even have the stomach to drink my morning coffee, and I had to keep a napkin in my hand to keep it dry.

Adding to my nervousness was the memory of a conversation I had had with my Mom the previous night. I had called to get some words of encouragement but instead got a lecture about protecting my privacy and hiding my dirty laundry. Although she spoke of it only in her typically indirect fashion, her comments were of course in reference to The Gay Issue. Her argument was that disclosing my sexual orientation would only harm my chances of getting a job offer, since it would subject me to prejudicial notions that would make me a less attractive job candidate. I, on the other hand, live idealistically in a world where employers either embrace the diversity of their employees or at worse, don’t care. The reality is probably somewhere in between, but either way, all I want is to work someplace where I can feel comfortable being myself and where I can feel safe enough to have a picture of my family (i.e., partner and cats) sitting on my desk. In my ideal world, I want to be as honest and comfortable around my co-workers as I would want them to be with me.

Since my sexual orientation is not a facet of my identity that is readily apparent, it is possible for me to keep that part of my life private in the workplace. I could refer to my partner as just a roommate or friend (and he is both of those to me), or I could be one of those perennially single people who are more into school and work than socializing (to some extended family members I’m still one of those). However, I’ve lived that lifestyle and found it stifling and repressive, which led me to come out of the closet in the first place during college. My sexual identity is very different from my racial identity, since the only way to hide that would be to wear a paper bag over my head. Even then, my Chinese surname would belie the truth. Thankfully, there are enough Asians in most major cities these days that I can honestly say I haven’t felt like I’ve been treated any differently based on my race alone.

Well-trained interviewers do not ask any questions about race, nationality, sexual orientation, marriage status, family status, or any other topic that appears on the list of illegal interview questions. To do so would potentially expose them to discrimination suits from disgruntled applicants. Therefore it was up to me to bring up the topic. Bear in mind that I am not an in-your-face activist type of guy by any means (in fact, I’m usually pretty conservative with a strong libertarian bent). So for most of the interview I kept quiet about my sexual orientation. By the end of the interview, the adrenaline had fully kicked in and I was no longer a nervous wreck but a confident and serious job candidate. When it came time for me to ask a few questions, I simply asked if there were any openly gay or lesbian employees at the office, with an explanation about why I was asking that question. I was prepared for a noncommittal stock response like, “I don’t know of any, but I’m sure there must be at least one.” Instead I was told there were several, and that I could obtain their contact information if I wanted to get their perspective on the work environment. I was very happy with the answer, since it addressed my concern about whether the office was an open and inviting place for gay and lesbian employees to work.

Ultimately I didn’t get the job. I was called back for a second round of interviews but the company was hiring only one Ph.D., and I didn’t make the final cut. Nevertheless I remain optimistic. I’ve advanced further and further with each company that I have interviewed with, and if the economy was still booming as it was in years past, perhaps the company would have hired two or three of us.

In the meantime, I’ve decided that I have not been very open-minded about my career prospects. Management consulting is just one of the many nonacademic fields that Ph.D.'s can go into, but it’s not the end-all or be-all that I had imagined it to be. It is a great way to gain exposure to a variety of business issues in a relatively short amount of time, but for many people it’s just a steppingstone to the next job. So now I’m investigating a wider range of possible careers, including positions in biotechnology research, patent law, and even teaching at the community-college level. In the meantime, I’ll also continue to keep an eye out for smaller consulting firms that deal with the biotechnology industry. One thing for certain is that I’ll make sure there’s a picture of my partner on my desk no matter where I end up.