Trader to Management Consulting

A friend of mine recently moved from a bank as a trader into BCG as a consultant. I don’t really see how the skills are transferable.

they arent at all, but if you went to the right schools & have the right network it doesnt really matter.

100% agree…If you went to Harvard or Stanford with a History major…you can laugh all you want but he/she can and will (if he/she wants) land front office jobs…And in my experience it is not some regional company…no, major ones…I didn’t go to Stanford but went to a decent enough school where you can pull this off especially in CA.

Thanks for your input, that’s what i sort of expected. You have to pay to play.

It’s not just about “paying” - successful job opportunities are also related to being good, which most people aren’t but do not realize.

Just connection, they hire kids straight out of undergraduate, wth do you think they know at that point? Just need to be smart and articulate.

They are smarter, more hardworking, and just have higher potential for success than kids from worse schools. I’m not saying there is a 100% correlation, but there is definitely a relationship. If the job market allure of top tier graduates was limited to sticker value, then companies like Google, GS or others would not value these graduates so highly.

Later in your career, what you have accomplished after graduating from school matters. If you went to Harvard but spent 10 years doing dick, few people will give you a shot. However, if you have demonstrated excellence and success in a field, even an unrelated one, that indicates that you could be valuable as an employee.

This brings me back to my earlier point, where people attribute the success of others to luck, their connections, or their upbringing. Sometimes this is true, but often, it is because that other person was just gifted, smart and hardworking, which allowed them to create a compelling background in the first place.

+1. I went to a crappy school and have caught some lucky breaks and keep getting better opportunities. When no one has heard of my school they dont really care at this point, they only care about the work I can do.

That said someone with a year or two as a trader your school is still important because you dont have atrack record yet. My original post wasnt meant to set off this frenzy, its that this kid likely could have went into consulting right out of undergrad anyway, so thats why going from trading to consulting isnt a shock even though its not a field with a lot in common.

Yes, my point is that you can always self improve and do better things in your career. However, most people blame their lack of relative success to other people’s advantages, which 1) is often not true, and 2) shouldn’t matter to you anyway. By blaming your circumstances, you are refusing to get better.