Consulting to Product Management

Updated

Consulting to Product Management – can it be done? Cara Jefferson (and others before her) showed that it can. If you’re considering moving from consulting to product management, this interview is for you!

We’re excited to featured Cara’s story, because not only did she break into consulting at Bain & Company, but she then transitioned into a product management role with Walmart Data Ventures. Cara shares her journey, an overview of product management, differences between consulting and PM, how to break into both, and more.

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Transcription: Consulting to Product Management

Stephanie Knight 

Are you a PhD postdoc, or MD interested in transitioning into management consulting apply to link to Le K by March 12 2023. What is linked to Le K? Well, it’s an opportunity for advanced degree students to get to know le K and the type of strategy consulting work the firm does three virtual two day program. During the program, you’ll network with Le K consultants, and participate in a simulated strategy case modeled after the work done by Le K’s Life Sciences team. But the best part of the program, you will receive the opportunity to an early interview for a full time role with the firm ahead of the general recruiting cycle. Again, the program is open to current PhD postdoc or MD students interested in Life Sciences strategy consulting, ideally with a target graduation in 2024. So again, apply by March 12. Click the link in the show notes or visit le k.com today to submit your application. Welcome back to Strategy Simplified. Today, I’m excited to bring you another installment of our coach interview series. In these conversations, we learn more about our coaches background, journey to MBB, and their case coaching philosophy. And this is a special unique episode as we hear from Cara Jefferson, who’s had experience in both management strategy consulting and product management. She’s going to help us make sense of the space. Understand the similarities and differences in these two interview processes. And speak to how you can prepare for both. Considering product management? Well then stay tuned to hear more about product sense, product execution and targeted behavioral interviews in the product management space. I hope you enjoy the discussion. Cara, welcome to Strategy Simplified,. So excited to have you on. Could you just kick us off with a quick, high-level background about yourself?

Cara Jefferson 

Yes, certainly. My name is Cara. I’m originally from Oklahoma City. I got my first bachelor’s at Washington University in St. Louis, where I studied biology on the pre-med track. So a little bit of career switching there. After graduating, I spent some time as an associate consultant at Bain. And then after that, I moved over to Walmart Data Ventures where I currently work as a technical product manager.

Stephanie Knight 

Okay, you said your first bachelor’s. So where’s the other degree? Are we missing a part of that story?

Cara Jefferson 

We are, we are. So actually as of Monday, I started a second bachelor’s degree in computer science at Oregon State University. So I’ve been wanting to go back to school for quite some time, and decided to just go ahead and do that after I left Bain.

Stephanie Knight 

Very cool. Very cool. Well, I’m excited to hear a little bit later about how that relates to your future plans. But I want to start at the beginning there. You said that after your first bachelor’s, you had the brief stint at Bain before joining Walmart. So for those who are at that point in their journey, what would be your top one or two top tips for recruiting out of undergrad to be able to land one of those coveted positions?

Cara Jefferson 

Yeah, certainly. So for many of the large consulting firms thinking about Bain, McKinsey, BCG, they have pretty straightforward and well, depending on the undergrad that you’re coming from, they have pretty streamlined recruiting processes. And so it was my junior or so year of undergrad, the first semester that I became interested in it. And then a lot of the bigger firms as well, MBB as well as Deloitte and others. They had campus visits where I sort of sat in and learned about management consulting, I learned about how much mentorship that you can get just straight out of undergrad, how much visibility that you can get at a point of your career that’s much earlier than you may have if you started directly in industry. And at that period, I had a an interest in technology, but I wasn’t 100% for sure that I wanted to start with that out of undergrad. And so I sort of saw it as an opportunity to be able to have some more optionality, get mentorship from people who have a similar background to me. And so from there, I decided to recruit full time. I had some friends who were interning there or starting in one of the offices that my school recruited for. It started with behavioral and case interviews. We had two interviews there. And then I ended up getting the offer and accepted that full time. So I didn’t do the internship. I was at another consulting firm for my internship, but then I started full time at Bain down in the Dallas office.

Stephanie Knight 

Well, I’m excited to spend the majority of our time talking around your next step after that. Moving into product management. But it’s really interesting and unique to be able to hear you talk through your time both in consulting and product management. As time has gone on these two career pathways, the recruiting process, and the interviews have become more similar, right? I think more and more industries, more and more companies are seeing the benefit of the case interview process to be able to actually test and get a preview of what of what their future employees are going to be like on the job. And product management is one of those areas where we’ve seen a lot of increasing synergy over time in the recruitment process in case interviewing. And so you know, first, I’m excited to get there. But before we do just want to dive into a little bit more of your mindset about your journey, and why you made the decision to pivot what your thought process was at that point, and how you landed at Walmart.

Cara Jefferson 

Certainly. I think I was always interested in technology and product management. I was recruiting primarily for consulting my junior year of undergrad, but I think when I got into my senior year, and especially after I went through the whole consulting recruiting process, I started tinkering around a lot in the startup space. So I’ve been interested in small businesses, interested in technology. So I took web development classes, I took discrete math classes in undergrad after I got my offer to join Bain. And I liked that it gave me bandwidth to work with my other classmates on products and projects that otherwise I’d be really narrowly focused on recruiting. So I think that throughout the process of recruiting for both of those career paths, my junior year in my senior year, I definitely saw that overlap that you’re talking about. And I think that for me, I just continued to work on like my technical skills over time, not only when I was a student, but also in the nights and the weekends while I was working at Bain. So always during staffing, my preferences were working in a technology industry, or helping with digital transformations, or just anything that I could sort of say fit into the product management toolkit. When I was in interviews helped to sort of make that connection between what I was able to learn while I was a consultant at Bain, and how I can sort of apply those skill sets when I was a product manager. And so when I actually got the initial interview for Walmart, I wasn’t actively looking at that time. I think that I was about a year and a half or so into Bain. And I had been thinking about whether I wanted to push for SAC or thinking about MBA, so those were my thought processes at that time. But I think I had a serendipitous moment. I realize for the listeners is not going to be super repeatable. But actually my now manager, he reached out to me directly on LinkedIn, and asked me if I was interested in this opportunity. He was he was starting up this brand new team to build data pipelines between Walmart’s first party transaction data and suppliers who are interested in that information so that they can optimize their sales. And so he was pretty much handpicking people to join that team. And for whatever reason, the LinkedIn algorithm, I don’t know what keywords allowed me to sort of pop up in that search query. But he reached out to me directly. But there’s a lot of other ways that people can break into product management. I know lots of people who worked at Bain or McKinsey beforehand. And so I was in the process of networking with those people, getting those referrals, and practicing some of those pitches, like why product management, or like what skills can be transferable. But I kind of got lucky, I think in the sense of someone reaching out to me and sort of starting that relationship on LinkedIn.

Stephanie Knight 

Oh, that is quite serendipitous indeed. That is a lovely story. If everyone could be so lucky. But in fact, as you said, there’s lots of different ways to break into the field. And it doesn’t need to be preceded by consulting by any degree. So if you are to put yourself in the shoes of someone who early in their career is deciding between management strategy consulting or product management, how would you help them differentiate between these two paths? What should be the things they’re thinking about?

Cara Jefferson 

Yeah, that’s a great question. So for me, I would ask them to what degree they have an interest in technology specifically. And by that I mean that if someone has a large interest in technology, maybe they have a technical background, maybe they get the most energy thinking about technical questions, sort of like the how around different products that get released, I would most likely urge that person to explore a career in the technology industry directly, whether it’s doing something technical as a programmer, or most likely, someone who is a product manager or designer, there’s a lot of various business roles. But in general, if someone has a strong interest in technology, then I would urge them to pursue that path. But for myself, and I think a lot of people who are interested in consulting and would be a good fit for consulting, they’re not quite sure what they want to do, right? If they’re just graduating, they’re in their early 20s and they want to explore sure technology, but then also, maybe they want to recruit for Private Equity a couple years after they finish their years in consulting. Or maybe they are interested in entrepreneurship, or they like oil and gas, or energy, or there’s so many other industries and functions to explore. And I would say if someone is not totally sold on technology, and they want sort of a broad exposure to different industries and functions, then I’d say that’s kind of the distinction between product management, you’re primarily working in tech, and then consulting, you’re able to explore a lot of different industries. And then another thing I could add on to that is scope. So within product management, you’re responsible for setting the strategy and the vision of a particular feature. Or if you’re more senior than it’ll be a feature suite or a product suite. And that encompasses everything from putting together the idea for a product, interviewing customers, being responsible for defining what that feature will mean. And then also supporting any other go to market activities related to it, depending on who else is on your team. Like if your team doesn’t have a product marketer, guess who’s doing the product marketing. That’ll be all the product manager’s responsibility. And then they will be evaluated based on how successful that product is. However, your company that you’re at chooses to measure that. It could be usage based, it could be revenue based, so you’re really judged on specifically outcomes. Versus in my time in consulting, it’s much different because you sort of come in to an initiative that’s been scoped and identified by someone else. And you sort of are putting together especially at the more junior levels, analyses to support a recommendation that someone more senior than you is pitching to the client. And then after that, once the project is done and the engagement is over, you don’t quite know what the outcome is. Maybe they follow the recommendation, maybe they modify it. So you’re not really sure, or you don’t get that end to end experience of putting together a brand new initiative, building it and then sort of seeing it through. And I think that seeing it through and that accountability is something that I was missing in consulting.

Stephanie Knight 

Absolutely. Tell me if you think this is fair, but what I heard from what you’re saying, kind of revolves around ownership and execution. So like, as a product manager, you get to own it, you get to lead it, you get to do all the parts, and you get to actually do it. You get to execute on it, you’re just not creating the strategy or the vision, you are seeing that come to fruition, you have to make it reality. In consulting, we often tell other people what to do, and hope that they do it. And you’re somewhere on the totem pole in the group process to be able to do so. So I’m sure at this point, we’re peeking some people’s interest and curiosity about product management and want to dive in a little bit further. Let’s just start basics, Cara, of one on one with the lingo and the language. So PM. If I say PM to you, does that mean product manager or project manager? What kind of language have you used at Walmart and the industry at large?

Cara Jefferson 

Yeah, there’s no alignment in regards to what PM means. I find that I always have to specify product management. And then even then, there’s so many different ways that firms define product management. It’s actually kind of crazy. I’ve seen job listings that say product/project/scrum master. And basically the difference between these roles is that a product manager will come up with the vision for a product and idea and we’ll specify what needs to be done. So they’re asking a lot of the what questions. And then the project manager will be responsible for sort of setting accountability for different tasks and making sure these get done at a specific timeline. And that can be similar at certain companies to a program manager, which is pretty much doing those project management-like tasks of just keeping people accountable, making sure that people are doing their tasks on time. They will run scrum meetings, for example, and those are daily meetings where engineers will sort of congregate and the product manager will be there, the project manager will be going one by one asking engineers the status of what they’re up to, and asking for story point updates. And story points are when they estimate how long or how difficult things are to compete complete. And then a program manager, as I mentioned before, they’re doing project management tasks across several teams. So they will be doing that process of keeping track of timelines for several different scrum teams are several different products across the organization. And so those are the kinds of distinctions there. But different companies will sort of put more project management tasks on the product manager as well, because at the end of the day, if a product fails, or it falls through because a timeline is missed, it’s not so much on the project manager, it’s on the product manager, because ultimately, they’re the one who is responsible for the success of the product. And so they’re supposed to be distinct. But sometimes there can be some bleed over if a product manager just wants to connect on something, or there needs to be more alignment. A lot of it is sort of centered around doing whatever is necessary for the product to succeed.

Stephanie Knight 

How important has certifications been to you in this career process so far? And how do we think about that in this world of product management, project management, scrum master? Because it’ not something critical on the career path in consulting.

Cara Jefferson 

Yeah, for sure, I would say that there are some certifications that could be helpful for project/program managers/scrum managers. Those I have a little bit less visibility on, I know, PMP was one of them. But for product manager, specifically, I don’t have any of those certifications. I’ve talked to a few hiring managers, and they don’t really look at those certifications, mainly because a lot of those sort of product management classes are purely informational. So they can tell you about what it means to lead an engineering team, or about how you might think hypothetically about a problem. But ultimately, when hiring managers or looking at resumes, or they’re trying to figure out who they want to extend offers to, it’s more about what things have they actually shipped. Or how do they actually think about and work through problems, as we’ve seen directly. And so that’s why I’ve never personally done any certifications, and why wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to others. If anything, I would, if someone is looking for something else to put on their resume, like let’s say they don’t have a product management internship or they’re not in a product role, but they want to recruit in that direction, I would say build their own product, sort of on the side and talk about how you scoped out what problem there is to be addressed and how you would put together a solution for that. How did it go when you actually shipped it in terms of do you acquire users? Is there any revenue that came from it? Or did it kind of not pan out at all? So those are the kinds of things that I’ve seen people, including myself, be pretty successful with. And it doesn’t even have to be like a software product or anything like that. You don’t have to learn how to code. There’s some no code software out there that you can use. It’s just like drag and drop, or it can be just a random business that’s not tech related at all that you can apply product management principles to.

Stephanie Knight 

Absolutely so many low code, no code platforms out there now to be able to experiment with. We’d love if you could continue on that train of thought and talk a little bit about what are some of the top qualities that you think that aspiring product managers need? And what are hirers looking for as they go through this recruitment process?

Cara Jefferson 

Certainly. I would say that people should show a bias towards action when it comes to product, especially coming from consulting, or if they’re not having a technical background. Because I think that a mistake I see in a lot of people, particularly my friends who are still in consulting, they kind of want to make a similar transition, is an overemphasis on the strategy side. If you’re consulting or if you’re in business, yes, the strategy side is great. And it’s important to sort of define the right product to build or define what the right use cases should be. But having some practice in the actual execution of some sort of idea is really what a lot of hiring managers look for. So if you have a side project, great, they did it, but then also have some bullet points about what was the outcome of that side project. Or if you have a class where you did a consulting engagement, that could be great for a product manager position, if you talk about how you helped the client formulate a digital strategy, or you gave them recommendations on a market to enter. But then there are some actions that were taken. And then what were the outcomes of those. So in terms of what are hiring managers are looking for, I would say in general, it could be product sense in terms of yes, the strategy, but then also execution. Have you actually built things. So that’s one side of it. And then the other side is domain expertise. So for my current position, I don’t know if I mentioned before, but my casework was in the private equity group for the most part in the industrials and chemicals practice. And then I also lead a workstream in a retail cost improvement project. And so those two things ended up being really helpful during my interview process as well. So you could either A) show that you’re a builder in some capacity, or B) sort of flex whatever industry expertise that you may have gotten in your time in consulting or in whatever other job you had before.

 

Bias to action, domain expertise. Let’s dive into this recruitment process a little bit more. So a lot of what we talk about here on the podcast is around consulting, interviews, case interview prep. And so help us understand through the recruitment process, what are some of the key differences of hiring and consulting versus trying to hire within product management?

Cara Jefferson 

Got it. So hiring in consulting versus product management?

Stephanie Knight 

What were the differences like for you in that recruitment journey?

Cara Jefferson 

Got it. I would say the differences for me in the recruitment journeying is on the consulting side, you have the case interviews, where the types of questions are like market entry, M&A, profitability, cost cutting, etc. There’s a few different types. And then on the product management side, the types are a little bit more general than that. So they have something called product sense, where they present you with some sort of user problem or something that they want you to design. So one really popular one is how would you design a clock for someone who’s blind. So they would give you some sort of prompt and instead of talking, having a structure about how big is the market, or the financials, etc, you would have a structure about really digging deep into what are some of the pain points that the kind of users that the product is built for, or who are the type of users would be for this particular product, and really aim to understand what the use cases are for a product that they asked you to build. And then building out like sort of a preliminary design of how you would fix whatever is the user problem that’s being presented to you. And so that’s one piece of it. Another is something that they call product execution. And this one is much more tactical than anything that you would get in a consulting interview. So one example is, let’s say you are a PM for a website, and your page views dropped by 30% in a week or something like that. For that kind of interview, you get really, really specific about how you would solve that problem. So first step, seeking to understand what is the circumstances of the issue. That’s the first step. And then second step is trying to diagnose where the issue came from. And then you would sort of step through your process for figuring out what caused the issue and then suggesting a way to ameliorate that issue. So it’s much more tactical, and it’s much more specific to how you would actually work day to day as a product manager. And then if you have experience as a product manager, then they’re going to ask you more behavioral questions, but less so about yourself as a person. Not like what are your strengths and weaknesses, or I don’t know, who would you have dinner with if you could choose. It’s more asking about how you would lead teams. How do you convince a stakeholder to get buy in for an idea that you poach. What was a time that you’ve had to sort of pitch an idea to others and drive alignment. So a lot of questions around how you convince other people that this is the right thing to build, and then how you work in terms of your teams to get a better understanding of what kind of leader you would be. So that’s, I think, another distinction that sort of comes in that usually in consulting doesn’t come up as much.

Stephanie Knight 

So did I hear you right that the three main categories here are product sense, product execution, and I’ll call targeted behavioral questions?

Cara Jefferson 

Yeah.

Stephanie Knight 

I feel like I heard in what you said, still the three key themes that we talk a lot about on case interview prep around still needing to be structured, needing to be a good problem solver, and needing to exhibit clear and compelling communication as you go through those conversations. Would you say that’s still true?

Cara Jefferson 

Oh, yeah, I would certainly agree that the questions themselves can be very different. But in terms of the delivery of how you answer, being a strong communicator, being able to understand where people are coming from, and what the issues that are presented to you are, and then communicating what your proposed solution is, is really important in both consulting as well as product management. In product management, you need just a little bit more domain experience to understand like technical products and think about technical solutions. And one final thing that I’ll mention there is that there are some companies that will ask you to explain basic internet concepts, like what is a web page, how would you explain the Internet to ensure that you sort of have the vocabulary of technology as well. And that could sort of be in the behavioral portion as well.

Stephanie Knight 

Yep, domain expertise, vocabulary. That aspect to which you need to be able to operate within and between engineering and business, technology in business. And as a key cog in that wheel there is a product manager. Is it fair to say, Cara, that these interviews need to be practiced for just like case interviews need to be practiced for?

Cara Jefferson 

Absolutely, just as much or even more than consulting interviews. So similar to case interviews, there is a certain cadence to a lot of them. So there’s a lot of interview guides out there. I always recommend to people Cracking the PM Interview as a first step. There’s entire books written on this concept and communities around practice interviews. So it’s certainly something that people take to the same degree of seriousness, seriousness as case interview for sure.

Stephanie Knight 

And although there are some resources out there, and we have some as well at Management Consulted, there’s not a slew of product management case interview coaches out there. But we’re so glad to have you Cara here on with us at Management Consulted to be able to help prospective product managers through this process, to be to be thinking through how to navigate through these discussions, to be able to pull together their domain expertise, their vocabulary, to be able to work through product sense, product exploration, targeted behavioral questions. And so, you you’re working with clients, people moving through this recruitment process. For those that you work with, could you just share with us some of your top tips overall, in terms of how to crack these product management interviews?

Cara Jefferson 

Yeah, absolutely. I would say for each of the companies that you’re interviewing at, I would make sure to really understand what products they have. So at some companies, this is much more difficult than others. For example, Google has seven-plus child companies. And they each have totally different business models. But it’s important to know what the different moneymakers are within a tech company, as well as what the vision is for each of those different sub products. Because much of the time, they will ask you, for example, at Meta, they could ask you how you would change the Facebook feed, or how you would sort of improve whatever products that they have. So there’s additional research that I would recommend up front, for each company that someone is interviewing at in terms of what is their product, what’s the business model in terms of how they’re making money. If their app is free, then being able to understand how they can generate revenue from that is super important. Because a lot of the times the questions can sort of center around that, or ask you to suggest what you like or dislike about them, or suggest new ways that they can be improved, either on the spot during a product sense interview, but a lot of these companies, especially for their APM, intern, and their APM, interview loops will ask you actually to do a lengthy take home assignment. And so sometimes for those it’s a requirement before you get to the first round.

Stephanie Knight 

Well, thank you for sharing those tips on the deal with everybody. And I understand that you not only coach towards product management interviews, but you also coach towards case interviews in the consulting sense. What’s your approach as a coach? What’s your case coaching philosophy?

Cara Jefferson 

That’s a great question. So my case coaching philosophy is to really understand where the other person is at in terms of their case preparation. So there’s undergrad interviews, and there’s MBA interviews. And I always ask them beforehand what specific feedback have you received so far. And then are there any specific interviews that they have coming up. And those can be really educational, because I’ve had people recently tell me oh, actually, I’m interviewing for a Life Sciences consulting firm. And so I kind of cater each individual interview to what that person’s background is and what they’re going for. As well as I always have a few different cases that I think could fit their background based on whether they want to work on their math, or they want to work on their structuring, or sometimes they just want an overall stretch case, because they’re coming up on a final round and really want to make sure that the hardest case they encounter is during the practice phase and not the actual. So I listen really deeply to what other people in terms of when they have sessions with me are concerned about what are they like having up on their horizon the next weeks or months going into the recruiting and paying attention to what I think are their strengths and weaknesses, and charting a little bit of a path forward. And sometimes that leads to sort of ongoing coaching conversations. So it can be either like a one time session or a series of practice sessions to get people as close to interview ready before their interviews.

Stephanie Knight 

I love that Cara. I think that that type of individualization is what anybody would be looking for in a coach. Anything else that’s top of mind as we share about the recruitment process, interview preparation, or product management?

Cara Jefferson 

One final thing that I think is important to highlight is that in the larger tech companies, especially compared to management consulting, there’s less formalized narrow recruitment shocks. And by that I mean that there won’t be hordes of companies who are recruiting directly from an undergrad school. There’s a shorter list, I would say, of target companies for big tech versus management consulting. And so that means that a lot of the times the recruitment cycles are off cycle, or some companies don’t have form like formalized nationwide cycles at all. And the result of that is that networking and getting referrals can be extremely important in the difference between getting an interview and not getting an interview. So especially for the more junior programs, I’m thinking product manager, PM1, PM2, or even APM programs and internships, making sure that you’re on top of where their job listings are. I would even set alerts for all of the different sort of job boards where it’s possible. And then setting up coffee chats with people who are at my target firms, whether it be Walmart, or Intuit or whatever company that I think is compelling and I would like to work there, just to get my foot in the door and talk to somebody about what they think are some of the biggest issues with the products that they’re working on, what excites them about the products that they’re working on. And a lot of the times in those conversations, and those referral asks can lead to a first round interview when otherwise you’re kind of throwing a resume into the void, especially in this current environment where there’s a lot of hiring freezes and stuff like that, of getting in front of somebody at a company that you’re interested in can make a big difference and be extremely helpful, more so than just throwing in a random application.

Stephanie Knight 

Great insights and advice, Cara. I am sure that we have piqued the interest of a lot of people listening who want to take advantage of your breadth of experience and your knowledge in both of these arenas. And we also appreciate you taking the time to share with us both your experience and some of your top tips. We’re glad to have you on here at Management Consulted. For people who are interested in learning more about you or working with you, what can you speak to that? Are there are there kind of natural patterns in your availability? Or certainly your full availability as online but anything you want to share about working with you?

Cara Jefferson 

Yeah, certainly. I coach people and both, as you mentioned, product management and consulting. I’m based out of CST, so I’m currently living in Bentonville, Arkansas. I’m available, I think just all evenings as well as all weekends and even Friday in the afternoon. So I’m pretty open. If there’s anyone that has like late minute availability for like a recruiter call or like a first round or something like that, that can be arranged as well. So my availability is pretty open. I’m on the website for a Management Consulted, as well as people can reach out to me on LinkedIn too.

Stephanie Knight 

Perfect. Cara, thanks so much. And we want to wrap up here with a Strategy Simplified tradition. We have a couple of fun questions here at the end just to get to know you a little bit better on a personal level. So our first one here is, what is one thing that you’re consuming, listening to reading or watching that’s inspiring you right now.

Cara Jefferson 

I think the last thing that I read and it’s actually a really good book about how product manager works, how some of the best tech teams do their design sprints is called Sprint by Jake Knapp. So it tells a story about how Google Ventures figured out a way to go from idea to concept testing in five days, so like only one working day. And I think that has sort of inspired me to speed up my discovery and sort of get from idea to output and execution much faster. And it’s jam packed with stories that are really cool from everything from robotics companies, to the early days of Google, to some of the smartest people in the industry. So I would highly recommend reading that book for anyone who’s interested in product or design or user research.

Stephanie Knight 

Very cool. Have to look into that. And then finally here, Cara, what is one piece of impactful advice that you’ve received from a mentor that you could pass on?

Cara Jefferson 

Yeah, I would say that when I got my Walmart offer, as I mentioned, I was like a year and a half at Bain. It was certainly sooner than I expected to be thinking about leaving. And I was talking to one of the partners that I’m closest to at Bain, about the possibility and about the company, etc. And he kind of paused and told me to slow down for a bit. And I remember what he said was he had like a whole monologue about it, but the point is don’t sweat the small stuff. I think that when I was working as hard as I was, I was leading my first work stream, I really wanted to just make a good impression on partners, clients, even my other colleagues. And I was so worried about the perception of following something that I’ve always wanted to do. I was worried about FOMO from not staying up Bain longer. And so it was really helpful, especially from someone at that tenure and that I really looked up to, to not sweat the small stuff. I mean, I think, especially for people who spend their free time listening to career podcasts and reading about tech and stuff, I mean, at the end of the day, right, if you zoom out, we’re all going to be fine. People who are driven and who are thoughtful, I’ve never looked at someone who is ambitious, who is following their dreams, and is happy with what they’re doing and thought they could do better. I think I could practice giving myself the same grace and admiration as I do for other people and not sweat the small stuff, as he said.

Stephanie Knight 

Oh, Cara, I love that and what a fantastic way to end. Really appreciate having you on today.

Cara Jefferson 

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Stephanie Knight 

Want to work directly with Cara? There’s a link to her Coaching Calendar in the show notes. She actively coaches both candidates working towards strategy consulting and product management roles and would love to customize her coaching plan to your specific goals. All of our coaches our ex-McKinsey, Bain or BCG consultants and interviewers who’ve been extensively vetted and only coach with us here at MC. They love working with prospective candidates to mock through full interviews or drill in the areas you need extra help. You can find a link in the show notes or read more about our offerings at managementconsulted.com We’ll see you next time.

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Filed Under: Bain, Strategy Simplified