Ecem Uluegeci
Harvard College
Boston (42.3° N, 71.0° W)
featuring Yoonjin Min, Consultant, Boston Consulting Group, New York (40.7° N, 74.0° W)
Consulting is an industry I had barely heard of before starting college in the US. That’s why I was excited to talk to Yoonjin Min to learn about the types of projects she worked on, especially in healthcare consulting.
Yoonjin Min is a consultant at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in New York. She graduated from Rice University with a double major in Cognitive Sciences and Economics. Then, she earned her MBA from Harvard Business School in 2020. In our conversation, she shared her education and career journey with me.
Yoonjin described consulting as “problem-solving for different companies,” and herself as someone who is interested in a wide variety of potential issues, which is why she thinks consulting is a perfect fit for her. The interdisciplinary background she gained when she was studying cognitive sciences equipped her with an approach to learning that utilizes different points of view and scientific methods for problem-solving, which were essential for her to build her career.
My key takeaway from our conversation was that consulting offers an environment in which one can discover intersections of many fields; however, there is also a need for expertise in consulting to create differentiated value for companies. Yoonjin talked about this unexpected but crucial aspect of her industry, and how consulting requires a combination of technical and business knowledge. I had this assumption that consultants were specialized experts in business but not necessarily in, for example, R&D for new drugs. Our conversation changed how I see the consulting industry; it provided a new perspective for someone like me who is both interested in life sciences and business.
Her advice to students interested in consulting was fostering a sense of intellectual curiosity and identifying ways to solve problems within that. She added that the practice of problem-solving doesn’t have to be limited to the academic environment and that it is a great skill for every industry, not just consulting.
Highlights from the interview:
Growing up, what was expected of you? And how did those expectations shape you into choosing your current career?
I was born in Korea, and my parents immigrated to the US when I was 1.5 years old. My dad pursued his PhD degree here. Both my parents come from humanities backgrounds but I was inclined towards a more traditional career path like law or medicine. I went into school thinking I was going to be a psychiatrist. My parents didn’t really force me into it; they actually didn’t think I was going to be a doctor. I wasn’t so much influenced by my parents, but by the environment that I was in. I went to a very high performing public high school in Maryland, and I was surrounded by people who were super ambitious. Once I was at Rice, I realized that I don’t have a real interest in medicine. I ended up in the business world because the people I knew were interning in consulting firms and that’s how I got into it. It’s the opposite of the career path of my parents who were very idealistic.
Can you tell us about your studies in Cognitive Sciences at Rice University?
Cognitive Sciences at Rice is an interdisciplinary major. It covers psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, computer science, and philosophy. The focus is the brain, but you can take it to many different directions. Some people go into artificial intelligence because they’re trying to mimic the brain; some go into neuro because they want to understand the actual biology behind the brain. I focused more on the psychology side. I looked into human factors such as how you interact with the world around you. I also looked at organizations and cultures and tried to understand the interactions among them. I took many hands-on classes. Most of my classes were from different departments; so, it was a really cool way to explore a lot of different topics. I always used to joke in college that I had a major in five different departments. I like having a diversity of information; I don’t like committing to one thing. Then I got into consulting, where I don’t have to commit to any industry to work in an industry. I like being able to try something new and learn something different.
What led you to your current position? And what does this position entail?
Consulting is problem solving for different companies. I used to describe it as being like a doctor for companies; you go in, try to figure out what the problem is, and help the companies solve the problem. I really like the aspect that you take junior people who don’t really know much about the industry. Then they go through a crash course about what the business is and can then say “because I have this outsider perspective, I can help you realize some of the things that you didn’t even realize yourself.” I really like that aspect of being able to explore different companies. I didn’t take any business classes in undergrad, but I did study economics, which is very theoretical. I wanted to interact with actual people; I wanted a job where I can work with clients, meet with people every day, have conversations, and understand what’s going on.
I started BCG with the mindset that I would be working on something related to consumer psychology; i.e., why people make decisions for purchasing things. I thought I would end up working in the consumer industry, but then I realized that people make decisions about where to spend their money in every industry, whether it’s technology or healthcare. So, I ultimately ended up working in the healthcare field.
BCG does all types of consulting across all the industries. I used to do a lot of work for hospitals. If you think about the Affordable Care Act and how healthcare in the US is evolving as a system, one of the big changes was that patients, who are the consumers of hospitals, had a lot more choice than they previously did, they cared more about the cost of treatment, or they wanted to know the best hospital for that treatment. I worked for different hospital systems and helped them think through their consumer strategy. How do they think about their patients? How do they encourage their patients to choose them over other hospitals? One of the things we looked at was their real estate strategy. One of the hospital systems that I worked with has many hospitals. They know that people don’t want to go into the ER every time they have a problem. So, they started thinking about how they can create their own urgent care system or whether they should partner with an urgent care system.
I liked working in the healthcare field and wanted to see its different sides such as medical devices and insurance. BCG has a program where you can work for one of their clients for a year. So, I worked for one of our social impact clients, GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, which is an international organization based out of Geneva, Switzerland. I went to Switzerland and worked in their strategy team. What they do is they get money from foundations around the world, pool that money together, and invest in low-income countries. They help the low-income countries get the vaccines and pay for the vaccines, and they actually distribute them so that the vaccine can reach all children, not just the children who live in major cities, but those who live in urban slums or in rural areas. They think about how they can invest in the infrastructure or people to get the vaccines there.
What are the skills you find yourself utilizing the most in your current position and how did your college years prepare you?
I think that taking cognitive science and neuroscience classes at college taught me the scientific method and to come up with a research question and a hypothesis, and that is highly applicable in consulting, where you are often presented with a problem. Right now, I’m working for a biopharmaceutical company, and they’re trying to assess their timelines for how quickly they can finish drug development. Drug development involves clinical trials, and they think that they’re slower than their peers. So, that’s the problem. We have a few hypotheses about what could be causing that. Maybe they’re not investing enough in certain departments, maybe they don’t have enough people, or maybe they’re not prioritizing the programs that they need to be focusing on. We then look up different data or create new data to say “this is how your teams are structured, you have five different roles doing the same thing, and sometimes nobody knows what they’re supposed to be doing.” We then test the hypotheses. That’s also similar to some of the stuff I was trying to understand when I was at Rice; why people had made a certain decision or taken a certain path during the experiment.
Do you think there are any misconceptions about your job?
What I’m realizing now as a misconception that comes from something that was true in the past is that when I went into consulting, I wanted to try everything and work on different projects. But, consulting is becoming a lot more specialized and targeted, even at big firms. BCG has been hiring many people who are PhDs and MDs because they understand the science and can work on projects that involve clinical trial protocols. Consulting is getting to the next level of technical knowledge combined with business knowledge. People are very specialized, and not necessarily because of their background. I don’t really have a technical healthcare background, but because I’m now working in healthcare projects across different areas, I’m building that expertise. I think there is a lot more specialization and expertise in the consulting industry than I realized until I was here.
How does the current state of the world with the Covid-19 pandemic affect your work environment overall?
I was in the Houston Office of BCG prior to moving to Switzerland and prior to going to the business school but I was always traveling even then. Consulting can have a very demanding travel schedule, which is very tiring. Obviously, in the current environment, that’s not happening; almost everybody is working from home. I think productivity in that sense is probably way up. One of the great things about consulting is that it’s a very relationship-driven business; consultants get really close to the clients. In the current environment, they still try to mimic that at BCG, but it’s much harder when you’re not in the same room with your clients. My team has 30-minute windows daily when anyone can call in anytime if they want to and chat about anything not work related. So, we are trying to mimic the more natural conversation we have when we’re traveling together and working together, but it’s not the same.
What changes or challenges you foresee in your industry in the future?
I think consulting companies are a little bit different now. There are more startups, and it is interesting to see how influential startups can be versus long-term Fortune 500 companies. Our company has traditionally worked with much larger companies. BCG invested a lot in digital and advanced data analytics. Having this knowledge is often not enough to solve clients’ problems in the same way as it was in the past. Not only making money and returning money to your shareholders, but also thinking about the impact that you’re having on society is an area that consulting industry needs to push more and grow into. With their connections to the largest companies around the country and around the world, consulting firms are well positioned to bring this perspective to a lot of business leaders. That’s something I hope consulting firms continue to push and drive. I would like to keep working on the healthcare field and at the same time, to help companies raise money to focus more on the social impacts of their business.
What advice would you give the students interested in your field?
The biggest thing is fostering your sense of intellectual curiosity and identifying the ways to solve problems within that. For me, that happened a little bit less in the classroom and more in some of the extracurricular activities, like the student government. I spent most of my time working with the faculty, the administration, and other students to figure out potential solutions and options for problems. If you are passionate about something, develop that curiosity and passion, and then try to create opportunities to flex your problem solving skills. It doesn’t have to be in the classroom. Trying to understand the problem and how to fix it is a good skill set, and it will be applicable in your job, even if it’s in a different area.
Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee. This article only aims to share personal opinions and learnings and does not constitute the interviewee’s current or former employer(s)’ position on any of the topics discussed.