Andy Chiang: The Importance of Prioritization and Discipline (Consultant at Oliver Wyman, Ivey Grad)

foreign Andy we're so excited to have you on today's episode and to learn a little more about your career Journey so thank you so much for being here it's lovely to meet you hi nice to meet you too I'm Andy super excited to be talking with you guys today and I guess it's a really quick intro I'm currently just graduate April 2023 from IBM Western study both medical sciences and business at Ivy and I'll be going full time to Oliver Wyman starting next April amazing thank you for the intro it's lovely to learn more about

you so I'd also love to start from the very beginning for our first question Andy how did your post-secondary experience lead you to where you are today yeah that's a great question I think post-secondary definitely was the biggest I guess time in my life where decisions were being made I was discovering more about what I wanted to do what I enjoyed and a lot of things come down to a lot of my interests and what I chose to explore outside of school actually so starting off with my first two years I was studying medsai and

that's because I do have an interest in medicine and Science in general and that's where I started but I always knew I wanted to explore IB and see what the business world had for me so even just starting post-secondary I had that kind of pathway in mind but I think throughout post-secondary I involved myself in a lot of extracurriculars and those were usually more based on my interests of whether it was my culture some more hobby interests or other things I realized that I really enjoyed just working on things anything as long as involved what

I was interested in and for that that meant like maybe running a club that was based around an interest or running initiatives or anything else and the thing that excited me most about that was I was able to always take on a variety of roles put on a lot of different hats to do a lot of different jobs around what I was involving myself in and I think that's something that's very similar to Consulting so I remember the summer before I started Ivy I I was really thinking about what I wanted to do and there

was this Consulting Workshop early on listened to it and went to it and just the way they described Consulting I felt like fit the type of work I really enjoy doing throughout my extracurriculars so I'd say my extracurriculars were definitely the biggest thing in post-secondary that kind of led me to where I am today amazing thank you for sharing that's awesome that your career that you chose was based on things you learned in post-secondary I feel that's where a lot of Youth also find that they'll find what their career Journey holds for them as well

I'm going to pass off to Raj for the next few questions hey Andy so for the second question you already answered a bit about it but we can go over it again how did you end up in the Consulting career path was this always a goal or did you have different interests such as working in Esports or medicine yeah that's a great question Raj I came into University wanting to make sure I explored but I really had no idea what I would do and I mean going for med school and being a doctor was a

pathway that I was interested in and doing something business related was something I was always interested in but I wasn't too sure but I think once I started thinking about recruiting the summer before Ivy that's when it became the goal when I heard about Consulting it just made a lot of sense to me if it feels like it was kind of the job I was I don't know if I'd say meant for but just the job that fit my skills and interest the best and the truth is I still have a lot of interest in

working in different fields so you mentioned like medicine or Esports and I think I love these things that I love like kind of dabbling in them whether it's going to be on the side or as a job and the way I see it now with my path is or at least in my career trajectory is I see that I'll kind of explore Esports and other similar things I'm interested in on the side whether that's in a paid or volunteer capacity and then things like medicine I can also find ways to incorporate that my job such

as doing Healthcare projects with Healthcare clients and in the future I'm still unsure if I want to stay in consulting or if I want to exit into industry after and I think by exits if I do choose the exit will be very involved or very similar to some of my other interests so I think these aren't Pathways but more so kind of just other things I want to explore and keep in mind and can see myself working in the future great answer it's always nice to keep your hobbies close to you if you have interest

in them for the next question you have a lot of post-secondary extracurricular experience such as being the president of a few clubs playing classical music and sports in your free time how did you manage your time to balance all these things with doing IV and medside yeah that's a great question and I think especially when it comes to being an IV in business recruiting is almost seen I guess it really is just another extracurricular in terms of the time I think those are yeah there's just a lot to balance in school and I'd say a

few things help me along the way number one definitely learning to prioritize and that's something you're just consistently working on and post-secondary is always a really big shock for people and I think it was for me too so really learning what things I valued and what was more on the back burner was really important for me the next thing was learning to sacrifice so after being able to prioritize and learning better how to value my what was on my plate I think being able to accept that I had to make sacrifices and pull the trigger

on those and really just really introduced to do that was definitely another big one that helped me so for example sometimes I knew if I was really swamped with recruiting I might have to sacrifice a few coffee chats because I wouldn't have time to do them or I might have to sacrifice something on my coursework side so maybe not being able to do an IV case for a few classes for for a week I think those things are really important to recognize that and just to have the will to be able to do that but

I think at the end of the day the most important thing I'd say is definitely discipline less so this last year since I'd say it was honestly a very a more senior artist year for me but especially years three to four so HPA one hp2 for me and Ivy was just making sure I had a lot of discipline to get things done so I would find myself after school or after classes ended sitting down and saying hey like before dinner I'm not going to do anything that's more on the enjoyment side or social side I'm

just going to sit down get these things done and kind of plan out the next few hours and for me I always would make sure I spent around a good chunk on Club work especially for the clubs that I was president of but also making sure I got some recruiting time in and then for coursework at the very least planning out what course or I was going to get done for the next day and talking with friends and coordinating with them to see if there's anything how be together with so I think discipline was definitely

the biggest one and then I sacrificed a lot of social time in my first to fourth year and fifth year it's funny because my friends would say oh Andy I've seen you so much more this year and it's all because I think I was able to loosen up after signing my full-time offer and just spend more time with friends value and my friendships and and yeah I think the discipline from years one and four paid off a lot and being able to know to sacrifice things and then having that year at the end for me

to kind of build back up my friendships and relationships and other things it's really great great answer discipline always leads to more progress than motivation anyways for my next question what about Consulting inspires you are there any misconceptions you might have had before you've had experience in the industry yeah I think Consulting is really inspiring for a lot of the reasons that you'll see other people say they're inspired or kind of interested in Consulting I wouldn't say my answers too unique but I think it's always good to kind of reinforce this that these are the

things that stand out to somebody looking into Consulting then that's something that's good for them to hear number one is definitely the high level work we do I think it's so cool to be able to come into a company fresh out of a university and just be able to work on some of the highest level problems that are affecting like the c-suite or high level employees at a company especially even working with private Equity firms you're making decisions on whole companies and in this case they're portfolio companies too which is really interesting so I think

that's definitely one thing just feeling like you can make such a big impact right off the bat and that's really inspiring for me number two is I guess that the nature of the work which is very challenging it also has such a big Variety in range we get to work on anything in any industry depending on the firm you're at but for me I'm a more generalist firm so I mean doing Financial Services Healthcare work maybe a bit of public sector private Equity there's just so many options there and and again like I said I

think I'm I find on myself more interested in doing any sort of work that's just kind of interesting to me and not really wanting to pigeonhole myself in one industry or anything so that's one thing I really appreciate about Consulting and the work is challenging always different so that's nice it's not like more of your cookie cutter office jobs where you might be doing something very similar day in day out or consistently on new projects working on new clients so we're always trying to understand a client Dynamic their goals their needs and their company and

trying to assist them in the best way we can and then finally another great thing is Consulting is filled with great people smart people and these people always go on to do great things so I think it's such a great way to start off your career by meeting just as many people as you can who have like big goals in mind for their career Big Dreams of mine and being able to build relationships with them because that means later on I can find myself working with them working for them or they're working for me or

anything like of the sort and just be cool to to be able to have that Network and opportunity available for me so those are definitely some of the biggest things that inspire me about Consulting in terms of misconceptions I think one thing that still travels around a lot is people think there's a heavy Monday that Thursday travel schedule and I think Post cover that's completely different now and that's what people hear a lot when they talk to real Consultants most firms used to do Monday Thursday travel don't do that anymore and in fact firms are

very different in terms of their traveling so I'd say always make sure you talk with people or do your research beforehand when you're looking to firms to find the ones that fit you more in terms of travel but I'd say Travelers the only thing a lot of people don't realize like a staffing model is something that changes your experience completely for example all over Wyman we have a North American Staffing model we have one pool of North American consultants and then a pool of North American projects and they're matching all across so it's not kind

of split by Canada and the U.S what that means is I'm going to be on projects for the US a lot going to travel around SF New York or anywhere else we have an ow office or client and that's going to be really fun for me but I know some people recruiting might find that something they don't enjoy they might enjoy that too but they might want something more for example a more International Staffing model where they're going to fly out of North America so I think that's something to to really think about break Consulting

insights I'm pretty sure the listeners will really care about that I'd like to pass it back to Sophie for the last question thank you Raj and thank you Andy for all of those really great insights I really enjoyed them our last question for you today is what advice would you give to someone aspiring to become a consultant in today's market and is there anything that you wish you had done differently in your career path yeah that's a great question Sophie I think thinking back to when I was recruiting and aspiring to become a consultant I

definitely would have wanted to hear a few things number one was definitely explore your interests I think as somebody in a more senior or I guess just a bit older now and having recruited I see a lot of people explore things not because they're interested but because they think it's the right thing to do to aim for a career in business IB or Consulting and I'm talking about people who might spend a lot of time on more Business Clubs whether it's investment club or pre-business networks or anything I think that's completely fine if you're interested

that's great you build such a great Network there but I think what stands out in your interview process and your coffee chats or anything is having a lot of different hobbies that make you unique whether or not that's a specific sport specific I guess like music or anything else type of hobby that's that's always going to make you more unique and memorable and again I think the experiences I had really shined because there were more unique things that I genuinely was interested in to talk about forever in an interview or just in a chat and

always found ways to kind of progress my level of involvement so starting off as a club exec or a volunteer and moving my way up to be able to manage a club or anything else was something that really helped me stand out I think in my interviews the other thing I think I would have actually really preferred to hear or appreciate a hearing is that it's not actually too important to have a non-business related internship before you recruit for Consulting however it is a nice to have so I personally didn't do anything before I just

worked at summer camps or veto pop-ups but never had a more consistent stable job and that was more business related and that's completely fine students Inspire to become Consultants should know that that's fine but they should also know that if they have the opportunity to look and to to be able to work in a similar internship I think it's definitely nice to have that helps get your foot in the door for interviews or anything else so it's always good to know that so I'd say for me differently in my past I I wish I could

have found a job more like that however it's I'm not too regretful about it because I don't think it's a requirement for sure amazing yeah that's a really great insight for our listeners to gauge their interests and pursue clubs so that they can really see what they're passionate about and good at doing so I think that's really great insight and that's the last question that we have for you today Andy so thank you so much for being a guest on the cast today I'm sure our listeners will really benefit from all of the advice and

insights that you've shared and we really appreciate your time today great really enjoyed this [Music]