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yeah my pain

At Deloitte this week
Freelance Associate Director of Social Content/Engagement role with top digital agency. 3 months to start.
-7+ years of agency exp
-Background working on campaigns for major brands across social media, content and paid social
-must have active accounts on all key social platforms
-Analytics/social listening/influencer marketing experience required. Onward Search
Thoughts on D&G LA?
Additional Posts in Life Sciences Consulting
does anyone here work for Veeva Crossix?
CRO companies as an exit? Yes or no?
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If you already have an offer to be an LEK associate then going to IB as an analyst is a step backward. Everyone is trying to leave IB now because of volume, pretty much every bank is struggling to recruit/retain, hours are long and new salaries aren’t going to be great. LEK does quarterly promotions, if you’re good, you can rise quickly and out-earn IB within 2 years. Exits to PE are very possible considering over 40% of their deal flow is PE-related. Location also matters; in Chicago, LEK is very tight with Water Street, one of the biggest healthcare PE funds in the city. If you’re trying to get to BlackRock or TPG, LEK isn’t going to cut it, but neither is MM IB. For pharma corp dev, you’ll need inside connections or direct experience from client side. Those positions don’t usually recruit publicly and they usually require 5+ YOE.
I worked in LS at LEK, so here are my thoughts if you want HC-focused corp dev or PE exit.
There is a distinction between Healthcare (hospitals and insurance) and life science (pharma/biotech).
LEK is very strong in life science, pretty solid in Healthcare. They are great at MM PE due diligence, but most of that is in industrials. However, PE work is done in LS for pharma services (CDMO) and in Healthcare.
There is not as much pharma PE work being done there.
If you are an associate, you can move from LEK to ER, IB or PE. I've seen it happen a lot.
My ranking:
For corp dev -
IB
LEK
ER
For HC PE -
IB
ER
LEK
Coach
If that’s your end goal, then banking is the path of least resistance. Would hard to land a PE exit from
LEK, Corp dev would also be challenging without transaction work. Same goes for ER.
Is this on the deal side or the operations side though?
Mentor
You can get into Corp Dev from ER, but IB will be path of least resistance; assuming your coverage / deals are for biopharma.
If you want healthcare PE, then IB in a healthcare (not biopharma) group is your best bet.
Both exits are possible from LEK, but it will be the hardest way there.
Where are you based?
Boston
I think for either biopharma Corp dev/BD or healthcare PE you will need transaction experience and a deal sheet. Agreed that it is “possible” to get into both from LEK and a consulting background, but it will be much harder to do. Just taking a glance at water street profiles, all current associates come from IB as well as 95% of their investment partners (if goal is to be on PE ops side then that’s a different story). That said, I think taking the IB analyst job would best position you for either of those two goals
Where are you now OP?
Cowen.