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Stepping Up The Game - 4-25-07

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” –Sir Winston Churchill

Name: Patrick Gray

Age: 29

Occupation: IT Strategy Consulting

Where do you work? Prevoyance Group, Inc., a company I founded a few years ago.

Where are you from? I grew up around the Boston area and currently live outside New York City.

Did you go to college? Yes, to Boston College.

What did you study? I was a triple major in Operations & Strategic Management, Information Systems and Computer Science.

Why did you pick this career? I've always had an interest in technology, and thought I would do programming or more engineering-oriented work when I was younger, but at college I discovered I was more interested in business operations and strategy, and how technology affected and influenced them.

What are your future plans for your career? I have been working on my first book, to be published by John Wiley & Sons this fall, and hoping to leverage the book to get more speaking engagements. I also hope to do more international work, especially in India and China.

How did you get involved in this career? My interest started in college, through a somewhat odd set of circumstances. I started with a traditional, math-intensive computer science major, thinking I would one day be a software engineer. My first exposure to calculus caused me to balk at the math requirements and I ended up transferring to the business school and discovering I enjoyed it a lot more than pure Computer Science. The business school helped me land a job with a large consulting firm. After a few years with them, I decided I wanted to move towards strategy consulting. I also had always wanted to start my own business, so I combined the two and founded Prevoyance Group.

How did you prepare yourself for this career?

I had a combination of circumstance and hard work that got me here. In college I always tried to use my summers wisely, landing my first internship my freshman summer while many people were going home to work as lifeguards or take it easy. I also did some IT consulting out of my dorm room, helping a local company setup servers and the like. I did not have top grades, but my work experience set me apart and helped me land a job with a big consulting company right out of school. The internships and other jobs also gave me a taste of working in the IT industry, and cemented my feeling that sitting in a cubicle writing code was not what I wanted to do. The economy at the time was also fairly strong and my decision to transfer to the business school gave me an advantage.

And if you just happened to land in this career what made you stay?

I love that I get to interact with different companies and solve different problems each time I work with a new client. It is like having a new job every 3-6 months. I also enjoy traveling to new places and meeting new people.

What are the downsides to this profession?

If you need a sense of grounding and predictability this is not the job for you. Clients can and will cancel a project without notice and all of a sudden you are wondering where the next invoice is going to come from and how you'll pay the mortgage. You also may suddenly find a new client that needs you to hop on a plane the next morning. The unpredictability is exciting at times but can also be frustrating. I have very little idea of who I will be working for, where I'll be traveling to and what specifically I'll be doing six months down the line.

What is a typical workday for you?

What I love about my job is that working for myself, there is no pressure to "see and be seen," and no imperative that you be the first person in and last person at your desk each night. In a typical workday, key things I try and do are read the Wall Street Journal and some international news, work through any outstanding client work and work on marketing my company, which could be publishing articles or newsletters, calling potential clients or working on new products and services. I also try and take a walk at a park near my office, get to the gym or otherwise get out and stretch my legs. A change of perspective usually helps provide thinking time for any difficult problems and keeps me from going stir crazy. Sometimes a typical workday will be ten hours on a Sunday, and other times it is a two hour email and news check, then personal time on a Tuesday.

How might this job be a stepping stone to other professions?

Working for a big consulting company really broadened my horizons. I saw the inside of several large corporations in a short amount of time, met lots of people and rapidly learned all sorts of things, from the mundane like arranging travel to how a Fortune 500 company handed its marketing. Consulting gives you a sample of a variety of companies and industries and really hones your problem solving ability. I went out to do consulting on my own, but several people I started with have gone on to be everything from teachers to corporate managers to stay-at-home moms and dads.

What is the single-most important piece of advice you can offer a person pursuing this career?
Get some work experience, preferably through an internship. People seem to either love or hate consulting, and an ability to "try before you buy" is very helpful.

What steps do you recommend to someone who is planning to pursue this career?
The consulting companies look primarily for an ability to work on a team, be adaptable and have strong problem solving skills. I worked with history majors and computer science majors, so I think being able to demonstrate those three traits is the key to landing a consulting job rather than a specific academic background. As I mentioned, experience in the industry will also help greatly, especially if your grades are not in the top 10%. If you are already out of school, getting project work at your current company is very helpful. You can see how project teams are assembled and run, and experience driving the team towards a fixed goal.

What professional or community volunteer organizations are you currently a member of?
I sit on the board of Connected Minds, a non-profit in NYC.

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