Why should you choose EDHEC Business School? For Marco Vecchiato, consulting enthusiast and Master in Management student at EDHEC, the answer is pretty simple.
Just three years on from his bachelor’s, his master’s has strengthened his knowledge of business and management, it’s taken him to three world class business schools around the world, and it’s given him professional consulting experience.
As he now eyes up a job at one of the coveted Big Three consulting firms—McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group (BCG)—his master’s is sure to have teed him up for the career of his dreams.
Gaining international exposure
When Marco graduated from his bachelor’s degree, he was keen to braoden his international exposure. Until that point, he had grown up and studied solely in Italy, and felt like, to pursue the career he wanted, he needed to have more of an international understanding of how business is done.
EDHEC Business School was an immediate draw for this very reason. On the Master in Management, 50% of the class is international.
“I lived in a very multicultural environment, with people from all sides of the world, that allowed me to understand the different points of what people from Asia, the US, etc, can bring to a business discussion,” Marco says.
At the end of his first year, as one of the MiM’s top students, Marco was selected to travel to California, to study a two-month diploma in technology and innovation management at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He got a full scholarship, for a course that would normally cost around $20k, as well as the opportunity to experience a whole new way of understanding business.
“That was truly one of the highlight experiences of my master’s,” he recalls.
Now back in Europe for his final year of his master’s, Marco finds himself studying at the University of St Gallen, as part of a year-long exchange. “This was a great opportunity EDHEC provided: plenty of universities in partnership allowing you to travel abroad and study different kinds of methods to apply to business.”
Getting professional experience in consulting
Since Marco enrolled in the master’s straight out of his bachelor’s, it was important for him to gain as much work experience as possible. He was drawn to the Grande Ecole structure which EDHEC offers, where the second out of three years is spent in industry.
“You can use this year of professional experience to develop your skills and know how the job market works. You can apply the skills you learn during your masters, and understand whether the industry you are interested in joining will be the right fit for your career.”
With his heart set on consulting, Marco quickly identified two internships that would help give him an in-depth look into the industry and help him identify what sort of positions he was after.
His first internship was spent in Amsterdam working at Heineken, as part of the risk management team. This helped him develop his idea of what consulting was, as well as learning from many of his colleagues who were former consultants.
Then, he moved to Luxembourg to work at PwC, as a business analyst. This proved to be a pure insight into what a consultant does, and what skills he needed for the job.
For Marco, this opportunity to gain professional experience confirmed in his mind that he was destined for a career in consulting. Alternatively, it offers people the chance to try out a professional and perhaps figure out it isn’t for them.
“If you understand that you don't like that industry, you still have one year of specialisation on your master’s to gather what you need to learn for a different industry,” he says.
Enhancing employability
Throughout his master’s, Marco benefitted from the bespoke career mentoring approach at EDHEC. From an early stage, master’s students get access to one-on-one career advice to help increase their employability.
Marco decided on consulting from early on, and the careers team helped improve his chances when it came to applying for jobs after he graduated.
“Through the various courses and career center, I definitely understood from the very beginning what were the topics I had to focus on, skills I had to leverage, and which capabilities I had to improve.”
His ambitions are set high—he’s eyeing up a role at one of McKinsey, Bain, or BCG. And with a rounded skill set, the applicable work experience, and the prestige of three world class institutions on his resume, he’s confident he’ll be considered.
