Yitong Li graduated from UNC in 2020 with a Ph.D. She was interviewed by Jane Lee in December 2021 when she was a Consultant at IQVIA (formerly Quintiles).
What are your main responsibilities as a Consultant at IQVIA?
At IQVIA, every junior member (ranging from Associate to Consultant) is staffed on 2-3 projects. Consultants are the project managers, who manage teams on small- to mid-sized projects. Consultants manage junior members, delegate tasks, and is the main contact for clients. If you have an established relationship with a client or if the seniors trust your presentation skills, you might present at important client meetings. There are times when the team gets stretched thin or when a project is high priority. In these situations, the Consultant will be more hands-on to ensure high quality by performing analysis, pulling data, making slide decks, and/or analyzing data.
What excites you the most about your work?
The most exciting aspect about my job is seeing the junior members grow. Junior members require more hands-on supervision, especially if they are new employees at IQVIA. Over time, I get to see them grow and take on more initiative as well as responsibilities. The other exciting thing about being a Consultant at IQVIA is that you get to closely interact with clients. You get to discuss with clients directly on what they like or dislike about the project. When the clients appreciate the work and are impressed with the quality, you feel like you made a significant impact. It only takes 1-2 months to see the impact.
How does your job affect your general lifestyle? Work-life balance?
In consulting, there are set expectations and it is not an easy job. At IQVIA 50-60 hours/week is typical for A-C levels; however, there are fluctuations with client expectations. For very demanding and high-impact projects, you might have 70–80 hours/week and additional work on the weekends. I get into this type of projects 1-2 times a year. To maintain work-like balance, setting your boundaries and communicating your availability with your team is the most important. You need to set your boundaries and they can change depending on what you want to bring to the table. This can depend on your career goals and drive. Personally, this schedule works for me: working late from Monday to Thursday, working normal hours on Friday, and keeping the weekend free outside of emergencies. In the end, it’s all about how you manage your time.
What type of career development opportunities did you participate in during graduate school?
I participated in a technology transfer internship through UNC’s Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC). During the internship, I helped analyze the commercial potential of the existing patents. The work is similar to due diligence work performed by consultants. In addition to the internship, case competitions and consulting bootcamp were both helpful. I had a second internship at UNC Healthcare through the TIBBS ImPACT internship program. It was focused on data analytics, running R, and establishing a dashboard to help analyze the data more efficiently. The experience helped me hone my analytical skill sets. IQVIA has opportunities in data analytics under the modeling and web-app development team.
What advice would you give someone who is considering applying to positions at consulting firms?
If you are interested in applying to a consulting firm, reach out and talk to people who work there and make sure you understand their expectations for the positions you are applying to. Make sure that you can understand big-picture questions for the clients. Case interview preparation help to some extent but too much case prep can make the applicant robotic and hide their thinking ability. Finally, make sure that you talk to as many people interested in consulting as you can and start to accumulate your network
Thanks to Yitong for spending time with us to learn more about her experiences! If you’re interested in following her footsteps, you can visit the website of the GBCC.
Yitong has also offered write referrals for GBCC students interested in working at IQVIA Consulting Services. You can reach out to her via LinkedIn.