This is an interview with Jonathan Chan, the cofounder and chief product and technology officer of Pear, an AI platform that’s helping to reinvent consulting. Prior to that, he spent five years as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group.
I started my career as a tech developer, then did my MBA and spent about five years in strategy at Westpac, an Australian bank. I loved strategy, so I applied to major consulting firms like McKinsey, Bain, and BCG. I ultimately joined BCG as a consultant.
I was excited. Then I found myself sitting on the bench.
I had an MBA and close to a decade of experience, but I wasn’t getting staffed on a real project. I’d done some small “free capacity” work, helping teams and partners with odds and ends, but I wanted a proper project.
There were about 14 consultants in my Australian cohort, and I felt like I was one of the last to get staffed. I was talking to the person responsible for staffing, and the message was basically, “wait.” So I decided to take matters into my own hands.
I made a pitch deck about myself. I called it “Will Write Slides for Food.”
Obviously, I was being paid a BCG consultant salary. The title was meant to be funny, but I was also anxious and wanted to create something I could send to people who might have influence over staffing.
The deck was essentially a résumé in PowerPoint form.
I included my background, strengths, project experience, and examples of my work. I showed slides involving project planning, financial modeling, driver trees, consumer research, and complex analysis.
I didn’t send it out to the entire firm. Instead, I sent the deck to partners, principals, and project leaders I already knew or had spoken with. The responses ranged from people finding it funny to people telling me to relax.
One senior partner gave me advice I still remember. He told me to enjoy the downtime because once I got onto projects, the work probably wouldn’t stop. If you did well, people would keep staffing you. He was right.
I wasn’t staffed immediately after sending the deck. I think it took another two months, and I spent roughly three months unstaffed in total. Once I got staffed, though, I was never on the bench again. Looking back, I probably should have relaxed more.
If you’re at a firm like McKinsey, Bain, or BCG and you’re not staffed, I’d use the time productively. Read the firm’s knowledge base, do trainings, and have coffee chats with partners.
Staffing isn’t only about your capabilities. There’s a human element, too. If I had to choose between someone amazing I didn’t know and someone reliable I’d already spent time with, there is a good chance I’d staff the person I knew. So make those human connections.
Even if the deck didn’t directly get me staffed, it forced me to clarify who I was, what I could do, and what I wanted. More than a decade later, I still think that’s useful.
Today, I do three things: I write a newsletter about how AI can help people work faster. I also do independent consulting, and I build businesses with AI.
One of those businesses is Pear, which we describe as an “Uber for consultants” that helps independent consultants find strategy projects. In some ways, it brings me back to what I was trying to do with that deck at BCG — figure out how to get my name out there among the partners.
Pear now does something similar during onboarding, using AI to pull together a consultant’s experience and basically creates that deck for you.
Here’s a look at the deck that Chan made to help him get staffed on a project at BCG:
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