3 UNBELIEVABLE Personal stories about my Career & Luck | Cracking McKinsey, INSEAD, & Ed Tech

Management Consulting Program that I personally lead at Blue Chapter:

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I am proud of my 5 professional achievements. These include working for Mckinsey and Co.U.S. office, one of the most prestigious consulting groups in the world, doing my full-time MBA from INSEAD, running a profitable Ed-Tech bootstrapped startup, building an online audience of more than 2,00,000 people who trust me, and teaching at Trinity College Dublin.

This journey has been challenging because none of these achievements are easy to attain. But to be honest, luck played a big role in my success. We often get trapped in the luck vs hard work debate, but what we forget is that success is a product of both luck and hard work. Hard work alone can’t make you successful if you’re unlucky most of the time, but if you don’t work hard, your luck wouldn’t get you far. There were many times when luck didn’t favor me either, but most of the time it did. This is my career storyline, which should tell you how I got where I am today.

I did my graduation from NIT Rourkela and joined Accenture, the package was ₹2.7 L per year, about ₹14K in-hand salary. A friend of mine suggested I apply for Mu Sigma, I didn’t even know the company before he mentioned it. But I applied because Accenture was taking me nowhere, but Mu Sigma was working in a domain of my interest. From experience, I knew that my analytical reasoning skills were good enough for me to get selected in the interview round. A day before the interview I asked a friend of mine who happened to be the best debater in my college to help me with the group discussion prep.

He took an example topic and told me how to pick up points for the debate and get my point across to other debaters. This was vital. The next day when I went for the interview, the topic under discussion was the same topic that I had practiced with my friend the other day. There were 250+ candidates willing to get into Mu Sigma, after the first round 100 were selected, after the second round around 40 were selected, and then the group discussion round was there. I missed the group discussion because I had gone out for lunch, so they put me in an alternate group of 10 brilliant people. I had already made a bad impression by not showing up for the scheduled group discussion by leaving for lunch. But as I knew the topic for the group discussion round, I was able to tackle it more efficiently than everybody else.

I had everything sorted in my head beforehand because I could also hear 7-8 other candidates talking about this topic before me. But luck played a huge role here because I would not have left if I knew that they were going to put my name in that first group. Only 2 people were selected from our group of 10 and I knew everyone in that group was very good. This helped me a lot in my career. Accenture was taking me nowhere but Mu Sigma did a very important job for me there. My direct supervisor in Mu Sigma was a dean who retired from an MBA college, he helped me learn many topics right from him and he also showed me how to think about work in one’s life.

After working for 3.5 years at Mu Sigma, I thought I had learned a lot and it was time for the next chapter in my journey. This was around 2011-12 when Mu Sigma raised $100 Million, which was a big deal. Raising such a huge amount in one round was unheard of back then. Then the euphoria around Mu Sigma was great. I applied to 300+ companies, I also applied to McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and so on. After my online application, McKinsey actually called me up for an interview. Since the consulting companies were looking to acquire Mu Sigma, my application got looked into and I was able to get into McKinsey by clearing their difficult but worthwhile interview.

If the timing of my application was any different and these supporting events didn't happen, I would not get into McKinsey. I wanted to do an MBA before and even after joining McKinsey. INSEAD was an institute on my list from the beginning, besides I did apply to many other institutes and also wrote CAT multiple times. But I realized that I had to improve my profile to get into INSEAD.

About Me

I publish meaningful and valuable content on this channel. My aim is to make business news more accessible and easy to grasp. If you find my videos informative and insightful then make sure to subscribe and leave a comment. I’ll see you in the next video

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Chapters

0:00 - Intro
1:33 - Getting into Mu Sigma
4:11 - How Mu Sigma changed my life
4:45 - Cracking McKinsey
6:52 - Getting into INSEAD
9:00 - Starting Blue Chapter
10:52 - Keep trying
12:19 - Outro

[the.no.commentary.gaming]

Holy Cow! Everything is interlinked.

Hope this is my Lady Luck that I come across your channel. I’m preparing for an MBA and eventually want to get a job in consulting. 🙂

[rujuparekh]

So inspiring Pavan, also how nicely you have highlighted the luck factor, awesome video!

[deveshjain]

Please keep sharing your personal journey, Pavan. It inspires us all!

[jayacharya]

Nice share Pavan. We need to follow our dreams to make them come true in our life.

[dushantbelekar]

I needed to hear this. Thank you Pavan, Keep sharing I love watching your videos.

[vinayreddyvaradhapally]

This is awesome. Your hard work paid off with a luck factor as well.

[kaveripakamsaichandrahas]

Hello Mr Pavan, Can you please make a video on Impact Consulting Firms in private like Sattva, samarga, Dalberg, Multilateral Organisations working like United Nations, UNDP and related agencies...

[teebone]

Pavan, it takes a tremendous amount of honesty to attribute some amount of luck to your achievements. A lot of people will not be very open about it. Kudos to you for keeping it real!

[anushkachaudhary__]

Inspiring story. Please share more such stories about your life struggles and failure and how you deal with it & got success as well. And I enjoyed watching this video. How luck helped you in your journey I was really amazed by this. 👏 Thanku for sharing this and please upload more such videos. 😊

[haseebmohammed]

Very inspiring Journey. Love your content and the work you are doing. I have been watching your content for long time now and the quality of content is unmatched. Especially your case study videos and analysis on current affair videos are great. Thanks Pavan

[prathameshbaisware]

Really resonated with what you said, many great things just came luckily while I was doing what I was supposed to do.

[shivamagrawal]

This is one of the most inspiring video for me, I have ever heard on YouTube.

Thank you Mr. Pawan for your guidance. I personally wanna meet you someday.

[chandu]

Hey pavan, would request you to make a video on custodian banks and their role in the financial markets..would love to hear from you..thanks!

[amandussingh]

These personal stories are undeniably remarkable. My firm conviction lies in the idea that success is a fusion of diligent effort, making appropriate decisions at opportune moments, and fortuitous circumstances. Possessing a network of valuable contacts does not guarantee securing one's desired role, as various unforeseen factors may come into play. Additionally, I greatly appreciate the informative content you share on LinkedIn.

[vanshpanjabi]

Please talk about your failures and doubts you had while paving the way for your career

[poonamagarwal]

Could you share how we can learn more about such opportunities to volunteer

[samvitsaroj]

Guides on masters in finance or strategy please?😊