EDHEC to Monitor Deloitte
Ethan (center) and his team at the EDHEC Sailing Cup
Ethan’s choice of dual-degree came in handy towards the end of his experience, when it came to applying for jobs in France.
“If you want to stay in France afterwards, a double diploma will increase your chances,” he asserts. “This is one of the few diplomas that is recognized by the French government as the ‘Grande Ecole’, which lets young aspiring individuals stay in the country after they finish their studies.”
After ensuring that he could stay in France after graduating, it was a word-of-mouth recommendation that gave Ethan his ‘in’ at Monitor Deloitte, the company’s international consulting arm.
“We had a coach in the intensive track who was providing interviews for us,” Ethan explains, “and he said, ‘if you're going to target strategy consulting, in France there’s one firm you’ve got to prepare for and that’s Monitor’—and he put me in contact with somebody.”
Ethan was invited to interview, using the same interviewing techniques he’d practiced with his coach at EDHEC. “Case-cracking strategy sessions were the basics of the classes at EDHEC, so if you are doing well at that you have no excuse not to do well during an interview,” Ethan says.
In his role as a strategy consultant at the firm, Ethan says he’s still using the skills he picked up from his experience at EDHEC, including effective research, teamwork, and the ability to synthesize large amounts of information.
“Education in the US is based a lot more on, ‘here’s the textbook’, but that’s not the education that EDHEC provided—you really learn to be resourceful.
“It was also just fascinating [at EDHEC] to be surrounded by different people that had different goals in life that were in the same area as you but didn’t take the same path to get there,” he continues.
“If ever I want to change roles or see what’s going on in different fields, I know I can reach out to some of my fellow students—and I also know that they’ll be future leaders or influencers in their fields too.”
