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0:01 [Music] how to make a career in public policy so i have divided this video into three parts uh first and foremost the motivation um i think that if you have clicked on this video then you must be motivated about public policy but assuming that your motivation may come from different arenas i would definitely like to actually share my motivation what were my motivation and then um slowly and steadily we will start building the step-wise process what step number one what step number two for you to actually build a career in public policy so let's definitely um start with the
0:48 the motivation around it right the why why do people actually build a career in public policy so first and foremost i think at a subject level at a content level there is this thing about public policy consulting which is very different than management consulting or private sector work which is that public policy work is actually very macro um of course it is related to macroeconomics as well at times but the topic or the impact or the kind of numbers that you look at are really huge right so for example when i was working with government of india i was directly working with the center and within the center i was not actually working with the lion ministry i was working with this department of administrative reforms and public grievances that's where one and a half out of my two years of career in
1:34 government of india was spent so uh that really brought out the macro right we were looking at the national level and then the state level and then at the district level so if you realize that macro doesn't excite you at times or big picture doesn't excite you at times it's the on ground implementation work then public policy still for you but in this specific video i wanted to actually touch upon more about policy consulting what is really policy advisory right and how to build a career in that so that's point number one point number two is truth be told when i pivoted from private sector to then public sector i got this really humbling feeling that uh the entire work that i was doing was way more meaningful way more impactful
2:20 than the work that i was doing before ideally i shouldn't be comparing but i kind of felt more peaceful when i was sleeping at the end of the day i kind of felt more motivated when i was waking up next day to go to office and do my work i felt that my hours my work was actually get impacting someone's life right it may not directly but indirectly there will be people out there whose lives will be impacted through my work so that was another motivation for me to actually work in policy consulting at the same time you should definitely know the downsides of working in policy consulting let's talk about the pay rate what is the pay parity between private sector consulting and policy consulting i have actually done policy consulting both at a national level at an
3:05 international level and both the times what i found is that the starting salaries are actually pretty much at par if you join a good organization however what typically happens in a private sector role is that your journey especially in firms such as management consulting like bcg mckinsey even if you're doing public sector work your salary actually increases like a hockey stick hockey stick right it's an exponential curve however in policy consulting your starting salary may be at par but your salary will eventually not increase like a hockey stick right because the variable component starts getting missed out on so for example when i was in dubai i was working as an international foreign policy advisor my salary as a consultant or as an advisor was actually
3:53 matching my peers at pcg who were working in dubai but had i stayed for a longer period of time then my peers salary would have taken that hockey stick curve however in my case i wouldn't have i would have probably taken a simple linear curve etc just saying that that was not my focus of motivation but just helping you guys know the starting salaries in these days for policy consulting are actually frankly not bad however if you really just want to become rich it may not be necessarily the best career fit for you that's point number one uh point number two once again before we even jump into how to build a career in public policy you should know the speed and the agility at times policy consulting can be slow at times it can be frankly
4:39 frustrating as well i recall of my two instances where for example in government of india we were picking up this really major overall of digitizing the paperwork with government of india and that meant right from the secretaries to the clerks we were working with all of them and they were just too much push back at times i would just be this young 25 year old and just think if i am actually wasting my times wasting my time with all of these people who are probably not motivated to bring a transformative change but at the end of the journey it was really motivating because we were able to move the needle very dramatically similarly during my time as an international policy advisor i felt that things were taking way more time than in private sector or in a startup ecosystem and as a young professional it
5:25 can be frustrating so i do not intend to demotivate you because you have clicked on this video to make to learn how to make a korean public policy but at the same time i do believe that's my moral right to also actually inform you about the financial implications at the same time the agility at times take a toll but but truth be told those were the two factors that didn't impact my career decisions a lot but still putting it out there for me i think what really mattered was working on macroeconomic macro issues and at the same time getting to uh impact someone's life and not just make myself rich right i do not want to make this world where rich people are just making rich people other people rich i want to actually wanted to bridge the income inequality that's in fact one of my life motors that i intend
6:11 to serve through global governance initiative so all right with that we're actually done with the motivation section by policy consulting so watch till the end because i am going to be sharing a step-by-step process and the last one is actually frankly the most important one because people reach till that stage somehow or the other but they fail at that stage so it's really important for you to be prepared to the best of your abilities as and when you reach that stage so step number one is identifying the right organizations right as and when we try to build a career in public policy what do you what do i mean by the right organization i would actually divide the entire universe of policy consulting and public policy work into two part implementation and strategical work right now
6:58 implementation what is implementation implementation could be that i have a scheme i have a policy but now i want to implement it you are not going to be the one as a policy advisor as a policy consultant to be implementing it but you are going to be the one who can expedite the process who can figure out the bottlenecks who can actually be monitor monitoring it it may not sound frankly as cool and as sexy as the advisory role but truth be told uh i actually did this project like i said of digitizing paperwork it just may sound very mundane but it's actually the project that was really transformative for me because i saw change really happening in front of my eyes so those are the implementation projects now what are really strategical projects strategical projects is uh government
7:43 government entity will actually hire you to set up a public policy unit from scratch or they would tell you the policy and they will say that the time to deliver this policy is actually more than what we anticipated can you figure out the procedural or operational challenges so on and so forth now there are organizations that actually play the intersection of both they will do implementation strategy policy work and there will be organization who just do a lot of implementation work and there will be organizations who would just do a lot of i would say strategy work so let me actually i always take notes for you guys so that i'm not missing out on content to provide you the truest value let's start with implementation so definitely big four in india kpmg eny etc they uh they do a lot
8:30 of good quality implementation work and once again they do not implement the policies on ground themselves but they are heavily invested in making sure that the schemes are monitored what gets monitored gets done so eventually because they are monitoring the kpis they kpis key performance indicators they end up catching up any red alert any red flags similarly there are state governments actually who hire young professionals so for example chhattisgarh government hires young professionals there is haryana young professional program there is rajasthan young professional program delhi has also come up with this similar program these young professionals in their 20s or early 30s would actually join a department at a district level or at a chief minister's office level and they would be heavily involved in expediting
9:17 things at a day-to-day basis or probably create a war room right for example maharashtra also has a really good quality chief ministers fellowship program what do i mean by volume war room is basically a management consulting jargon forum is basically there would be a dashboard and the chief minister would come and monitor the status of all of these schemes and programs and then realize which scheme is actually running on time which is below behind the time so on and so forth so that is basically the kind of uh landscape in terms of the job opportunities that are out there so that's on implementation the landscape looks more richer for the advisory part right and i'm going to be covering national and international opportunities both so on national of course i will
10:03 start with the ministry of commerce quality council of india that is where i was employed that's where i started my journey but of course i was the 15th member to join the team back in 2016 um in 2021 when i'm shooting this video that team is 500 member plus so i'm sharing this um sharing all the experiences in the hindsight things could have changed um at quality council of india but they were actually doing both strategical work and implementation work and i got a chance to actually do one and a half years of strategical work and six months of implementation work as well so pretty kick-ass so that's one opportunity for you there is some agra consulting samara consulting is also doing some really good work uh oh this is really cool actually so at global governance initiative we have gta fellows dji
10:48 fellowship is actually the most covetous program that we have we hand pick people who are mentored by mckinsey bcg dalberg carney mentors and we actually build a thought leadership on a public policy topic and at the end of the day we actually submit those thinkings and that those papers to the respective ministries based on the relationships that naman and i naman is the co-founder of global governance initiative naman and i actually have formed during our time at government of india so fellows actually learn in that process so learning by doing and at the same time they also get to create an intended impact in public policy so if you would be interested feel free to apply for ggi fellowship as well that's on ggi um there are of course other management consulting firms as well who are deeply involved in policy
11:35 consulting work i would say fsg's one brit spanish and other dahlberg is another these three firms fsg british ban and dahlberg they are more tilted towards social impact consulting than necessary policy consulting there is a difference social impact consulting can be more tilted towards non-profits and policy consulting the client happens to be government of india my understanding is that 20 25 percentage of their ballpark it's a ballpark number of their clients could be governments but largely they focus on social impact consulting because they look at 20 25 percentage of government hence i actually wanted to share their name in the list as well and then of course internationally right i was working at tony blair institute for global change um i am just sharing this but please do
12:20 know when you are applying internationally they do look for a lot of things for example do you have any so for example when i got into tony blair to work as an advisor to tony blair i already had public policy work at a national level i had international exposure during my master's or an mba or and lastly i already had management consulting experience all these three things combined together for me to land that public policy advisory role at an international level and international firms typically very uh they look for proof of concept do you have management consulting and special international experience before because they want to know that you are internationally motivated to make a change as well and then of course there are big um the
13:05 mbbs right mackenzie public sector is really good practice in northern america and similarly we have bcg public sector practice very powerful both in india in middle east and of course in other regions as well and then of course so you have other management consulting firms so that's step number one why am i sharing these this list of this is an exemplary list right it's not exhaustive it's just very illustrative um of implementation and strategy firm so that you even know what kind of firms are actually doing policy consulting work if you do not even know what kind of firms are out there how would you even go about and apply so that's step number one for all of you ah before we move to step number two be sure to subscribe to this channel because i intend to put out daily videos
13:52 on career advancement personal finance and productivity hacks moving on um the next step is definitely about designing your cvs oh my how important is that people typically do really shitty job at this please do yourself a favor do not submit a shitty quality cv consulting cvs and policy consulting cvs look very similar for example you need to make sure you quantify each and every aspect of your work people typically struggle with that if you realize that you are not good at quantifying your existing work it may be a little hint towards the fact that you might not make a good management consultant or policy consultant i'm sorry about this but management consultants and policy consultants are actually obsessed with numbers um even at when i was in groupon india even when
14:38 i was not actually management consultant i would always end up doing a quantification of my work it was very innate in me and that's what my observation has been for most of my friends when i was working bcg um it's a skill that can be nurtured as well but if you realize that you do not enjoy it at all then it could be a red signal and then of course they look for sky spike you need to have one extraordinary element amongst your education experience or extracurricular i'll be happy to share across the link of victor chang's uh resume um advisory blog it really helped me during my journey uh but at the same time it will take hard work i've shared this uh link with a couple of people and i've been surprised they still did shoddy job at building their resume uh if you're lazy
15:25 about building a resume if you're lazy about your own career i'm sorry nobody frankly on this planet can help you so there is no shortcut about it you have to make your good um cv so that's step number two for you in order to build a career step number three is of course apply on the website and get a referral if you can reach out to the managers of the firms where you have seen that opening so you need to know that policy consulting largely is a very small niche circle there are few people who have worked in policy consulting it's kind of like impact investing in india there are few people people know people uh there are few firms right it's an upward journey almost 10 years ago there was no concept of policy consulting bilateral entrance right in india and of course in middle east or in european region but now this
16:11 trend is rising but still i would say it's this covidius nish circle so you need to make sure that you can reach out to few people please do not write paragraphs i get almost 300 in-mail messages on a daily basis on linkedin with these long paragraphs with their cv attach hey can you refer me it doesn't work like that you need to just write two or three lines build credibility in those two three lines why should they help you or not someone else if you're from good institute if you have worked with good leaders if you have actually worked at really good organization please throw that in it is okay to name names at times um especially for when you're trying to cold email people cold emails can be tricky but they have worked fantastically well for me as well so write to them and see if they would like to advise you or guide you uh for
16:58 you to be able to get that job and then on that call see if they can end up referring you most of the referrals do not actually end up uh by asking for a referral until or unless the organizations have a referral ecosystem many organizations especially mid-sized do not have a referral system if you find that the reference system does not exist then the only hope and the only advice that i would give to you would be to actually reach out to a mid manager or a senior manager especially a senior manager and get on a short call with them write to them on linkedin thread them actually a cold in mail message and see if they would be willing to actually advise you how to go about that process people are typically really nice in terms of helping people provided you write them a credible short relevant message
17:44 if you would be interested about how to write cold emails or if you like my content feel free to comment uh it definitely motivates me to actually bring out the best value for all of you that brings me to my last point and the most important point so step number one just to synthesize we looked at the forms right these these are illustrative like i said step number two is you actually build a kick ass cv step number three is you go on the job uh pro opening you apply and step number four is the last bonus point which is that you prepare for policy cases a lot of ggi fellows in their interviews actually tell us that they've reached the finals not final stage the first stage of fsg interviews or for example government of india advisory interviews but they failed they were rejected why
18:31 because just to be impulsive they ended up going through step one to step three but they were not prepared for step four for example at global governance initiative we have a mentor from bain who prepares people for policy consulting interviews in fact we have an in-house schrodinger which is ai based consulting policy consulting case interview prep and of course for management consulting as well so you can prepare at any time you want without being dependent on a mentor but of course we have a hybrid ecosystem as well policy consulting cases especially are more i would say trickier than management consulting private sector cases why because they are abstracting each other at least in management consulting you would know that i am solving a profitability problem which is revenue minus cost revenue is price into volume cost is fixed cost plus variable
19:17 cost right you can start you have something to talk for initial two minutes but in policy consulting cases these are really abstract cases right for example how do you increase the tax to gdp ratio of a country it's an abstract case how do you go about actually solving that case or how do you actually double farmers income in agricultural domain these cases take way more structure way more practice way more experience especially from experienced professional so just saying at global governance initiative we provide those uh help shall you be interested but at least from awareness point of view please do yourself a favor do not be in that rejected pool just because you were not prepared for uh policy consulting cases that's all i had to share in this video
20:02 of how to make a career in public policy i hope you're liking my content please give it a thumbs up please click on the bell icon so that you're notified every day as i am planning to put out content please take care stay safe bye subscribe right now so that you get notified every time every day whenever i'm putting up my videos on career advancement personal finance and lots of productivity [Music]
