5+ years Postdoc want to move to Consulting

[devon2018]

Hello Everyone,
Please help/advice me. I am at my wit's end. I absolutely abhor my academic job. It feels so dead end. No team, no promotion and even if I get a grant I am only going up one grade and end up working all on my own.

I am looking to move into consulting and started updating my LinkedIn. I got an initial few good responses as a data analyst which pays even less than what I was getting paid in my PhD. But I just don't want to move to a data analyst post rather to a consulting firm. I am also happy to take a pay cut as I know the industry is fast paced so I will eventually reach where I want to be in a few years. Maybe not with my first attempt.

Has anyone been at this stage before? Any advice (especially on my nerves) during technical interviews or interviews for consulting would be really helpful.

Which industry?
If you aspire to advise Industry it may be easier with a few years of industry experience under your belt on top of your academic experience. Depends entirely on your field though.

GahWhatever, I want to move into healthcare consulting. I am applying to options I am getting on LinkedIn but no avail. I have got more negative responses to consulting than data analyst position. I have had two negative interview responses from data analyst post because I couldn't answer their basic technical questions. I guess on the first occasion I was nervous and on the second occasion, I just couldn't hear the person's question on phone. I am trying to keep doing my postdoc work while taking calls so have to move to a cafe or something but they are really noisy these days.

I am trying to get that essential industry experience but how to start? Is pay cut the only way to go forward?

Alas, yes.
Know that if you are good your development will be accelerated compared to peers but at the time of employment your excellent skills in one area will not offset the fact that you are inexperienced in the role. Think of your Industry experience phase as an investment for your future career.

On interviews: remember that although you are an expert in a specific area you aren't an all rounder, so do your revision! Chalk up your 2 interviews so far as experience and go away and find out how you should have answered those questions.

Thank you, really appreciate your confirmatory message, gives me some hope that I am not going completely mad looking at the numbers. I have been beating myself for failing on such simple phone interviews. I was never good at phone interviews anyway. Yes, I have collated the questions and proper search on answers for next time.
There is a bigger interview happening next week on advanced technical points in modeling. I am feeling worthless as of now. I just don't feel confident at all that I can even take their questions. I always feel they are judging me at the other end and that despite being an expert I am coming across as a complete idiot. How does one keep their cool with these technical questions?

1. Can you do the job?

If you are confident that you can actually do the job then all you need to do is prove it to the interviewer. Collect your buzzwords so you are speaking the right language (Industry may use different acronyms for example).

1. Research and revise the advanced techniques you may need. Write them out as a list with a coupe of lines as an aide memoir.

Keep practising: obviously you don't know exactly what they'll ask but you need to be fluent and sound confident . You can fake this even if your knees are knocking.

1. Find out all you can about the systems they are using. If you are more experienced doing the same thing on a different system brush up on the one you need.

1 again, double check you can do the job. If you are feeling frail there's no point putting yourself through this, with a pay cut to boot, to put yourself in an impossible situation.

The job is via a recruitment agent, I am googling on similar roles to make sure I know what is required to do. I am also practicing the model required to talk about. My own work has been very much modeling based but I somehow don't feel confident. I feel overwhelmed when I am asked to remember all. Also, I may have done fancy work but as an academic, I am used to presenting it in a very simple way so I lose all the complexity faced when I was working on it. I am feeling very overwhelmed.

Thank you GahWhatever for your advice, it really is useful and helpful.