Class Of ’17: Meet Bain & Co’s Newest MBA Hires

An MIT Sloan MBA, Pablo Sanchez Servitje is now working for Bain in Mexico City

Pablo Sanchez Servitje

Bain Mexico City

Hometown: Mexico City, Mexico

MBA program: MIT Sloan School of Management

Undergraduate school, major: Anahuac University, Economics; National Autonomous University of Mexico, Law

What industry or project type are you focused on in your current case?

Applying Agile methodology to improve customer service and employee satisfaction in the branches of a major bank

Why did you choose to work at Bain?

The people and the career opportunities Bain opens for consultants.

Before joining Bain, the people I met in Bain’s Mexico City Office showed me what makes the firm such an extraordinary place to work: a collaborative spirit, devotion to their work and a commitment to excellence in solving complex problems for clients. I wanted to be part of this team of extraordinarily talented and fun people.

Bain is also a great place to learn about the capabilities and industries I find exciting through case experience, exposure to experts and top-notch training programs. It opens up opportunities to work on those topics within Bain and beyond. The firm has exceeded my expectations in this respect. It´s hard to think of another place where top talent and firm leadership will invest so much in mentoring you with the shared goal of developing you into one of the best in almost any sector that you chose.

What lesson from business school best prepared you for your career at Bain?

Only a company that has a clear sense of where and how it can win, and aligns the rest of its decisions to that strategy, can truly succeed. It seems simple, but on my cases at Bain, I’ve realized how hard it is for most companies to get this right. There’s no magic technique or tool that will reveal the right strategy for a company; it involves judgement and requires a very structured thought processes. Bain teams are experts in helping guide companies on their path to victory, and the time I spent at business school learning how to think about strategy prepared me to quickly become an active contributor within my team.

What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned so far at Bain?

Great teams, not great individuals, achieve the most successes in business. Bain delivers such great results because it is extremely collaborative with the client.

In my current case, in which we are helping a bank improve customer service at their huge branch network, we are actually co-creating the solutions with the client’s multifunctional teams. In this process, Bain identifies the most impactful initiatives among the range of possibilities, tests them, and ensures alignment with global best practices. The client teams bring the expertise that makes the initiatives feasible from an operational, commercial, HR, IT and risk perspective.

What do you want your career to look like in 10 years?

There are three things I would like to do in the next 10 years:

First, I would like to have a robust consulting career, specializing in the financial services sector. Bain is giving me exposure to top management decisions and even frontline operations in the area;

Second, I would love to have considerable experience in the management team of an emerging company— perhaps taking a leave of absence or even beyond Bain. I am glad to see that promising start-ups are hiring Bain colleagues to lead their expansions into different countries, so apparently our firm is proving to be a great school for start-up management teams;

Finally, I hope to try my hand at politics at some point, to help my make my country a better place. At Bain I’m having the chance to work in cases that involve extremely important public sector projects.

Even for a person with such a rare combination of ambitions like myself, Bain is proving to be a great place to prepare and achieve each one.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to work for Bain?

Two things: prepare and connect.

Practice cases and interviews as much as you can. Be patient and take your time before you learn to have a structured approach to a business problem, and to present your personal story in a compelling way. Get in touch with the people from the Bain office you want to work in, and have conversations about their career, their life and how they relate to their colleagues. This will allow you to picture yourself working at Bain and see how you fit into its culture, which will come out in your interviews.

My greatest personal or professional accomplishment is…shortly before college graduation, I was appointed Committee Chairman of the youth wing of a major political party in Mexico, a 50,000-member organization. My task was to oversee a reform project that would reshape the organization. After navigating deep rivalries among top leaders in the party and negotiating with leadership, the project was approved.

A fun fact about me people would be surprised to know is…I was elected as a Substitute Representative to my State Legislature at age 26.

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