Meet Bain & Company’s MBA Class Of 2018

Luiz Paulo Fabre

Bain & Company São Paulo

Hometown: Florianopolis, Brazil

MBA program, Concentration: The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Strategic Management, Finance, Economics

Undergraduate school, major: Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Mechanical Engineering

Why did you choose to work at Bain? Usually people praise Bain for its results, people and culture. I was already convinced that Bain focuses on delivering value to its clients. However, it is harder to understand how consulting companies differentiate themselves on culture. I decided to reach out and talk to former consultants to see if they still had a good impression about Bain. I ended up talking to four Bain alumni who had left Bain at different moments in their careers, and what impressed me was the fact that none of them had anything negative to say about Bain. They still thought Bain was an exceptional place to work at and kept close friends from their time at Bain. This is what convinced me that Bain was the right place for me.

What did you love about the business school you attended? The strong “pay it forward” culture that Booth cultivates. Booth attracts an amazing set of accomplished people who work hard to reach their goals, but harder to help you when you need it—whether you need help during recruiting, classes, extracurricular activities. And somehow we still found time to have a lot of fun in the process.

What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned so far at Bain? How to break big problems into smaller ones. Clients don’t hire Bain to solve simple problems; the problems we tackle will always be big and complex. One of the most important skills I have learned is to distill the problem down to smaller, more manageable, elements. By doing this, it is easier to identify what are the main drivers of the problem that, if solved, will have the biggest positive result for the client. This is especially important with Bain’s general management approach, where consultants cut their teeth in a variety of industries. Changing industries several times forces you to continuously hone your approach for solving niche industry-specific problems!

Which manager or peer has had the biggest impact on you at Bain, and how has he or she made you a better consultant? Guilherme (Gui), a manager from the São Paulo office, has had the biggest impact on me in my career at Bain so far. I worked with Gui for 10 weeks during my MBA summer internship in 2017. Gui is an exceptional manager and was the person who taught me that it is possible to have a sustainable life in consulting. By quickly identifying the main priorities and getting rid of unnecessary work, Gui showed me how to best use my working hours to be able to leave enough time for my personal life. I believe that being able to find this balance is what will keep me in consulting long term.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to work for Bain? Reach out and talk to us about Bain! I truly believe that Bain is an exceptional place to work in the consulting industry, and the easiest way for you to understand what we mean when we say that our culture and people are special is to talk to people who are living it. Don’t be afraid to contact people you don’t know!

My greatest personal or professional accomplishment is…One of my greatest professional accomplishments was designing and finding funds for a reciprocating rasp for orthopedic and prosthetic surgery, while working in Germany. The device is used to reduce the damage caused by regular drills during hip replacement surgeries, making patient recovery more comfortable. A couple years after the project, it was awarded first place in an Innovation Award for the Fraunhofer Institute and second place in the International Bionic Award. Working on a device to help alleviate other people’s pain was very fulfilling for me, and the awards were the cherry on top.

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