Down On Consulting

Anyone been to scribd.com?

You wont believe what you can find there. Try a search for mkinsey for example. I wont link directly to it, cause im not so sure all that stuff isnt copyrighted, but you can find a lot of stuff there. Complete wetfeet guides... etc. Or try a search for "MBA".

thanks rhyme, now i can look busy staring at my monitor all day.

You also forgot:
13. move the needle
14. at 30,000 feet

But you passed the test.

Rhyme and I were being facetious, buddy. Sorry about that.

Bingo, but a great doctor will convince the patient to take the medicine and then monitor their progress.

But if you didn't drink and smoke so much, you probably wouldn't have gotten sick in the first place.

Yeah, they even have the full text of the 911 Commission Report. Great database.

Being able to point the finger at somebody else is, indeed, a benefit of hiring an external consulting firm. Especially for layoffs. When you see a consultant appear and then employees disappear a few days later, don't always believe that it was the consultant who drove them out. Especially if the CEO says "Well, Consulting Firm X told us to do it." You don't make those kinds of life-changing decisions without at least scrutinizing the consultant's analysis.

Yeah, but those substance abuse problems are probably the result of issues that started in early childhood.

Enough with the analogies people! We get the point!



lol!! Business jargon?! Where? When?

Edit: lol, i'm probably offending someone, i'll edit this out.

One more note from me, and this is an obvious but not-often-talked-about piece of advice.

If you want to be in a consulting firm after b-school, please take into account the offices that you are applying to. It matters - more than the consulting firms will tell you. Consider these facts:

- Supply and demand matters. If you want to work in New York, well so does everybody else. Put New York as your first choice and you are jumping into an excessively competitive pool.
- Diversity matters. Nobody wants their office to be full of people all from the same school. So if you're from Stanford and want to work in San Francisco, or Kellogg and want to work in Chicago, then you're placing yourself into an excessively large pool. On the other hand, if you're from Stanford and want to work in Chicago, or Kellogg and want to work in San Francisco, then you've just made your life that much easier.
- Fit matters. Want to work in Los Angeles? Sounds great...do you think you fit in with LA people at your b-school? Trying to prove to a consulting firm that you "fit" is difficult enough without also trying to adjust your personality to match a local office.

DO YOUR RESEARCH - put just as much effort (or more) into studying the culture of each consulting firm as you did when you applied to b-schools. Do not declare office preferences without thinking this strategic element through. If you're dying to be a consultant, but aren't tied down anywhere and know you're going to be traveling all the time, then play it as safe as you can. I hear Cleveland and Denver are nice.

Funny, I've never heard that about Cleveland.

Of course, I'm sure you are right that competition for jobs there will be less intense.[/quote]

Hi guys, very useful thread here, thanks to all the people who shared their experiences. I have a couple questions:

1) I am a hard working and ambitious person...but if I want to sleep 8 hours a day and work out twice a week, is that feasible as a MC? I am assuming IB is not possible if I want that kind of lifestyle, but maybe MC?

2) How good is the compensation? Is it much worse than IB or comparable? What's the salary range say coming right out of bschool, after 3 years, and after 5 years? What's the career progression?

3) Anybody know about MC in Asia? Is it the same lifestyle? same pay as the western world? I am talking about McK BCG and Bain in particular.

4) Is it possible to work in MC for a few years, then switch to PE/VC/HF? Is that option available?

5) What do you guys think of an MC internship? I heard it's not necessary to get into the field? So what would you recommend for internship? Maybe an IB internship?

Thanks

It is feasible to do it if you are productive, although you may need to sacrifice some other things. It's more feasible after the first year or so. Work-life balance becomes better over time.

You're looking at a six figure salary out of b-school. I think that compensation is maybe half of IB, but I'm not sure. MC compensation would probably double within 3 years, including bonuses. Career progression is that you're a consultant out of b-school, leading to manager and then partner. From analysis of a specific part of a project, to controlling the entire recommendation, to selling new projects.

In my firm, Asia definitely works more hours than the US. The compensation is different, although I'm not sure if it's more or less. A consultant in Asia will have a great quality of life.

That option is available and not uncommon. Those fields often leverage headhunters that consistently go after consultants.


You should do an internship in an area that you would like to do full-time. So if that's MC, try to get MC. Make sure you apply other places in case you need to use a backup. But no, you don't need a MC internship to get the full-time offer.

PE is coming up in a big way in India. A lots of PE shops (the bigs ones esp) are increasing their presence in India, and most of their recruits are ex McK people. Blackstone and Warburg Pincus are examples.

Hi,
Sorry in case my questions are very silly.
I am working for a well known MNC as an IT Engineer and have a good technical and client interfacing role

I would like to expand my scope to management and interaction with business team and clients.

How is MC different from this in the perspective the kind of job they do ?

Is it much more technical ?
Or it is business analysis, pre sales etc ?

Also in case I take up an MBA from a top school (top 20 or so) in US with the knowledge and degree can I get good ROI in an Asian country ?

Can anybody with a software background elaborate on the kind of work profile a MC has after an MBA ?

Thanks in advance, hope I have not digressed much from the topic under discussion.