Guide to Consulting Recruiting - Part 1

What is consulting? What are the pros and cons? What are the firms that hire and any differences between them? How much do they pay?

If you’re already researching about these topics, I guess you are kindof decided about applying to business school. You may have already heard some / all of the below phrases when it comes to consulting:

- Consulting is b-school experience continued for 2+ more years
- Want C-suite exposure from day 1 of your job? Consulting is the place to go
- If you are unsure of what you want to do after your MBA: go to consulting!

I can go on, but the fact of the matter is – most of these are true. Consulting lets you work with a diverse team of exceptional colleagues on a variety of exciting short-term projects with a range of companies. You could do an operations improvement project for an auto manufacturer, a customer experience transformation project for a telecom provider and 5-year strategy project for a digital banking client all in your first year itself.

You work with a client with a team, which mostly look like this - Partner/Principal in the firm leading the project, a Manager leading the delivery of work and 2-4 associates/analysts doing the grunt work. You’ll be one of those grunt-work associates after business school when you join a consulting firm.

Side note: McKinsey calls projects a “study”, Bain calls them a “case” - it’s all the same, but firms love their internal lingos.

Old school analysis method - let’s look at some pros and cons to help you think:

Pros:

- Fast-paced work
- Steep learning curve
- Exceptional colleagues (well most of them)
- Project based work (can always eventually roll-off)
- Broad exposure to different types of industries (Banking, Manufacturing, Oil & Gas, Automotive etc.)
- Broad exposure to different types of work (Digital, Ops, Strategy, M&A etc.)
- Exciting travel perks (Titanium, Platinum, Gold is all you’ll hear)
- Great pay (more on that below)
- Fast promotions (if you’re doing well of course – heard of up or out?)
- Exit opportunities (industry does love ex-consultants)

Cons:

- Projects can get very challenging/stressful
- Travel burnouts are real
- Superficial exposure (it can all end up being too “high-level”)
- Clients act like they own your soul at times
- It’s a people business, if you don’t gel with your team, can make for a sucky experience

Till the pros outweigh cons for most people – consulting remains one of the most lucrative and exciting opportunities for folks out of business school.

Let’s get to the point – let’s talk names. These are some of the most common names you’ll hear on-campus:


Ok, how do we differentiate between these? A lot of these firms do similar work and you can find them competing amongst themselves for most clients out in the market. These are some of the things that typically set firms apart from one another:

- Size: E.g. McKinsey and Deloitte are large – most $$ in consulting revenues and higher number of consultants
- Specializations: Some firms have a specialty and reputation in the market – E.g. Kearney is known for its procurement and supply chain expertise while Oliver Wyman is popular name in the financial services industry, Bain is prominent for its work in the PE space.
- Global footprint: Most of these firms are cross continents however aren’t the premier firms in all countries or have focus areas too.
- Culture: This is the tricky one, which gets very hard to define – but more about that below.

2. How to recruit for consulting? What to do before b school if anything? What to do the first second and third month and what is the timeline like?

Yay – you’re at business school now. Most business schools have a very capable career office that will guide you through the structured process that is consulting recruiting. It’s a pretty standard process across schools, spanning over months – summarized as below:

Phase 1: Learn about the firms

This involves attending their corporate presentations, signing up for coffee chats, meeting folks at happy hours at campus. Firms want to tell students about themselves, especially what makes them stand out and how they are rated the “best place to work for” by multiple awards. They’ll give away swag, book the fanciest places in town to impress candidates and it’s a fun and enjoyable time to be swayed by them. I would encourage everyone to make the most of this free food and drinks to actually start understanding how every firm differs from one another. Doing this basic homework/research is key to Phase 2 of the cycle. This typically goes on for the whole first month, with firms spreading out their events and competing for time to meet their future consultants/budding MBA students.

Phase 2: Network with the firms

This is the next 1-2 months of rigorous networking where firms also want to see you put in effort in learning about them. They want to see a cultural fit with you and want you to put the effort to find fit with them. Connect with more people in the firms you like, set up calls with consultants who have worked in areas you are interested in, visit offices if possible and showcase your interest in the firm. In parallel being preparing for interviews.

Phase 3: Interviewing

Preparation for the interviews starts around month 2 and will go on till you get those offers in. Two large components of the interview are: Case Interview and a Behavioral/Fit interview. Most school campus will have a robust prep course/plan for their students to get exposed to and practice casing. Casing with MBA seniors is one the best way to get a broad variety of cases. Most firms do not as much time allotted to the behavioral interview as the casing interview, but it is as important as casing. Apart from testing your skills as a potential consultant in their firm, people who are interviewing want to know if you’re a fit for the firm and answer the key question – “can I put this person in front of my client?” This makes the fit interview component crucial in itself. Prep, prep and prep with the career office, friends, peer, MBA seniors and your developed connections in the firm. Most firms have a round 1 on-campus with Managers/Principals and a final round in your choice of office with Partners.

Phase 4: Decisions

The best part of consulting interviews? Decisions right away. Most firms will inform you about your offer or no by the end of the day you finished your final round interview. This makes the process go superfast. You could potentially have a round 1 on-campus on a Tuesday, fly to your office on a Thursday, interview Friday and have an offer in hand before the weekend. It’s time to enjoy the rest of your MBA year 1 and summer break before you go on for your internship!

3. Any other advice for wannabe consultants

- Talk to your friends and family who are / were consultants – learn about everyone’s experience. Since work/timelines/projects change all the time, everyone has unique experiences to share and can help you learn more about “life as a consultant”
- Realize the fact you will get sucky projects, managers and teammates at times in your career as a consultant. And you have to be okay with that. You will eventually rolloff but a consulting career has its highs and lows – understand some of the hard times people have had to face to be sure you will be okay with them.
- The travel will get to you, know your limits with it. However, much of a seasoned consultant you are, travel burnout is real. Firms these days are implementing lot of great policies around travel breaks/time off/remote weeks/local work etc. Know that you will have flexibility to manage that for yourself in every firms and try to learn how every firm’s policies are around those.
- Research other career options too- so you know your options at school, and you are taking an informed decision about pursuing this route. It will also help you decide upon plan B pursuits, because I’ll be honest, >50% of your class would be aggressively pursuing consulting but <30% would end up getting a job in consulting.

This post is contributed by a final year MBA student going into a big consulting firm who wishes to remain anonymous but will be happy to answer questions!

Next Week - Nailing the case interview. Stay tuned!