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Re: Very non-traditional, very premature profile evaluation [#permalink]
Thank you both for your quick responses and encouragement.

Method- I absolutely intend to sell the **** out of my work experience... that's one thing I've definitely learned to do in my work. :)

I know right now that I'd prefer to stay on the east coast. Beyond that, I intend to do more homework on individual schools and at some point in 2012 start visiting targets. It should be easier now that I've got a better idea of what's realistic. :-D

As for career goals- I agree with you entirely, it's absolutely something I need to better hammer out. As it stands right now I can see myself being interested in a few areas- general management, strategic consulting, or management consulting. I think the latter 2 are areas where the tools I've developed in my work experience would be very useful, though that's just from looking at sample interview case studies that I found online.

On career goals, I have to ask- how specific should I be? Is it enough to say that my skills as a campaign manager would make me an excellent strategic or management consultant? Or do I need to say that my goal is to be a strategic consultant to mid size companies making widget XYZ in the Peoria, IL area? I feel like saying the former is too vague, but saying the latter is kind of absurd. Am I missing something in between these extremes?

Sorry if these are dumb questions, I'm starting from total ignorance on this whole process. Again, thanks so much!
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Director
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Joined: 03 Jun 2010
Status:Go Blue!
Posts: 684
Own Kudos [?]: 157 [0]
Given Kudos: 249
Location: United States (MO)
Concentration: Nonprofit, General Management
Schools: Michigan (Ross) - Class of 2015
GRE 1: Q170 V166
GPA: 3.22
WE:Management Consulting (Non-Profit and Government)
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Re: Very non-traditional, very premature profile evaluation [#permalink]
Haha, yeah you're exactly right on goals scope -- job function + industry should be a good middle ground. For example, management consulting in the healthcare industry. With strategy consulting, you can probably be a bit more vague with industry, and maybe just go with service industries since you have this background in a people-oriented field.

One thing that might help in your school search is to reverse engineer it based on employment, even taking geography into consideration. I lost the website, otherwise I'd post it, but you can find general firm/staff numbers by region or city, then once you have a list of target companies, go to BusinessWeek profiles which list top employers for each MBA program, and find the matches.

You can also do some more mathematical analysis, like.... if Kellogg has roughly 560 in its graduating class, 84% of them are looking for employment, 43% of those people landed in consulting, and 88 ended up at McKinsey, Bain, or Boston, then you can follow:

560 * .84 * .43 = 202 base consulting hires
88 / 202 = 43.5% of all consulting hires landed at MBB

Whereas for Ross:

550 * .84 * .37 = 171 base consulting hires
40 / 171 = 23.4% of all consulting hires landed at MBB

There are definitely schools which are known for consulting like Kellogg and Ross, and firms hire at both, but you'll see much higher density of placement at M7 schools. Make sure you have a couple medium to safe schools like Ross and Fuqua, or even a hair lower as well as a couple big boys.
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Re: Very non-traditional, very premature profile evaluation [#permalink]

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