Back-up for consulting

Question

So I want to get into consulting, and I am going to put 90% of my efforts towards this industry. But... I should also have a back-up right? I have heard consulting interships are really hard to get. So, which industry should be my back-up? I have only 2 years of WE so general management is not an option

. I have read some parts of the case interview bible 'Case in Point' and it say there that i-banking is a very common back-up for consulting because the set of skills that a candidate needs for both is the same. But ... I don't think I like i-banking at all and I think I am not the i-banking kind of person. Even though the skills set migh be the same I think the personality of consultants vs. i-bankers is totally different. soo what are my back-up options?, any ideas?

riverripper · Answer

No idea what your background is but I have heard getting internships in MC is much tougher than getting a full-time job so you will definitely want a back up for your internship.

pelihu · Answer

Generally speaking, that book that you're referring to is talking out of its ass, at least as far a internships are concerned. Investment banking wraps up recruiting before most of the other sectors start. If by back-up you mean you'll something you can target if you find out you didn't get a consulting job, then banking wouldn't be an option.

I guess you could throw your name in for banking, knowing that it isn't your first choice, but banks generally aren't going to hold your offer open while you try to continue interviewing. At Darden, the policy is that students have 3 weeks to decide after receive offers, but they start putting the pressure on right away - I mean like the same night. Very few people are able to hold out for a week, let alone 4 or 6 weeks waiting for consulting firms to decide.

The other obvious flaw is that you need to devote serious time to both banking and consulting recruiting efforts in order to make it onto closed lists and ultimately recieve an offer. Throughout the fall, it felt like I was attending 1-3 events a day, including company briefings, lunches, dinners, cocktails, poker nights, golf, wine tastings, etc... I don't see how you could possibly navigate that for two industries like banking and consulting. No way.

The natural backup for consulting is general management or marketing, or some general MBA type job like a rotational program or something like that. BTW, general management is an option for almost anyone at a top MBA program, even if they have little experience. But whoever wrote that case interview bible you're talking about knows nothing about internship recruiting.

Darden2010 · Answer

Thank you guys!! My background is in big 4 accounting (I am an auditor) and I have no idea how MC firms would like that, but I would imagine they will appreciate the fact that I analyze financial statements and internal controls of the companies all day long

Anyways, I am not going to apply to IB internships because I just wouldn't like such career, it is not my cup of tea

. I would really like to use general management as back-up but I am just worried that I won't be very competitive because of my short WE (almost 2 years). Also, the book does not suggest that you apply to both IB and MC it just said that these two industries compete for the same talent (people with the same skills), and that if MC firms ask you what other industries you are interested in to tell them IB is quite OK. The author was commenting this in a section where he talked about how to approach the 'who else you are interviewing with' question.

rhyme · Answer

In general, given consulting as a first choice that means

+
general management
corp finance
corp strategy
new business development
product management
project management
CPG marketing / buyer

-
I Banking 
Investment Management / Equity Research 
Hedge Funds / Funds of Funds
Sales & Trading
Private Equity
Venture Capital

skaballet · Answer

I know several people who did brand over the summer and then MC full-time. If that's something that interests you maybe you should consider it. In reality I don't think it matters that much to MC what you do for your internship. They hire many more for full-time than summer which means they have to take people with a variety of summer experiences. You should probably just start attending some presentations on campus of industries that sound interesting to you and start narrowing down from there.

riverripper · Answer

I dont know if Ross gives access to the vault career guides. At Kellogg we just got free access to all the ones that would be interesting for people going through MBA programs right now...that could be a place to start to figure out what you might want to do as a backup.

KingKREEP · Answer

Yes River. We get free access to a bunch of online resources with the Kresge Library, including the Vault and WetFeet career guides.

Darden2010 · Answer

KK can we access these now? or do we have to wait to get here?

lepium · Answer

I agree with what rhyme said. 
Additionally, backup to M/B/B (if that's what you mean by consulting) =
all the other hundreds of MC firms. There's lots of firms around, so as long as you can get interviews, you should have more consulting backups.

L.

KingKREEP · Answer

Yeah, you can access them with your uniqname.

Darden2010 · Answer

KK are you refering to the free Vault.com gold membership? I just found out we get free gold membership, so I guess we can access the vault guides from the vault.com website. This is so cool !

do all schools do this?

Back-up for consulting

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