Consulting Q&A - Stelle Fragen rund um Deine Karriere in unserem Consulting-Forum

Hi there,

I would recommend the following steps to maximize the likelihood to land an offer:

1. Define a calendar for your preparation. Check if there is any deadline for the applications. Then identify how many hours you have before that and allocate a time slot for preparation in your calendar for each day, working on the points below. Many people need 100+ hours to be ready before the interview so you can keep that as a benchmark
2. Read Case In Point or Case Interview Secrets for a general understanding of what a consulting interview is. Don’t focus on the structures proposed in the books, as they are not good enough nowadays.
3. Start reading good MBA Consulting Handbooks – you can find several for free online (Insead is a good one to start). Read the cases and try to apply your structure to solve them. Whenever you see there is something missing, upgrade your structure with the new insides. Try to read at least a new case per day – in this way you will absorb better the information with constant learning.
4. After the first 5-10 cases in books/handbooks and basic theory, start to practice live. PrepLounge can be helpful to connect with other candidates for that. There is a relevant part of the interview score that is based on your communication, which you cannot practice at all if you read cases only. Keep track of your mistakes and see if you repeat them. If so, try to identify the source of the mistake (feedback of experienced partners would be particularly useful for this). Be sure to focus on both the behavioural part and the case part. The case part should also cover market sizing, mental math and graph analysis.
5. Before your application, be sure to review your CV and Cover, so that they are in the required format for a consulting application
6. At least 3 weeks before the application deadline, start networking to find referrals for your target companies.
7. Before the interviews, be sure to prepare your questions for the interviewer –great way to show you prepared in advance and to connect with the interviewer for a good final impression.

If you want to spend few hours only instead of 100+ and cover everything mentioned above, I developed a program to precisely do that. You can click at the following link to find more:

https://www.preplounge.com/en/profile.php?id=2433#coaching-package

After this program, you will know exactly what to expect in your interview, what to work on, and how to focus on the real differentiator to land a top consulting offer.

Please feel free to PM me if you need more information.

Best,

Francesco

Hi Anonymous,

The referral is not bound to the specific office - so perfectly fine if your referrers are located in a different office.

And yes, you are right - referrals are now more important than ever!

Hope that helps - if so, please be so kind to give it a thumbs-up with the green upvote button below!

Robert

Hi Gabriel!

Do you mean any specific book? On which topic?

I think you'd better start with books on branding, marketing and saling or hire some experts on that, in case your expert level is fine.

Best,

André

Hi Anonymous,

As far as I remember is just takes you to the next round.. no intermediate feedback between.

Hope that helps - if so, please be so kind to give it a thumbs-up with the green upvote button below!

Robert

Hello Anonymous,

These are actually great questions. I cannot the latest one but for the first one here are some elements:
1. experience is valuable: our clients tend to be more demanding for the expertise and in-depth on-the-field knowledge. That's why having consultants who went through a Ph.D. & an industry experience can be very beneficial because you are more mature and knowledgeable from an operational and topic perspective.
2. Age is not a criterion of selection: Our clients are asking us to be supported by people who are from diverse backgrounds. And they want to be supported by consultants who have been in the field and tend to give more credibility to consultants who are "older"
So I would actually say that your age is an asset!
Let me know should you have any other questions,
Best,
Norah

Hello there,
That's a great question. PM me if interested.
The best way to prep is also work in the field of PE in your current consulting firm (try to get staffed on DD projects)
Thanks
Norah

Glasses are totally fine - a lot of consultants have it and you definitely won't feel out of place. For braces why not consider invisalign? It's really good and no one can tell

Hi!

You are very right to doubt this statement. In fact, the provided information is NOT justifying the statement! "More valuable" has to be defined - otherwise it is impossible to come to a verdict. If "valuable" is defined in terms of profits that a market entrant can expect, then the per capita consumption is just one of multiple driving factors. Others include competing suppliers of the same good, price level, country-specific cost positions, etc.

So either you have just provided a small snippet of the relevant information, or the solution of this case is (as it happens very oftne in case books) flawed and derived from weak thinking. I would almost bet that the latter is the case - this is why I always warn my mentees to not waste their time with the solutions provided in case books. They are almost never good, let alone great. Thinking rigorously will allow to spot such flaws more or less instantly.

Bust of success with the further preparation.

Cheers, Sidi

Hey A,

In my career I had two transfers:

1. From the Financial Services practice to Automotive within the same region
2. From Munich to Dubai office

I need to say that transfers are a pretty tricky thing and require a lot of sensitive political skills.

Different companies offer three types of transfers:

1. Temporary project assignment abroad (for the duration of the project)
2. Short-term office exchange programms (usually between 3 and 12 months depending on the company)
3. Permanent office transfer

All of them are different in terms of difficulty to get. While project assignments abroad are quite common and easy to get, permanent office transfers are very challenging and require hard work from your end and a bit of luck.

In any way you would need the support of your mentor, the staffing manager in your region as well as partner in the targeted office, who will push your transfer.

If you want to live on the west coast or Europe why don't you apply directly there?

If you need any help, just drop me a PM.

Happy to share my experience.

Best,

André

Hi there,

in the first months you usually have:

1. An introductory week with some training. The formal training for new joiners may happen straight when you join or a few months after, as it is structured at regular intervals
2. Work on either:
   1. A project, if you are immediately staffed
   2. Proposals or support to other teams, if you are not staffed

Below you can also find a list of things that could be useful to practice during your first weeks:

1. Take notes when your manager tells you something – this will help you to remember details and will show you care about them to the team.
2. Always double-check. The first impression is very important in consulting: if you show you are reliable from the beginning, you create a reputation of a reliable person. Double checks should be done on expectations for your job, your Excel analysis, your slides – basically everything.
3. Define priorities before starting any set of tasks. The majority of the results usually come from a subset of activities – this is true also for your tasks in consulting. You have to identify which they are and prioritize them – the application of the so-called 80-20 rule or Pareto Principle. Alignment on priorities and expectations is particularly important with your manager at the beginning of the project.
4. Socialize with your colleagues and start to build a network. Consulting is a people business and you should build a good network both within and outside the company. A good start is key to develop good relationships long-term
5. Organize your private life activities. You want to organize your calendar to leave some space for personal activities (sport/ friends/ family). This is not easy but can be managed if you organize well, and long-term will be critical to keep a balance between work and private life. Also, it is better to align with your manager/teammates from the beginning on your core needs, so that there are no surprises later on.
6. Ask for feedback every two-three weeks – this will show you are proactive and willing to learn.
7. Ask for help when you don't know what to do – better to let know you are in trouble with meeting a deadline then missing the deadline.
8. Be social and respectful with the support staff – these people are great and influential as well in the company.

Hope this helps,

Francesco

Hi, it's great that the interviewer offered you this! It is always a benefit to have good internal contacts.

I would not worry too much about what position you will apply for in 2 years. It just depends on what professional experience you will make until then.

But instead I would rather apply for other big consulting firms. You can always try to do a transfer from one consulting firm to McK.

Feel free to reach out to me directly.

All the best,
Giulia

Hi there,

Old and new competitors is a horrible way to break it down! (sorry)

What does this split actually get you/help you organize?

Rather, your main objective here it to figure out what we as a company are doing wrong.

When you think about it, "wrong" can be an absolute/internal thing or it can be a relative/comparative thing.

As such, a reasonable bucketing is:

Company

• Have we seen rising costs?
  • FC? VC?
  • Split by store
  • Split by product
  • Split by geography
  • ^i.e. some stores/products/geographies doing well and others not or universal?
• Have we seen falling revenues?
  • Absolute revenues? Margins?
  • Have we lowered our price?
  • Are we selling fewer items?
  • Split by store
  • Split by product
  • Split by geography
  • ^i.e. some stores/products/geographies doing well and others not or universal?

Competition

• Is all of our competition doing well or just a few?
• If all, why?
• If a few, what makes them different?
• If doing well for x, y, z reasons, what are we not doing?
• ^benchmark benchmark benchmark

This is a rough overview. It is not exhaustive nor is it tailored. The independent context, objective, industry, and my clarifying questions completely change what I write in these buckets and how I talk about it, but I hope you get the point :)

Hi Rafic,

It is indeed a good idea to write down the main mistakes you make in a document.

You should keep details of all the areas you could improve. Some examples include:

• Initial structure
• Graph interpretation
• Math structure
• Math mistakes
• Conclusion
• Communication

For each area, you may recognize your own mistakes or receive feedback by peers pointing out what you could improve. Ideally you want to find peers able to provide detailed and relevant feedback – the more detailed the better.

Hope this helps,
Francesco

Hi,

Your approach is indeed a good one.

If you want to master your market sizing skills I suggest that you should focus on segmentations patterns. You can use the following segmentation for market sizes:

B2C:
- Demographics (Age, education, income, family size, race, gender, occupation, nationality)
- Behavioral (Purchasing behavior, customer journey stage, occasion & timing,
customer loyalty & interest, risk tolerance, user status)
- Psychographic (Lifestyle, personality traits, values, opinions, interests of consumers)
- Geographic (Geographical boundaries)

B2B:
- Company characteristics (Industry, company size, number of employees)
- Geography (Geographical boundaries)
- Purchasing Approach (Occasion & timing, customer capabilities, nature of existing relationship)
- Personal Characteristics (Loyalty, risk attitude, user status)

B2G:
- Demographics (Type of agency, size of budget, the amount of autonomy)
- Geographic (Geographical boundaries)
- Government Tier (Federal , State, Local, Quasi-governmental, International)
- Bid type (Closed, Open)

But sometimes you don’t need to segmentation. Here is an example of case that could be solved with high level top down approach - estimate the size of credit card market in the US:

In this case you should follow demand-driven approach to market sizing. By market size I would assume value of credit card debt in the U.S. (not the number of Credit Cards issued).

First of all you can start by outlying an algorithm which would consist of 3 big steps:

1. Total addressable market

X

2. Product penetration

X

3. Average ticket size

Now let’s see how to calculate each of these blocks:

1) Total addressable market = US population X % bankable population

2) Product penetration = number of credit cards per capita in US X % of active cards

3) Average ticket size = average credit card limit X %limit usage

• average credit card limit is usually estimated though debt-to-income ratio. In case of credit cards it is 5 monthly salaries on average
• limit usage could be derived from your personal experience but on average it is 20%

Let’s plug-in the data:

1. Total addressable market = 330 mln x 80% bankable population = 264 mln

X

2. Product penetration = 2 X 50%

X

3. Average ticket size = 4k USD X 5 X 20% = 4k USD

Thus credit card market size is 264 mln X 1 X 4k USD ~ 1tn USD

Let’s double check with official statistics. STATISTA.COM provides the following data: Value of credit card debt in the U.S is 0,93 tr USD. Thus our answer is super close

You can also make your calculations a bit more sophisticated if you add segments (e.g. by income or credit score). In this case you would have to provide detailed assumptions on product penetration and average ticket size for each segment.

As for the sources for your assumptions you can use:

• Input from interviewer, well known facts
• Statistical data
• Personal experience, e.g. from casual everyday situations
• Workplace experience, e.g. from working on projects in the industry
• An educated guess

Best,

Anton