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

Hi Anonymous,

First of all it's important to understand that consulting firms act more rationally than most other firms (should not be that surprising, but worth mentioning anyway), so if it makes sense business-wise, they will probably do that.

So let's look at your question now. Yes, indeed that is a possibility that well-performing interns might receive full-time offers - maybe not automatically straight away, but potentially with a fast-track recruiting process.

That being said - consulting firms are also profit-oriented companies and partners want to take home a reasonable amount of money (yes, ethics exist too.. but let's keep it simple for now). If demand on HR market (depending on consulting projects and required skills) is exceeding current staff - drop-outs + well-performing interns, then additional recruiting will take place.

Side-note: For now it's difficult to imagine that MBB will completely stop recruiting activities since many bright young candidates are somewhere out on the HR market. However, the bar for getting interview invitations as well as for receiving offers will be rising.

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

Robert

Hi Anonymous,

Assuming you are talking primarily about case interviews (i.e. not personal fit part) I see a gradual shift from theoretical background knowledge to interactive case interviews with other persons.

Depending on your background, the theoretical foundation inkl. clear structured thinking might be there sooner or later. However, I recognize many people studying case interview theory for too long before moving on to interactive case interview prep. It's like learning to drive a car - you definitely need the theory behind, but it won't make you a great driver without enough practice. The same is true for case interviews - it's neither brain surgery nor rocket science, it's mainly persistance in high-quality prep.

One issue I would like to highlight in particular - practicing cases with peers vs. professional coaches is like day vs. night in terms of increasing your case interview proficiency. Most defiinitely you will need both to have reasonable chances especially in current siutation of MBB recruiting - a few sessions with a professional coach to take your learning curve to the next level and actually understand what are good and bad habits during case interviews (how could a peer know that without consulting recruiting experience?), as well as "practice" sessions with peers to apply your learnings from the sessions with a professional coach.

Since I understand that the price tag for a professional coach might be a hurdle for many candidates, I explicitly offer risk-free coachings to guarantee your benefit from a session. Only if we find significant improvements in your case interview skills the session will remain paid - otherwise I will refund your investment immediately after our session (you can read more about it in my profile).

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

Robert

I would look at this angle from three angles:

1. What price do we need to have to be competitive with other market offers (Netflix, Hulu, etc)

2. What value do our customers see in our product and what is their willingness to pay (consumer research driven approach)

3. Cost-based approach (what is the cost of buying the content, operating the platform, and buying CDN capacity, marketing, etc.)

Having previously built a similar product before in my career your pricing decision, in this case, will be very much driven by competitive pressure as pretty much everyone is trying to catch up with Netflix and offer a differentiated product vs them.

I agree with Vlad's analysis.

It is a very complementary business that can be monetized in many different ways. They can charge directly for the service or for premium features that are rolled out over time and leverage the product to create additional advertising space.

As you say it fits in with their mission of bringing people together but these kinds of decisions are made based on profit potential. The fact that it is highly complementary to its existing product means that the likelihood of success is high.

Another interesting angle for Facebook is likely also the additional data that they can collect from the dating product. As you probably already know they already use the data you enter to create the most targeted advertising product out there today.

Hi Anonymous,

having lived in Switzerland for 5 years, part of that time working for the Oliver Wyman Zurich office, normally the requirements are:

(1) Graduate hires: C1 German skills as a lot of clients require teams to speak / work in German, create slides in German and so forth (as a matter of fact, many Swiss clients even prefer Swiss German speaking consultants over German speaking consultants (and yes, Swiss German is an entirely different language). The only exception I encountered was McK as they have an office in Geneva, do a lot of business there and accept French-speaking candidates. However, if you are not fluent in either of the two languages, you should consider investing some time in your German skills - they will test this during your interviews, so it doesn't help simply to state it in your CV.

(2) Experienced hires: No German skills required if you are hired for your expert skills or network and they can afford sending you only to english speaking clients. I have met Italian- / English-speaking, French- / English-speaking and English only-speaking principals / partners working for Swiss offices.

Hope this helps!

Best
Dorothea

Hi!

Clear this out now, at the pre-interview stage – you need to definitely push for the consultant role. Clearing this post-factum is more difficult in my experience.

Best,
Daniel

Hi Pedro,

if you manage to spend some time in MBB before your MBA application, this will increase the chances to be accepted in a top MBA. Your options are not mutual exclusive though, you may try 1 (apply to MBB) and if doesn’t work go for 2 (stick to SK).

In terms of timing: recruiting is slowing down globally, including in the Middle East – I would try to connect with someone in MBB in your target geographies to understand the status there and if it makes sense to apply now or to wait few months.

As a side note: an MBA is not the best path to entrepreneurship – you would learn far more saving 1-2 years and 100k-150k required for the MBA unless sponsored and investing them in a new company. Even if you fail you will learn a lot more for your following venture.

Best,

Francesco

Hello!

If you are joining as a general consultant, I would dedicate 95% of my pre-joining spare time to Excel.

Please find below a list of the most popular commands. I would suggest you to follow some online courses and practice the commands on a dataset_

- Basic operations: SUM, SUMPRODUCT
- Text transformations: CONCATENATE, LEFT, RIGHT, & operator,
- Connecting different datasets: VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, INDEX(MATCH(),MATCH())
- Conditional-based operations: SUMIF, COUNTIF, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, COUNTA
- Learn how to analyze data using Pivot Tables

For the other ones you mention, the only ones that could make sense at a point are SQL -altough you normally get a data scientist who is a specialist- or Tableau -that is super super easy and intuitive, you will even enjoy it-.

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

HI there,

Agree with Vlad on 1 & 2.

On 3, beside trying to secure a full time offer from the internship, see if you can tag yourself to some stragety work, or make your experience a bit more closer/relevant for consulting. That can help your CV/resume.

Best,

Emily

Hello!

Not only that, but also cross-sell and up-sell opportunities

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

Hi Kay!

Let me try to answer your questions:

1. I think you misunderstand what a structure is. A structure is not meant to mirror a "solution"! So structuring a case does not mean to brainstorm all sorts of buckets and possible answers and then hope that one of these is actually "correct". A structure is meant to explain, how you will answer the precise question asked by the client. So a structure is a logic! And you are asked to lay out this logic, according to which you will answer the question. If you follow this principle, then the problem you described completely vanishes. A sound top-down logic includes (i) the question, (ii) the criterion to answer this question (derived from the underlying objective!), and (iii) the logical disaggregation of the criterion's elements to eventually test if it is met or not.

2. The "process" on how to start into the case is (mostly) exactly as described in Case in Point. However, the actual approaches ("frameworks") are very weak in this book - mostly due to the fact that they ignore what I outlined under 1. above. Just laying out buckets and areas to look into is a purely explorative way of working (defining areas, and then looking into these areas in the mere hope to find something interesting that will lead you on the right track towards solving the case; another word for this approach is 'guessing') - and if one is mean one could say that this exactly how your should NEVER work as a strategy consultant. That being said, the frameworks are still quite helpful for beginners in order to get a good feeling for the areas that will most probably be relevant in the actual analysis in certain contexts.

3. The time is not super critical. Crafting good and robust structures usually takes around 90 seconds for a well trained candidate. But even if it takes longer - I can promise you that, if your approach is a super clear top-down explanation of how you will answer the clients question, what you will analyze and what are the most important qualitative areas to explore in order to perform this analysis, then every interviewer will immediately forget about any doubts he might have had on your speed. My mentees usually take far more than a minute to structure, and it is never standing in the way of getting MBB offers.

Cheers, Sidi

Hello!

At this point, the situation is evolving so fast that it´s difficult to predict, since the situation changes day after day.

Logic sais that, as well as clients are slowing down... so will consulting companies. This will inevitbly lead to a slow-down in hiring -but not a total freeze, as there was not a total freeze after the fall of Lehman-.

For people who are currently in the recruiting process, as per what I am seeing with my coachees, interviews are not being cancelled. They are either being posponed (with a determined date, not in an undefined way) or they are being shifted to video-conference.

Given that you are not still in the pipeline, little can be done. You can maximize your chances by getting a referral -this would at least ensure that your CV ends up in HRs desk instead of in the black hole of CVs-.

Feel free to PM me with your CV and CL for review.

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

Hi there,

The staffing process would be quite similar in many firms.

Unless you are recruited as a specialist (in which case you have a set of pre-defined people that you typically work with), if you are recruited as a generalist, when you first join, the staffing is very much decided by the staffing team. The decision would be mostly based on the the time window when you are available and which project is looking for people at that same window. You preference (if you ever stated one) might be taken into consideration on some occasions, but don't count on it.

As you build your credibility and reputation in the firm, if your performance is good (the cohort performance would be discussed on a regular schedule so the leadership team knows where a associate/consultant stands in the pool), then case partners and principals would notice you and try to get you on their projects when they know you are available.

After a few cases, some people find their "gang" to attach to, by following the same partner/principal or sticking around to the same practice. You can choose not to do so if you still want to be a generalist. But in general, as you get more senior in the firm, the expectation is that you have more focus.

Hope it helps.

Emily

Hi,

it means that the profit expected (revenues - costs - initial investments) in the future from a project is zero. Thus the project is not particularly attractive itself (at least from a financial point of view).

you have to understand if you can have synergies or intangible benefits (e.g., image, brand awareness, ...) to decide whether the project is attractive.

Hi! I'm sorry to hear about that, I imagine this is very frustrating. I agree with Vlad, the hiring will be reduced now and the bar will be set higher. So, use your time to prepare and remind them of your existance from time to time.

Best,
Daniel

Hi! One of my coachees in Germany had an interview with BCG last week and it was over a video, so I supposed that will be the same for you. Just reach out to the HR to clarify!

Best,
Daniel

Hi Bhavish,

Needless to say, the ideal scenario is a referral from a partner or director within your target office - that will definitely secure your interview slots.

Based on my experience, second best option is already a referral on partner/director level from another office (still better than from engagement manager from same office).

So main question is actually the rank of your referral source!

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

Robert