Hi there,
Sorry to hear about the rejection. In terms of your question:
Q: I would like to apply to OC&C strategy consultant in Milan. Do you have some advices / feedback about it?
If you want to get an invitation from a consulting company, you should work on 3 main things.
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1) CV
The key elements they will look for and that you can optimize are:
- University brand
- Major
- GPA
- Work experience
- Experience abroad
- Extracurriculars and volunteer experience
Red flags include:
- Low GPA
- Lack of any kind of work experience
- Bad formatting / typos
- 3-4 pages length
- Lack of clear action --> results structure for the bullets of the experiences
- Long paragraphs (3-4 lines) for the bullets of the experiences with irrelevant details
- Long time gaps without any explanation
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2) COVER LETTER
You can structure a cover with 4 key parts:
- Introduction, mentioning the position you are interested in and a specific element you find attractive for that company
- Why you are qualified for the job, where you can report 3 skills/stories from your CV, ideally related to leadership, impact, drive and teamwork
- Why you are interested in that particular firm, with additional 1-2 specific reasons
- Final remarks, mentioning again your interest and contacts
In part 2 you can write about experiences that show skills useful in consulting such as drive, problem-solving, leadership, teamwork and convincing others.
It is important that in part 3 you make your cover specific to a particular firm – the rule of thumb is, can you send the exact same cover to another consulting company if you change the name? If that’s the case, your cover is too generic.
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3) REFERRALS
To find a referral, you should follow three steps:
- Identify the people that can help you
- Write to them a customized email
- Have a call and indirectly ask for a referral
You can find more information on networking and referrals here:
▶ How to Get an MBB Invitation
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BONUS: INTERVIEW PREPARATION
After you get an invitation you need to prepare for the interview. You can find more on that at the link below.
▶ How to Prepare for an MBB Interview
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If you need help with OC&C specifically please feel free to reach out, I helped a few candidates for OC&C and know some of the questions they asked.
Best,
Francesco