Hi there,
Q: How can I sell myself and convince the hiring manager at the tier 2 firm that my non-strategy consulting experience can bring value to the firm and get interviewed?
It seems your experiences are good. It could be a matter of how you are displaying them in your CV/Cover or the fact that you need a referral.
Overall you want to work on three main things for your application, as summarized below.
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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
Some of the key things to consider for a good CV are:
- Use action verbs to describe the experiences (eg “Led…; Analyzed…) and use a structure of Action - Results
- Quantify results. If you find it challenging to define numbers, you can use the number of countries/clients/forecasted results
- Show experience related to leadership or teamwork. A good number of candidates have points on problem-solving and drive to achieve results, but lack experiences related to working in a team.
- Show relevant extracurricular activities and interests. They make the profile more interesting and help to show leadership skills when you are junior
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 in 4 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 managed to get an invitation you need to find out how to pass the interview. You can find more on that at the link below.
▶ How to Prepare for an MBB Interview
Good luck!
Francesco