On my way from a lawyer to a Big 3 consultant, I've outcompeted candidates with perfect GPAs and test scores from the top schools. In order to do so, I had to hack the game. Every game has algorithms that successful players master to achieve winning results. So does consulting interview. I realized that consulting interview is just a limited number of possible situations for which you have to establish algorithms to crack them. This had a big effect.
Now as I am leaving consulting industry to join my EdTech startup, it is very important to pass on what I have learnt to you. These algorithms allow 9 out of 10 of my students get offers from MBB and tier-2 firms.
Think of the numbers: It depends on the location and the year. Generally speaking, think of the following ratios, loosely based on actuals at my office in 2020:
- 80 applicants to one position
- 20 get a 1st round interview
- 4 get a 2nd round
- 1 gets the job
Most of candidates are likely to receive a response:
Unfortunately, we have decided not to pursue your application further. We face a very difficult decision when considering well-qualified candidates such as yourself, and inevitably the decision must rest upon relatively small differences in performance.
And here is what most of candidates have in common:
Before preparation:
- Focus on case studies from 2010 with outdated Cheng frameworks
- Study fit part based on random articles and forums
- Do not understand why they head to consulting
- Do not think about working on their state of mind and confidence
- Do not think about their image/positioning in interviews and their communication skills
During preparation:
- Confidence: Emotional burnout, lots of stress and fear of the interview
- Motivation: Inadequate level of motivation for hard daily work
- Communication: Lack of a skill of building rapport with an interviewer and making the proper image
- Fit: Lack of a skill to clearly convey your thoughts to the questions
- Structuring: The use of only standard and generic frameworks
- Business sense: Lack of giving practical recommendations
- Problem solving: scarce math and graphs reading skills during the cases, wrong conclusions
- Operational rhythm and assessment of own skills: “Plateau” in training, ignorance of the weaknesses
During the interview day:
- «Unresourced» state
- Lack of the ability to sell yourself and be natural
- Lack of rapport with the interviewer, who finds faults
- Boring and unclear answers to Fit questions
- Standard memorized frameworks for complex problems and “overwhelming” the case
- Low level of practice recommendations and errors in analytics
After the interview:
- Fail the interview
- Do not receive an offer
- Get a ban for 1.5 - 2 years
HOW I CAN SOLVE THE PROBLEM AND THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES OF MY APPROACH:
Training support (flexible approach)
- Creating an operational rhythm for training
- Using a flexible system to structure your own knowledge (X-mind and My life organized)
Course structure (content depth)
- Leveling of state, confidence, attitude and motivation (which are not affected in other case studies)
- Setting communication skills (which are not affected by other cases courses)
- Deepening in Fit part (which is very poorly covered by forums)
- Using algorythmic structures that are not wide spread across prep community (incl. real frameworks from consulring projects)
Message me to get FREE preparation checklist!