Consulting Q&A - Ask questions around your career in our consulting forum

Hi,

"Is the client primarily looking for quantitative or qualitative insights?" - not sure how this question is relevant if at all. Most of the insights are coming from numbers

"Are we mainly concerned about finding the causes and then propose some solutions or should we directly come up with solutions?" - Irrelevant as well. There are no cases where you come directly with the solutions. Even in the case of the sales growth you first need to do the diagnostics. Consultants don't come up with ready-made recommendations.

I suggest asking the following questions:

1) Clarify the business model / how the business actually makes money. Even if you think you understand it, try to repeat it to make sure that you understand it correctly. e.g. if the case is about oil&gas company which revenues are declining, ask if it is Up / mid / down-stream problem. In this case, defining a revenue stream is critical to setting up the right structure.

2) Clarify the objective. Here make sure that your goal is:

• Measurable
• Has a time-framed
• Has / has no limitations

e.g. Should I invest 100k in this business for 1 year if I want to get 15% return?

3) Ask the questions that will help you build a relevant structure and remove ambiguity

Best

Do you consider yourself intelligent? And why?

Hello!

It depends on many things: how far along are you in the preparation, how much background you have about it -hence, how quickly you are picking it-, how much time you have for the sessions...

I would advise you to pick a coach and work with that person to make a tailored approach for you, both in terms of # of sessions and content of those.

Feel free to contact me! :)

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

Hello Pankaj,

The structure of the cases is pretty much the same and not really dependant on the industry. You have just to keep in mind some particularities of that market. For example, talking about pharma, always think about patents, side effects of your product, regulations and governement incentives.

Feel free to contact me if you want to discuss it further.

Best,
Luca

Hi June,
you are going to simulate the final Steering Committee, i.e. the most important moment in a real Bain project.
Different skills will be assessed: 80-20 prioritization, top-down structuring, and impactful communication. I recommend staying in 15 minutes with the presentation (10-15 slides), to leave 30 minutes of Q&A, by structuring the document in this way:
- Executive summary (1 page): sum-up of the problem and of your resolution;
- Context (1-3p): presentation of the main challenges of the company and the problem you were in charge to address;
- Recommendations (5-12p): structured presentation of your approach, findings, and solutions to the problem;
- Next steps (1p): additional aspects valuable to be further assessed.

For any further details feel free to text me.

Best,
Antonello

Hi,

In the real case interviews, you don't necessarily finish the case. In fact, you can easily pass the interview without finishing any case. One thing that is important is the ability to provide a soft recommendation:

Indeed, in many cases, you can't provide a definite answer. Consultants may be testing several things:

• Are you comfortable enough with providing preliminary recommendations based on limited data? (Imagine a CEO whom you met in the elevator and who wants to know the preliminary findings)
• Will you make a mistake of providing a recommendation with a high level of certainty without having a proper supporting data?

Imagine a case when you have to make a decision about whether a PE fund should acquire a company. You make a proper structure (Market, Competitors, Company, Feasibility of Exit) and in 25 min of a case, you've managed only to go through the Market and Competitors branches of the analysis. What will be your recommendation?

In this case, you have to provide a Soft Recommendation:

1. You start with an objective ("Our objective was to understand whether we should buy this company")
2. You provide a preliminary recommendation highlighting the uncertainty("According to the limited data we have so far, our preliminary recommendation is to buy this company and there are three reasons for that..." or "Purely based on the data we have about the market it looks like it's a good idea for a number of reasons..")
3. You provide the reasons ("First of all the market is big at X and growing at Y, Secondly the competition is fragmented with the target company having x% of the market. Thirdly...")
4. You Mention the pieces of data that you need to provide a full recommendation ("But to come up with a final recommendation I would like to look at the company financials, key capabilities and..." or "But to be 100% sure in our recommendation we need to check...)

Best,

Vlad

Hello,

You could approach the problem in 2 different ways:

1. Estimating the number of hotels and airbnb apartments in Paris and their occupancy (then you can increase it by a small percentage to include people that are hosted by friends/relatives)
2. Estimating the number of flights and trains that arrive in Paris in a given day. This way is more complex because you have then to estimate the percentage of passengers that are tourists. Furthermore, you are not considering tourists coming by car

I would follow the furst methid and then propose to do a sanity check of the result using the second one.

Does it make sense?

Best,
Luca

Hello,

If your long term goal is to join consultancy I would accept the offer. Having some experience as consultant is always a good plus in order to prove both your motivations and skills.
Anyway, try to start the selection process with MBB asap because spending too many years in an unknown consulting firm could be a problem for them.

I would then consider the following 2 points:

1. Have you considered to freeze the offer and start MBB interviews in the meanwhile?
2. Would you accept an offer from Tier-2 consulting firms? If not you should be careful because the risk of not being accepted from MBB is always high.

Hope it helps,
Luca

Hello Mike,

You can easily approach this case in the following way:

• Population of Dubai
• Estimation of tourists in Dubai
• Average water consumption per day. Be careful to consider substitutes (especially for young people) and the reduced water consumption for babies
• Liters of water = # people * consumption
• Average bottle capacity
• # of bottles = Liters of water / average bottle capacity

I would skip the segmentation of the population by age in this case, since the water consumption per day is pretty much the same. I would just mention those 2 qualitative point when you have to estimate the average consumption per day.

Hope it helps,
Luca

Hello Mike,

Here there are the main guidelines of the approach that I would suggest:

• Population of Peru
• Segmentation of the population by age
• Estimation of the average media usage per segment
• Estimation of the % using illegal source per segment

Feel free to contact me if you want to discuss it further.

Hope it helps,
Luca

Hi!

I would strongly recommend to focus your answer on the future, not on the past! So the precondition for this is for you to do some introspection:

• What are your mid- to long-term objectives?
• What kind of professional do you want to become?
• Why is consulting in general, and the target company in particular, a great platform to achieve these objectives?

On why you don't want to continue with the startup - just be honest and clearly state that it is not an option anymore. But make sure to outline and highlight the learnings for your personal growth that you could draw from this experience, and how it will benefit you when embarking on your consulting career.

General rule: don't try to guess what they "want to hear"! Just do some HONEST THINKING on why you want to do consulting, what it will help you achieving (other than "I am fascinated by the work"), and what qualities you can bring to the table.

Cheers, Sidi

Hello Chris,

Sure! Don't be afraid of reaching out to the HR, they are there to helo and part of their work is to answer candidates ;)

Good luck!

Luca

Hello!

It totally depends on the tenure you want to start in MBB with:

• BA: not needed in principle, but some come from BIG4 or IB
• Associate: 3-5 years of relevant experience, MBA is a plus
• EM: +5 years and management experience

From AP upwards it´s not based on # of years, but relevant knowledge in a particular field.

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

Hello!

The HR team who reviews CVs does a "holistic" overview of them.

What does this mean? That is not only looking at grades, but the whole picture. If your records are not great but you were a professional sports player, for instance, your case might be even stronger. Same if you were involved in impressive entrepreneurial activities.

In any case, applying is for free so you don´t have any opportunity cost.

Give it a shoot!

Good luck,

Clara

Hello there,

As others has suggested, the hottest topic would be digital, encompassing the following areas:

• Blockchain
• Industry 4.0
• Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
• Advanced Analytics
• Big Data
• Data Science / Statistics
• Digital Transformation
• Agile Organization
• Digital Marketing

Also useful if you have sector-specific skillsets such as:

• Precision Agriculture / Aquaculture
• Predictive Maintenance
• Crytocurrencies / Blockchain-based FinTech

Hope it helps.

Kind regards,
Nathan