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

Hi Anon,

I would say that there isn't really a way to know, if the interviewer is very professional. As the determining factor to your success is a concensus amongst your interviewers, one interviewer doesn't have final say. Additionally, regardless of the outcome, they should want to leave you with a positive lasting impression of their company. Therefore, even if you don't do well in interview, they should still answer all your questions and complete the interview.

That being said, I would say that there is a mental checklist that you could go by as a "rule of thumb" to increase your odds of success. These are all your PrepLounge-encourages best practices e.g. have you been structured and MECE in all your answers? Have you quantified impact? Have you approached the problem in a structured and comprehensive way? Have you communicated top-down? Was your maths accurate and timely? Did you communicate your workings during the case? Did you "crack the case"? Do your interview stories show clear impact and your personal contribution? Etc.

These will depend on the company you interview with, so I'd encourage you to write your own list.

Best of luck!

Kay

Hi Anon,

I haven't been to any BCG women's events, but can speak for my experience with McKinsey's and will assume they are fairly similar.

If this is a by-application-only event, the relevant recruiters will already have seen and screened your CV. You wouldn't necessarily need a "referral" per se, but having a recruiter chat to you and encourage you to apply (I know this happens at McKinsey) will at least give you a high chance of getting through the CV screening stage and straight to the tests.

In order to do this, I would just find some topics of conversation to chat about - it doesn't have to be BCG or your current job, but can be on other topics e.g. BCG's initiatives to encourage women to apply, some of their other current projects at BCG, etc. Get them talking to you and they'll ask you questions about yourself as well.

Importantly, keep in mind that the referral only helps get your CV through the first stage. From there, you are on a level playing field with everyone else who has passed that stage.

Best of luck!

Kay

This is a key part of the interview! Please do not overlook it at all.

DO

Ask questions about one the below 3:

-consulting industry (how have clients need evolve?)
-case (did you wind up proposing this to the client? which were the roadblocks during the project?)
-himself (which step of the consulting career did you like best?)

AVOID

Ask stupid questions on:

-questions you can ask to HR (how long before I have an answer?)
-basic consuling career stuff (how often do you promote people?)

Dear Ankit,

I've gathered some info on OW and what I can say is they are much less structured when compared to McK and others.

For example:

1) Sometimes they don't even ask for structure;

2) I've heard from friends that went to final rounds who got a lot of "strange" estimation cases (PM me if you want to learn a few of them)

3) The style of case depends a lot more on the interviewer rather than the firm (in other words, depending on the interviewer you will get a more interviewer-led or candidate-led)

4) The cases tend to be shorter (this could depend from country to country) - the entire case is more 40-45 minute, with a good 7-10min FIT and at least 5-10min Q&A so the case usually is from 25-35 minutes (again, this can change from office to office)

Hope this helps

Hi Anonymous,

assuming you can approximate numbers, in this case you can find what is a relatively small percentage (eg 1%) and see how the number you have to calculate compares to that.

In this case, 1% of 275 is 2.75, which means 2% is 5.5. At this stage, you would probably notice that 11 is therefore exactly 4%.

Best,

Francesco

Hi there,

thank you for your feedback on this case and for helping us to improve our content! We will definitely have a look at this. If you have any further feedback or questions, feel free to contact us!

All the best for your case prep,

Christine

PrepLounge Community Management

Hi Edouard,

I'd like to complement the perspectives from another regions: Asia Pacific and Middle East.

Looking at the Asia Pacific region, AT Kearney has a much stronger presence to Roland Berger. In some countries, AT Kearney was even the first mover and had dominated the market before MBB comes in and started dividing up the pie.

In the Middle East region, mainly Dubai, AT Kearney also has an established footprint compared to Roland Berger and even Bain & Company.

Answering your inquiries regarding the 3 consideration factors:
- Future career opportunities: There are 2 factors that influence this:
(1) Exposure towards specific industries and functions within the firms. Opportunities to get involved in emerging topics such as digitalization, fintech, Industry 4.0, etc (depending on your areas of interests) will put you in a good shape for your next endeavor.
(2) Brands. This will varied across regions, e.g. In Europe, especially Germany, Roland Berger eclipsed AT Kearney. Hence, it's important to determine this aspect while taking into account your specific location / office preferences as well as the potential exposure towards industries and functions in the area.

- Entrepreneurial spirit:
Typically, the firm with smaller footprints and presence in a region presents higher opportunities for entrepreneurship, allowing one to shine and participate in different initiatives, even building up practices and offices, as opposed to a more established ones.

All said though, consulting firms generally highly encourage consultants to be actively involved in coming up with new initiatives as it will positively impact the business.

- Sustainability competencies
I can speak only for Asia Pacific region on this. Roland Berger has exposure towards a variety of projects within the sector such as aquaculture, while AT Kearney's focus mainly lies in conventional industry with operations focus such as oil & gas as well as manufacturing.

From industrial perspective, Roland Berger will have an edge in sustainability sector in Asia.
However, that is not to say that there are sustainability-focused projects and initiatives even within conventional industries that AT Kearney serves.

Hope it helps!

Kind regards,
Nathan

If an interviewer makes a case like this, you should try to better understand the context. If no additional context is provided, I would try to solve the case by making assumptions on key variables characteristing market entrance and discuss different scenarios.

For instance, consider these 2 variables:

• Client market share
• Type of market entrants

Depending wheter:

• The client is market leader vs minor player in the market
• New entrants are large corporations growing by adjacencies vs new emerging startups testing a new business model with strong traction

By mixing these factors, you could already build 4 scenarios and provide a structured answer to the interviewer.

1. Consulting job is extremely relevant to business school education. It is sort of waste not to apply the business acumen we honed in b-school into any other type of job;

2. Consulting enables people to handle various type of businesses. You'll never get bored easily with such a steep learning curve, or, should I say, learning curves;

3. Consulting offers unlimited career possibilities as a great launchboard, the analytical skills and sector insights might get updated one day, but the problem solving approach, once mastered, is highly transferrable.

Hi there,

As far as I understood it has some historical big customers in both industrial and consumer goods, however is more focus on Consumer goods.

In addition, It is a well reputated consulting firm even if you want to enter the MBB after some years in VP (expecially Bain). If you work there for 3 years you will enter Bain as Consultant not Associate.