Hey there,
I always say to my students that you don't need Tom be so worried about industry background, as they are really not what the interview processs is trying to assess you on.
If you think about the consulting industry, one big thing is you will be working in multiple industries and change topics very swiftly. This means they are not expecting you (and also your client won't expect consultants to) to be an expert of the industry in you case interview. In fact you can know nothing about it.
What you do need to demonstrate is your ability to:
- learn things real fast so you can get to understand an industry and its key trends/ characteristics quickly
- conceptualise industry problem to strategy problem. The essense of strategy consulting is the fact that consultants are expert at solving strategy problems and different industries has SIMILAR strategy problems. So it is much more important for you to learn about the strategy problems than to learn about industries.
I would recommend you to read some business books, potentially materials for MBA, or just some general business books, such as Profit from the Core, Repeatability etc.
If you want to learn about particular industries, I highly recommend you to just read through some industry reports MBB publishes, for example here is a link to Bain industry insights. https://www.bain.com/insights/industry-insights/
Feel free to PM me if you want to learn more!
Best,
Torrey
Thank you for the assuring answer, Adi. I get that in-depth industry knowledge is not expected, but I think foundational business concept/ terminology etc. is. My Q was more related to being able to quickly recognize type of cases & their key drivers. I will look into the links you provided (thank you!). If you have additional info that can help with business analyses and linking that to case types, that is welcome.