Consulting On-boarding

Question

When someone joins a consulting firm, they spend the first couple of weeks getting trained on excel, powerpoint slides, jargon, some basic problem solving techniques ... etc.
Does anyone know an online resource that offers training similar to the on-boarding training offered by any of the MBB firms during those first couple of weeks of employment (ideally the trainers/content authors would be ex-MBB consultants).

Answer 1

Hi,

I don't know of any holistic resource that is like that. And the reason is because this training is already provided by MBB firms, so ex-MBB consultants don't really need to do it.

If i were you, I'd not worry about ramping up before the job - you will learn whats needed when you start your projects!

Answer 2

Hi Emad,

I don't know who told you so, but that's not entirely correct.

In McK, for example, you have 1 orientation week + a first training week. All that you are going to learn about pptx are a few shortcuts (more than half of with are about proprietary functions only available on pptx in McKinsey computers). The same for Excel (basic shortcuts that you will forget anyway if you don't use them straight away). That's all, less than 2 hours of training for both of them.

Therefore, I would not get stressed in learning shortcuts and "how to build a model" in advance, you are going to learn them pretty quickly in the first month "on the field"

Answer 3

Hi,

Your training with MBB firms is more formal, rather than hands-on. You'll go through the basic approach of structuring the problems that you already know. You don't learn Excel, PPT because you are supposed to know that by default.

Here are my recs:

1) Excel and Financial modeling - the best course I know is Training The Street. Take Financial Modeling, Valuation, Maybe LBO. They have the amazing templates that you have to repsoduce to be able to do that fast.

The key thing - throw away your mouse and put some tape on your touchpad. Do everything with your keyboard!

2) Power Point

First, read "Say it with charts" and "Pyramid Principle".
As a next step Google for MBB presentations on SlideShare and try to replicate them in PPT.
Finally, take MBA some cases (HBS or any other) and try to derive the conclusions and put them on slides using MBB styles.

Good Luck!