Email to MBB current employees

I would suggest asking those people for 10-15 minutes calls to know them and learn about their experiences. Then you may want to consider for asking their an hour time for a mock interview. Otherwise, your success rate can very low.

Hi Anonymous,

asking directly for a mockup case in a cold email would likely be too pushy, I would recommend to establish a relationship first, then if needed ask for support. Moreover, the greatest benefit a current consultant can offer you is not a mock, but rather a referral.

In order to obtain a referral, I would suggest going through the following three-step approach:

1. Identify who are the people that can more easily help you

2. Write them a customized email

3. Have a call with the consultant, and indirectly ask for a referral

As general tips:

• Don’t use LinkedIn for your communication – emails work a lot better. There are several tools nowadays that allow to find very quickly the email of basically anyone. You should target at least 30% conversion for your messages – if you are not achieving that there is space for improvement in your message.
• When you write to your target connections, your goal should not be to ask questions, rather to organize a call. Then in the call you should ask the right questions to create a link with them.
• Whatever questions you ask during the call, you should have a closing question to ask (indirectly) for the referral. Don’t leave that to chances.

You should prepare three main things before the call:

• Your own pitch, highlighting who you are in 3-4 key sentences. Previous experience with relevant brands/companies would be great to show you are qualified
• 3-4 questions, focused on the personal experiences of the person (and not on the company only). Ideally you should try to learn as much as possible about the contact before. You can also discover relevant information with the first questions. Your goal here is to have a conversation and not a Q&A session.
• Closing question for referral. You should ask (in an indirect way to avoid to be too pushy) a referral at the end of the call. If you correctly introduce yourself, do a good job with the questions before and have something in common (eg former alumni, common connections…), you can increase by a relevant amount the likelihood of a referral. If you don’t ask, they may not volunteer to offer one.

Before the call, it would be useful to review your CV and Cover, to be sure they are updated and structured properly for your MBB application, so that you can forward them without delays if needed.

If you are interested to know more about the exact steps to maximize conversion for referrals, please feel free to PM me.

Best,

Francesco

Hi,

You can try reaching out to the alumni of your school who are now working in MBB. You have a better chance of receiving a response from them.

Thanks

Ashwin 

Hi,

It really depends on where you got the contacts. Did someone give you the e-mails? I do not recommend writing any cold e-mails

Best

We are all human beings, the only difference between you and a consultant is that he/she probably gets a lot more people reaching out of the blue.

Francesco already had a great answer. Keep it simple: focus on people you share something with (origin, school, previous company, weird passion...) - and don't ask too much. Not everyone will respond (one of my own office mates has now ignored 2 of my personal emails!) but you won't get anything without reaching out