Hi Srishti,
Q: What should I do now? I would love to hear your suggestions.
If the only option you have is India due to languages and visa and you cannot use campus recruitment, the best thing would be to find a strong referral and optimize your application material before you apply there.
If that doesn’t work as mentioned by Udayan, you can work in a strategy role or similar target job for a few years, do an MBA and then apply again.
If you want to be invited for interviews with MBB you should work on 3 things: a strong CV, a strong Cover and a referral.
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1) CV
The key elements they will look for and that you can optimize are:
- University brand
- Major
- GPA
- Work experience
- Experience abroad
- Extracurriculars and volunteer experience
The fact you don't have consulting experience is not a problem if you structure your CV correctly.
Red flags include:
- Low GPA
- Lack of any kind of work experience
- Bad formatting / typos
- 3-4 pages length
- Lack of clear action --> results structure for the bullets of the experiences
- Long paragraphs (3-4 lines) for the bullets of the experiences with irrelevant details
- Long time gaps without any explanation
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2) COVER LETTER
You can structure a cover in 4 parts:
- Introduction, mentioning the position you are interested in and a specific element you find attractive for that company
- Why you are qualified for the job, where you can report 3 skills/stories from your CV, ideally related to leadership, impact, drive and teamwork
- Why you are interested in that particular firm, with additional 1-2 specific reasons
- Final remarks, mentioning again your interest and contacts
In part 2 you can write about experiences that show skills useful in consulting such as drive, problem-solving, leadership, teamwork and convincing others.
It is important that in part 3 you make your cover specific to a particular firm – the rule of thumb is, can you send the exact same cover to another consulting company if you change the name? If that’s the case, your cover is too generic.
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3) REFERRALS
To find a referral, you should follow three steps:
- Identify the people that can help you
- Write to them a customized email
- Have a call and indirectly ask for a referral
You can find more information on networking and referrals here:
▶ How to Get an MBB Invitation
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BONUS: INTERVIEW PREPARATION
After you managed to get an invitation you need to find out how to pass the interview. You can find more on that at the link below.
▶ How to Prepare for an MBB Interview
Good luck!
Francesco
I sincerely thank you for advising me and moreover suggesting me how I should be giving attention to each piece. Its a pity that the tag of University Brand matters a lot(makes sense too) but I read some interview questions from mckinsey and I believe I could answer 8/10. As I worked Full time while having Full time Masters to gain experience. I will be doing strong market research and do certification courses and meanwhile connecting with people in India will be the goal. Due to language barrier it is difficult to get a consulting role in Russia, but I am certainly getting work visa. But is guess if the role is to get in MBB, I need to go India and start working in Consulting goals. Thanking you again for the tips, I saved it and going to work accordingly.