All questions tagged candidate - Consulting Q&A - PrepLounge.com

It is completely okay!

Hey there,

The answer, as often is the case, is "it depends". In general, it is different to "typical just postings" in a couple ways:

• In some cases, recruiting happens year round, and there isn't a specific number of associates/BAs they are looking to hire. This is sometimes even the case in fall recruiting - for example, I heard that McKinsey's London office has no "intake target" for fall recruiting but will simply hire all candidates who were "good enough". In this situation you are really just competing against yourself.
• In some cases, of course, there may be a limited number of positions. However, since consulting firms are always looking for best talent, if they genuinely thought you were good enough for the job, it is unlikely that they will reject you simply because there is no space right now. They may offer you a position in another office (or to go through another set of interviews for this office), or propose a delayed start-date. I think this might be especially the case in Germany, where there are many offices so it seems reasonable that if there are no spaces in Frankfurt, you might be offered a space in the Munich office.
• The example you gave about potentially no one getting an offer is also true - consultancies don't just say "we will hire the top 10 candidates we interview". Rather, firms have well defined standards they are looking for in their applicants. If no candidate meets the mark, then the firm will hire no candidates. However, if more than 10 do and there are only 10 spaces, they may try to find an alternate solution (e.g. the points I mentioned in point 2).

Hope that clears some things up!

Alessandro

Hi,

The most common and critical mistakes are:

1) Not clarifying / asking the details of the business model in the beginning

2) Not clarifying / quantifying objectives in the beginning

3) Using common frameworks and not adapting them to the case specifics

4) Not digging deep into the root causes of a problem and switching to other parts of your framework

5) Getting some data and not applying it (i.e. you should compare with previous periods / benchmarks / breakdown further into segments)

6) Slow math / math with mistakes / not stating clearly what you are trying to calculate and why

7) Providing a strong conclusion having limited data

8) !!! spending a lot of time on cases, having no fit interview practice

Best

I have seen a guy showing up to an interview and discuss an idea and get a potential buy-in from the Senior Partner.

He got out of the room with the Senior Partner interested in developing the idea and fund raise for that.

Outstanding sign of entrepreneurship.

Hi,

I would say that at the 2nd round the partners are more demanding to your interpersonal skills than the fresh managers of the 1st round. The partners in the last round are more experienced and they will challenge every single detail of your story. They can easily spot if you have problems with communication, etc. And they will be looking at you have a question in mind: "Can I put this person in front of the client or not"

Best