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Hi Anonymous,

If it helps, I also considered this decision. I ultimately decided on keeping a home. At least for me, having a home base to put my things, relax/recover in on the weekend, see familiar faces at etc. definitely kept my sanity. Most people I know have a home base, though I have heard of a few people calling their hotel home.

That being said, I was travelling to a city where I knew noone and I was very far away from my home country - if I had travelled to a number of other cities where I knew people, had a parent's home I could store my stuff in, and perhaps started BCG at a younger age I probably could have done it!

I think that the benefits also play a bigger impact lower down the food chain. For example, the returns on this decision are very high on the lower wage of Associate, however, at Project Leader level this probably doesn't make sense!

It depends what it is stressful for you. I think it is fair to say it is a demanding but very rewarding job!

In my experience, most common stressors for people approaching / intending to work in consulting are
- Working under pressure
- Constant travel
- Long hours
- Changing deliveries ( in time and content) - somehow linked to point 1

No secret, consulting job can be all of the above.
But, i'd like to comment on some myths
- Stressful situation can happen wihtin the projects but are not the norm. Depends also on the industry / project / where you are in your learnirng curve
- It is extremely satisfying job if you are one person which is TRULY enjoying the challenges
- You can find stressful situations also in other jobs, not only in consulting, so this should not be the (only) decision factor

Hope it helps,
Best

I think you have the right answer staring at you in the face: what happens if you take the new project, fail your interviews and never get into MBB - what then? Will you hate yourself forever?

Having said that, I'd like to challenge two of your core assumptions however:

1. Do you truly need 2 weeks to get ready for an MBB interview when you arguable have already succeeded at such an interview at a Tier2 (even if the bar was lower, most of these do give case interviews). Let me answer for you: many of us got into MBB by preparing while working full time & having a family. Just commit to a plan such as "review feedback in the morning before work, listen to audio on my way to work, do a case in the evening and 2 each day during the week-end". Sure you will hate life even more than usual for these 2 weeks, but what's 2 weeks in the grand scheme of things?

2. You seem to believe this will be the last opportunity you have to apply for / interview at MBB. First, you can probably delay the interview if needed; second, they will probably still be interested in 6 months if they are interested today

Also, you mention that you've waited for "one year" to do this type of project? One year is NOTHING! I can't even remember the type of projects I used to dream of doing when I was 1 year out of school. [insert old geezer joke here]

Last but not least, let's also look at the bigger picture: You are just 1 year out of undergrad. Odds are, a Masters degree is in your future, which will then give you another solid chance at MBB.

Here's what I suggest:

1. If you are "MBB or bust", you take time off and prepare as best as you can

2. If you are a type-A and think you can do it all, you take this cool new project for now since it is important to you - but you also kick your prep into high gear before/after work and during week-ends; if you honestly feel you would need a little bit more time, ask MBB for a delay, they will usually try to accomodate. And you can still ask for a couple of days of beach time / PTO if needed (I'm sure you can be creative here).

Good luck.

Hi Anonymous,

I definitely don't think 20 months is too early to leave the job. Generally at MBB there tends to be a pretty significant exodus at the ~2 year mark, either to industry, finance, or to work at / start their own start-up.

However, I would echo what others have said - you should consider if what you hate is consulting, or just the firm you are working for. Think about the actual content of your work, the types of problems you work on, and the interactions with clients. If this is something you enjoy, you could look at applying for other consulting firms. If, however, you are simply tired of consulting as a whole, then it is definitely not too early to start taking calls with headhunters and see what is out there!

Good luck!

Hi Anonymous,

the main element to consider is always your motivation for the change. Normally, you want to move to a company better positioned to your goals, thus you should do due diligence in advance to ensure the target company fits that (eg faster career, higher position, better work-life balance, better culture...)

The best time to switch depends on your goals - people switch at all levels of the hierarchy, although usually it happens at Manager/Principal level. And yes, I would say it is pretty common.

You can find some other general tips on that for MBB lateral hire, mainly true as well for 2nd-3rd tiers, at the following link:

https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/lateral-hire-at-mbb-2352#a5186

Best,
Francesco

Hi,

You'll work with 3 tools where you need to quickly develop proficiancy (know all the key function and work fast)

- Excel : function to know vlookup(), index(match(..)), sumproduct(), sumif() . In addition you may learn to work with the keyboard only, this allow higher productivité than using the mouse pointer. You will also need to develop your own rules to always check your results and make sure your calculation are right on the first time

- Powerpoint : alignements, formats. In creating content you'll need to make sure you use parallel phrasing

- Emails : sharp wording, direct and clear phrasing, easy reading

Hope this helps

Best

Benjamin

Hi,

I would concentrate on getting the right financial modeling skills and presenting your analysis in Power Point.

1) Financial modeling - the best course I know is Training The Street. Take Financial Modeling, Valuation, Maybe LBO. Also, learn pivot tables and the basic statistics tools

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 reproduce 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.

And finally - take a long vacation before starting your job;)

While in consulting focus on the following:

• Having a good DGL / career counselor, etc. (Each company has different names). This is a person who guides your development in the company, collects the feedbacks on you, and presents your case to a promotion committee. Make sure to have a person who is organized enough to collect the feedbacks in time, who is a nice person in general and who has enough authority in the company (i.e. Senior partner - the more power he has - the better)
• Choosing the project you work on smartly (i.e. collect the feedbacks on each and everyone prior to accepting the project)
• Perfect technical skills (Excel, PPT, Problem Solving)
• Good feedbacks on you from the client. Thus try to make friends with your clients (Both senior and non-senior role. Even a bad feedback from a blue collar can ruin your career)
• Ability to manage your own standalone workstream with minimum supervision. TOP performers bring the end products that impress others
• Being proactive - helping the team with daily routine, scheduling, etc. Participating in the office initiatives
• Establishing relationships with your managers and partners. Ideally, you should have multiple senior partners to be excited about you and to support you)
• Being lucky!

Good Luck!

After 6 years in management consulting, I have noticed that those who stay in consulting and strive have become more outgoing. I have seen many consultants in their entry positions as more introvert who evolved towards more and more extrovert over the years.

Formative

What a very kind gesture - I don't know how much you want to spend but here are some rough ideas.

• Cufflinks
• Tie
• wireless headphones
• laptop bag
• briefcase
• travel suitcase
• watch
• starbucks voucher
• gym related workout clothes to encourage him to keep healthy
• belt

Hi Anonymous,

your certainly need to meet a certain threshold regarding cognitive smartness ("IQ"). However, you do not need to be Albert Einstein for sure! If you meet that required IQ floor level, it is much more important that you

• are able to navigate social/political client settings,
• build trust quickly,
• have the work ethic to put in the hours, which can be brutal at times.

This is why you need a well-rounded profile as a consultant - if it was only about cognitive smartness, the firms could just go and offer huge salary packages to the best graduates from the most difficult programmes at universities around the globe.

Cheers, Sidi

This is a really common question a lot of people ask when moving into consulting. A few thoughts from my experiences:

- You will simply NOT be productive if you are working 80+ hours a week for a sustained period. In 3+ years at McKinsey, touching every continent, I never exceeded 60 hour weeks for more than a couple of weeks at a time. Maintaining productivity in the shorter term in a very different prospective.

- Eating meals away from the desk helps - I was always more productive after a good meal break

- Try to build in a couple of activities a week (Gym, sports, music practice, etc) where you are completely offline for a couple of hours, and provides you something to look forward to. Your productivity normally increases when you are working to a deadline

- Try to work with others - working in a hotel room there can be a lot of distractions. If it's late and you are working next to someone you don't want to disturb your colleague too much

- Prioritise ruthlessly and ask questions like 'does this need to be done today', and 'will this change the answer'. Partners are people and are very open to these challeneges. New consultants are often afraid to ask these questions, but they are crucial in maintaining productivity

Hope this helps

Cameron

In a certain sense YES...without great interview skills you are not given the chance to prove yourself as a great consultant :)

A more serious answer: Definitely not. I've interviewed several false positives unfortunately. Great interviewers and then didn't succeed on the job. Usually for the below reasons:

- lack of practicality

- difficulty in connecting with people

- inability to cope with the pressure

- inability to cope with travel and long hours

Keep honing your interview skills!

andrea

Hey Anonymous,

I'm sorry to dissapoint, but there is no such thing as a typical day. Some days I will be staffed somewhere in Kuwait working until 3am on some obscure valuation, and then the next day my team decides to go to a team dinner downtown and we call it a night at 11pm. The variability in your day is one of the key elements of consulting, so I'd say the question is a bit counter-intuitive.

P.S: I work for BCG and we always laugh at newbies who ask in the morning whether the day is going to be intense

Cheers,

Vasilis

Totally agree with Hemant; I would add to the list of exit opportunities Private Equity, in particualr if you are coming from MBB (Bain is particularly strong on that thanks to Bain Capital connections). Dolf also provided a pretty complete list here:

https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/exit-options-most-lucrative-ones-249#a459

As for why people choose a specific exit, there may be multiple reasons for a particular choice; some of the most common are: (i) better work-life balance (eg Industry); (ii) increased salary (eg PE/partner track in a smaller consulting firms); (iii) control on execution (eg Startup founder).

Hope this helps,
Francesco

Good news for you - not much you need to spend money on before you start. Here's what you need

Dress code

This usually varies by sector/region. I will say that you don't need to be fancy, but you need to be neat, especially at the entry level - meaning, you don't need to spend a lot, but those clothes need to be ironed, for example. For example, in the Middle East you need to wear suits (for guys, women wear abayas so they don't need to worry about anything in this respect), in the US most of the time you wear a shirt and pants. I'd have 1 suit ready regardless, and enough semi-formal/business casual clothes to last you comfortably for a week and where you won't need to wear the same thing every week. If you are a guy, have a few ties. I don't know enough about women's attire if you are asking about that, but follow the same/equivalent principles. That's the minimum. Some clients vary (US hospitals, investment banks, some government entities, some regions) - but wait until you are assigned a client and then just buy what you need before you start.

Suitcase

Get a decent roller bag - a lot of consultants get a Tumi brand. I survived for 2 years on a Samsonite $60 bag which no one complained about. You only need a larger suitcase for international trips - again, wait for the assignment abroad before you go spending.

Laptop bag

My company provided one - send an email asking if this is the case for your company/office

Calculator/other equipment

None needed - all software will be on your laptop and provided.

What else comes in handy?

Being relaxed and ready to go!

For the most part, you should be able to survive at the beginning based on what you likely already have as an accomplished college graduate. If you are in a unique case you may have to pick up 1-2 extra suits or something, but wait until someone tells you something before you go spending.

So, everyone is different with their personal needs for down-time, but from my (BCG) perspective, it's better to start earlier in the year - why? Because consulting billing slows considerably closer to December because of the holidays (this may be a different month in different regions, so if not in the US/Europe, apply this same logic to your situation). Therefore, if you start in October or November, for example, there is a greater chance you aren't staffed onto a client case until January or February (when billing tends to pick back up). Since the clock is always running on your promotion windows, you don't want to wait that long to get staffed. I'd go with September, in your case

Hi Anonymous,

personnally I am not a fan of in-house strategy consulting opportunities, and am a bit sceptical about the rational of choosing this type of opportuntities as it seems to share the downs of each job without capturing the benefits :

1. If you are really interested in consulting, then go for a proper consulting firm
You're learning curve will be much steeper, salary growth higher, and exit opportunities better

2. If you are really interested by a specific industry, then go for either a consulting firm with strong presence in that industry or an attractive player of the industry
Both will give you more exposure and concrete experience in the industry. Being a third party consultant is sometimes an enabler for achiving a job vs. being challenges from inhouse consulting

3. If you are really interested by a specific company, then identify what are the core jobs of the company (every company has on or sevral key jobs / function) and apply directly to it

I realize this is a very personal thought and not every one can be aligned with this, but at least you will consider this to make your own opinion

Best

Benjamin

As with many answers you'll find in consulting, it depends.

Your consultant or manager will likely want to test the waters in order to gauge your personality, ability to learn, flexibility, and intellectual prowess, focusing on qualitative abilities before your quantitative abilities.

Generally, you can expect to spend a fair amount of time working in PowerPoint to refine slides to the style of your firm. You'll get a lot of feedback on how to tell a coherent, tight story. How you react and adapt to the feedback will lend toward executing on executing and effectively communicating findings from primary (conducting interviews) and secondary research (pulling data and other information). The last piece is often modeling or other quantitative analysis (forecasting, market sizing, etc.).

Again, it will largely depend on your firm and you as it relates to your case needs.

Hi Gaurav,

Your ask is complex. One simple way to start is by considering what your department is doing now and what they have trouble doing (or are unable to do but want), especially as it relates to supporting realization of the company's goals.

An understanding of the department's current capabilities at a high-evel and gaps that exist will enable you to priortize departmental needs for execution today and what may need to happen in order to support growth. From there, identifying players that can fulfill those respective needs will help give you a starting point on a list potential partners.

Clearly, it is much more complicated than the explanation I provided above when you begin explore strategic, financial, and operational fit and when thoughts move toward building for the future as opposed to a current need.

Hope that helps.