Hey everyone,
I recently got an offer to join Bain & Company as an Associate Consultant. I have ~6months before joining the firm and I am reaching out to get your tips on what can I prepare during this time.
I am looking for courses and books to read, or skills to acquire. I am going to work on these skills in the next 3 months and then take 3 months of vacation.
Please let me know your feedback.
John
Hi there,
MOST IMPORTANTLY: Know that no-one can perfectly prepare for the job and that's the point: You will mess up, you will learn, you will be trained and supported. That's OK!
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First: Read the 25 tips in my consulting handbook
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Second: In terms of things you can learn/do to prepare beforehand:
1) Daily Reading
2) Industry deep-dives
3) Analytics tools
4) Excel
5) Powerpoint
6) Presentation skills / sharp communication
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Third: In terms of doing well in your role when you're there:
1) Understand the context/prompt (what role are you in, what company, who's watching, etc.)
2) Understand the objective (what, specifically, is expected from you...both day to day, and in your overall career progression)
3) Quickly process information, and focus on what's important - Take a lot of information and the unknown, find the most logical path, and focus on that.
4) Be comfortable with the unknown, and learn to brainstorm - think/speak like an expert without being one
In summary, there will always be a flood of information, expectations, competition etc. and not enough time. Find out which ones matter when. (i.e. be visibile and focus efforts on the things that people care about)
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Fourth: Here are some great prior Q&As for you!
https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/how-hard-is-it-to-excel-in-top-consulting-firms-6762
(edited)
Hello!
Congrats of that offer!
If there is one thing I wish I had done before joining McKinsey, that would have been Excel. It can really be a game changer, so I would really focus on that (more than pptx, industry knowledge, etc., that are nice-to-have, but not deal breakers).
Excel skills are part of the core skill-set of consultants, and it´s great that you want to practice them. PFB a list of the most popular commands:
Basic operations: SUM, SUMPRODUCT
Text transformations: CONCATENATE, LEFT, RIGHT, & operator,
Connecting different datasets: VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, INDEX(MATCH(),MATCH())
Conditional-based operations: SUMIF, COUNTIF, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, COUNTA
Learn how to analyze data using Pivot Tables
There are plenty of online materials -unfortunately now we cannot post the adress but you can find them easily-
Microsoft Support: support.office.com/en-us/excel
Kubicle: kubicle.com/personal (go for the 7 days free trial - Excel for Business Analytics)
Hope it helps!
Cheers,
Clara
Hey there,
I wrote an answer for the same question related to McKinsey and I believe a lot of the things there are applicable to your situation as well.
Have a look: https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/a-month-to-my-mckinsey-start-what-to-buy-in-preparation-9210
In short: Enjoy your time before your start. :-)
Cheers,
Florian
