Launch Your Consulting Career
The Complete Guide to Breaking into Management Consulting and First Year Success
The Consultant Counselor
Copyright 2010 by The Consultant Counselor
Smashwords Edition
Contents
1 Purpose 3
2 Consulting Overview 4
3 Selecting Your Target Firms 6
3.1 Types of Consulting Firms 6
3.2 Finding Your Fit 8
4 Preparing Your Application Package 12
4.1 Your Resume/CV 12
4.2 Your Cover Letter 17
5 Preparing for the Interviews 19
6 The Interviews 23
6.1 The Behavioral Interview 23
6.2 The Case Interview 26
6.3 Post Interview 28
7 Receiving Offers 30
7.1 Considering Your Offer 30
8 You’re Hired! Now What? 33
9 Your First Year 38
9.1 How to Successfully Network 38
9.2 How to Maintain a Positive Outlook 40
9.3 How to Find Mentors 41
9.4 How to Work with Client Executives 43
9.5 Managing Up 45
10 Wrap-up 48
11 Sample Application Materials 49
11.1 Cover Letter 49
11.2 Resume 50
1 Purpose
Management consulting is an equally popular, competitive and exciting career field that has seen a dramatic increase in the number of applicants vying for positions in its top firms. Consultants have the opportunity to travel the world, work with top global organizations and get an inside look into cutting-edge strategy and technology. While consultants fulfill a number of roles in each of their engagements, at a basic level they provide independent advice, industry best-practices and methodologies, system and business expertise and help businesses to accomplish their goals. In return for these services, consultants have the opportunity to easily earn six figure salaries, handsome bonuses and quickly build a very impressive network very early in their career.
So how do you break into the management consulting? And what do you need to know in order to be successful early in your career? That’s where the Launch Your Consulting Career guide comes in; it is a step-by-step to guide answering these questions. This guide will also help you to:
• Identify the right consulting firm for your personality and skills
• Prepare yourself academically and professionally for the interviews and application process
• Consider your consulting offers and negotiating your final benefits package
• Build the foundation you need for a successful first year as a consultant
• Set-up your plan for continued success
The advice, tips and guidance you will receive are based on years of experience serving as a management consultant where I have worked on countless projects and helped to select, train and mentor the next generation of top consultants. In short, this guide is made to give you a clear advantage in breaking into and succeeding as a management consultant.
2 Consulting Overview
Management consulting is a fast-paced lifestyle. Why the emphasis on lifestyle? Well, that is because those who typically target this career have been highly successful in many parts of their life, including sports, academics and, sometimes, in other industries. It is also because the average consultant dedicates a lot of time to serving their clients often working late into the evening, over the weekend and in locations around the country—or even the world. For two months you may be helping a large restaurant chain to redesign their supply chain in the Southeast followed by six months of implementing a new financial system with a large credit card company in California. Many expect to be travelling from Monday morning to Thursday night living out of a suitcase.
But, it almost goes without saying that the exposure that you receive to a variety of industries, business styles, executives and other consultants is beyond comparison. Many consultants begin their careers immediately working alongside executives and top industry experts and being handsomely rewarded for their efforts (think six figures plus bonuses) while still in their 20’s.
In management consulting, being a strong listener, analyst and communicator is just table stakes. You will be expected to balance multiple tasks, become an overnight expert and be confident presenting information using a variety of media. Consultants begin to separate themselves from their peers by continuing to hone their skills, by nurturing their networks and by building on their personal and business successes. While no specific academic requirements are in place across the industry, nearly all expect you to have been exposed to at least some statistics, business, economics and communications courses and to have a strong track-record of being a self-starter and solid team player.
Although it is very difficult to generalize the typical experiences of a management consultant or describe an ‘average day’ as each project and team is unique, some of the work you can expect to be exposed to includes:
• Assessing client problems and identifying possible solutions
• Researching and collecting data to investigate and solve specific client problems
• Consolidating detailed analyses into an overall diagnosis, strategy or plan
• Facilitating workshops to identify performance improvement opportunities
• Managing client stakeholders to create "buy-in" to a new program, product or procedure
• Constructing and delivering business presentations
Still interested in pursuing a career in management consulting? If not, then the tips, guidance and advice outlined in this eBook can still be applied to other interests that you have. If yes, then let the work begin. You have a lot to learn, prepare and do to get your resume in front of the right people, get your foot in the door and Launch Your Consulting Career.
3 Selecting Your Target Firms
There are thousands of consulting firms across the country, each with their own set of services, styles and target customers. Therefore it is just as important as preparing yourself academically and mentally for a career as a management consultant to determine which of these firms fit your goals, your skill set and your expectations. Doing so will not only increase the chances of landing the interview and, ultimately, joining their ranks, but it will enhance the experiences you will have and prepare you for the next stage of your career.
3.1 Types of Consulting Firms
To help you get a better understanding of the consulting landscape, the vast majority of the firms can be organized into 6 categories based on the industries they service and the skills their practitioners offer. While the boarders between these groups can sometimes blur and shift, the 6 categories are: The Leaders, The Big Five, The Information Technology Firms, The Boutiques, The Human Capital Firms and the Independents.
3.1.1 The Leaders
Leading the industry is a core set of consulting firms that have built their reputation by providing cutting-edge strategy and operations services to many of the world’s top corporations. These organizations, which include A.T. Kearney, Bain & Co, Booz Allen Hamilton, Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey & Co, among others, are able to target the cream of the applicant crop from the world’s top MBA and other graduate programs.
These firms focus primarily on strategy development and are sought after for their capability to break down large, complex problems and create strategies to help companies launch new products, streamline process or implement new systems. They do little implementation work, however, meaning that as soon as the strategy is presented, these consultants move on to their next project.
3.1.2 The Big Five
Members of this group were born out of the world’s 5 largest accounting firms and include Deloitte Consulting, Ernst & Young, KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Accenture. While these firms also pride themselves on their strategy and operations consulting work, they are also able to provide a wider range of services to their clients in addition to their tax and audit work. For example, these firms differentiate themselves from the The Leaders in that they often assist clients in executing on the strategies they helped to develop, implement large technology programs, perform human capital and organizational design work and pretty much own the bulk of the public sector work throughout the U.S. Federal and State governments.
3.1.3 The Boutiques
Think of The Boutiques as very specialized or niche consulting firms that focus all their energy serving a specific type of client or even offer a very specialized service. The Boutiques offer many of the same services as The Big Five, but have built up industry knowledge that sets them apart from their competitors in fields such as energy, research, finance or technology operations.
Given their specialized nature, these firms are often smaller in size (less than 500 employees in some cases versus tens of thousands in The Big Five) and allow for increased opportunities for advancement, more responsibility and can have more limited resources, including salaries and benefits in some cases.
3.1.4 The IT Firms
Making up one of the fastest growing segments of the consulting business, especially in the public sector, IT firms provide a wide-range of services to their clients. IT firms assist with planning, designing, building, testing and evaluating hardware and software, upgrade existing systems and provide advice on how organizations can use cutting edge tools, (i.e., cloud computing, telecommunications technology, security and privacy safeguards) to improve and protect their business operations.
Unlike the strategy and operations consulting firms, these organizations obviously prefer applicants with strong technical and/or computer backgrounds, including engineering, computer science, database management and networking as well as relative familiarity with large commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) packages developed by Oracle and SAP.
3.1.5 The Human Capital Firms
While many consulting firms factor in the people side of their work, The Human Capital Firms specialize in the personnel and stakeholder issues that are critical to the successful implementation and/or operations of a business. Common services provided by these firms include employee satisfaction evaluations, training programs, facilitation services, payroll and compensation programs, turnover issues and executive search. Many moving into these firms have a strong background in organizational design, communications and facilitation often gained at The Big Five firms.