Getting the Interview Call

Friday, March 13, 2009

Govindan Sendhuran writes the 2nd part of his 3 part series on "Finding Jobs in the Consulting Industry"
[ For those who missed the first part, here is the link ]

Getting the Interview Call

In my opinion, getting an interview call from a top tier consulting firm is probably the hardest part of getting the job for many people. If you have a 750 GMAT, great undergraduate GPA, and go to a high-ranked business school, it gets a bit easier, but still there is lot more involved. The way I see it, there are two ways to get the interview call, one is through the formal application process, and the other is through informal networking.

Formal Process: All the top consulting firms, and many smaller firms too, have a formal application process (normally online application). Most top firms look for four things in the application:
1. High undergraduate/graduate GPA
2. High GMAT Score (at least 700, preferably in the 750 range)
3. Reputed MBA program
4. ‘Killer’ Resume
Not having one of the first three mentioned above does not mean, you can’t get an interview call, it just gets much harder. So if you need to, re – write the GMAT. And put your GMAT score if it’s a good one on your resume.

Now on to the resume. Your resume has to highlight several important key characteristics:

1. Impact/Achievement
Eg. Each of your achievements/accomplishments needs to be clearly quantified. How much business did you generate? How much did you save? How big was the project, in $$ terms, were you responsible for?

2. Leadership Experiences
3. Teamwork Abilities
Eg. how did you work across cross-functional teams? In international teams? Etc.
4. Something interesting about yourself
This is quite important. Everyone has great impressive professional experiences to talk about. But you need to differentiate yourself from the pack to be more interesting. Here are some examples.
“Shot down 3 enemy aircrafts in dogfights over Iraq”
“Directed documentary about robotic camel jockeys in the Middle East”
“Authored, ‘Running with the Buffalos’, book about the Colorado Men’s Cross Country Team”
If there are two resumes with similar experience and only one can be chosen for an interview, you can bet it’s going to be one that is more interesting… It’s nice to have interesting colleagues right?
Check out some excellent tips on resume writing from McKinsey & Company:
Informal Process: By the informal process, I mean being able to have someone in the firm forward your resume to the people responsible for hiring. This generally works only for smaller consulting firms. But there are exceptions. I know a person who got an interview because a Senior Partner at a top consulting firm was impressed with him. He didn’t even have to go through the online application process! The informal process is particularly useful in-case the formal process becomes difficult (low GMAT, low GPA, etc.)
So how do you start? You first find the firm you are interested in and then network to find someone in the company who you can talk to. Remember LinkedIn? Get out there and find ex-colleagues, ex-classmates, alumni from undergrad, alumni from grad school, etc. and get talking with them. Once you find a person to talk to, you have three goals in your communication with them:
1. Learn more about the firm and what your role would be once you join
2. Impress upon the person that you are a fantastic candidate
3. Get them to forward your resume to the appropriate people to get an interview
For many smaller firms, this is your best chance because recruiting works on trust. They can’t afford to make mistakes in their recruiting so a referral works strongly in your favour.
Next time, we’ll talk about how to convert that interview into an offer.

-Sendhuran Govindan
MBA Class of 2009
UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School
NUS Business School (exchange)

Posted by Shipra at 12:03 PM  

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