From Interview to Offer
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Govindan Sendhuran writes the Last part of his 3 part series on "Finding Jobs in the Consulting Industry"
[ For those who missed the earlier parts, here are the links to Part1 & Part 2 ]
From Interview to Offer
General Interview Preparation
The first thing to do when you get an interview call (and preferably you should start before that), is to find out everything you can about the firm’s interviews. This applies to pretty much every industry, not just consulting. The things to find include (but aren’t limited to):
- Format of the interviews: How long is it? How many will there be? Is it going to be case interview? Group discussion? Etc.
- What the firm/interviewers are looking for: Relevant experience, knowledge of finance, analytical skills, etc.
- Frequently asked questions: Tell me about a time when you lead a team? What are you strengths & weaknesses?, etc.
The best sources for this kind of information are people who have recently interviewed with the firm and the alumni/friends who work there. The recruiter can also be approached regarding the format of the interviews, and what the firm is looking for. But it would be inappropriate to ask about frequently asked questions.
This information will help you better prepare for the interview. Prior to the interview, you should prepare answers for the frequently asked questions. This will help you feel more relaxed in the actual interview. Additionally, if there is some special interview method used at the firm, you can get ready for that too.
Consulting Firm Interviews
Most top management consulting firms will have interviews that are a mix of behavioral interviews and case interviews. Each is used to assess different aspects of your candidature:
1. Behavioral Interviews: These are used to assess your experiences, attitudes, leadership skills and other relevant skills. Additionally these interviews check for fit with the firm.
To prepare for these, check with others who’ve interviewed with the firm recently, or alums who work at the firm, to get the inside scoop on the frequently asked question. Also, ensure that you prepare your answers to these questions beforehand and practice them with others.
2. Case Interviews: These are used to assess your analytical skills, your creativity, and your general business judgment.
The only way to prepare for this is to practice, practice, and practice some more, at least 50 – 100 cases before you interview. This means you have to start practicing long before you even get your interview call. Also practice with different people, practice with different types of cases (investments, market entry, operations, etc.) Quantity and variety are key! “Crack the Case” (www.mbacase.com), by David Ohrvall is the best resource I’ve seen for case interview practice. In my opinion it’s a MUST.
A few consulting firms will also use other methods to evaluate your candidature, including group discussions, presentation, etc. So make sure you investigate this before the interview.
The Actual Interview
Be confident and SMILE!
By the time you go for the interview, you should have prepared enough to be confident of getting the job. And if it helps, realize that the firm has invited you to interview because they think you are a good candidate. They already believe that you are smart enough and have the right background and experiences to succeed as a consultant!
Be relaxed and SMILE. When you are tensed up or nervous, your brain starts wasting mental cycles. You’re slower to respond, you’ll forget things, and you’ll do poorly, especially in the case interview. So relax, take a deep breath if you need and SMILE. Smiling can actually make you feel more relaxed! Smiling will also help you be more personable. If you’re stiff and don’t smile, it could harm your chances. Remember, consulting is hard work, and the interviewer is also looking for a new colleague who can be fun to work with through those long days. So relax, SMILE and be personable.
MBA Class of 2009
UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School
NUS Business School (exchange)
Consultant Unplugged 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
On March 19, 2009 at 2:30 am, as I finally flopped on my bed, and in the 2 seconds before I fell asleep, all I could remember were Srikanth's words, "Just make sure you hold Consultant Unplugged"
The day was Dec 6, 2008. I wasn’t even a month old as the Club President when at the annual ART dinner, one of our alumnus, Srikanth Sridharan caught hold of me and Srinivasa, our student council President, and told both of us that we must hold “Consultant Unplugged”. Our outgoing ex-co had said the same thing and it was already somewhere vaguely in my mind and hence, of course I agreed. I hadn't even planned the event calendar for the year and I was going home for a month. So I lodged it in the back of my head and promptly forgot about it. Back in January, I started planning 
the events, and thinking about Consultant Unplugged. After much deliberation and consultation, we, the club ex-co, decided on March end. We had 3 months to plan, but no idea what we were in for.
For the next 3 months, at painstaking pace we moved from one step to the next. Talking to people day and night, identifying possible speakers and going through all possible channels to invite other business schools, we were sending what seemed like a countless number of mails.
It is an NUS MBA flagship event and the smallest details mattered. 8 days for designing
the registration flyer, followed by faculty invitation cards, publicity email blasts, 5 different versions of the panel guides: each for a different target audience, numerous iterations of each version; every single word, logo and punctuation mark in every single document and e-mail was scrutinized by at least 5 independent pairs of eyes.
There were setbacks, failures and sacrifices. We had to give up looking for internships, going for recruitment talks and even studying for tests. I remember studying only a few hours before my mid term and of course I bombed in it. The last 20 days were the hardest to keep going. Except actually attending classes, we were doing nothing but planning the event. Endless trips to the programs office to finalize the logistics, recruiting volunteers, assigning escorts for outside teams & panelists, countdown reminder flyers, customized reminder emails, 25 versions of the banner, detailed volunteer plans with clear time lines and tasks, down to pasting chits at the points where volunteers were supposed to stand, 250 name tags to be prepared, checked and printed; audience question templates, Panelists introduction briefs, thank you notes and welcome speeches, emcee's scripts, I was exhausting all my writing skills as the team worked full steam. "Consultant Unplugged 2009" had become our lives; the atmosphere was frenzied.
On March 19 at 7:15 PM, as I finally sat down in one of the reserved seats with the volunteers and the rest of the team, and listened to the panelists speak for the next 90 minutes or so; the constant laughter and applause from the audience echoing in my ears, I knew that we had done it!
Appreciation mails have been pouring in since the event. We had created a lot of publicity before the event and its success increased the event's visibility manifold. The bar is now much higher for all future NUS MBA events, especially for "Consultant Unplugged 2010"
-Shipra Gupta
President - NUS MBA Consulting Club
Class of 2010
The NUS MBA Consulting Club
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Shipra Gupta, President - NUS MBA Consulting Club, writes for the IIM Calcutta Magazine, "The Joka-Strategist" ...
People pursue MBA programs for a variety of reasons: switching industries, climbing the next rung of the corporate ladder, taking a study break to go back to the joys of being a student and taking a sabbatical to figure out the next step in life; constitute a few of those. A large proportion of these categories of students explore consulting as a prospect career option. Add to this a large number of students who harbor an informed preference towards this field, and the result is almost half of every new batch that wants to consider a career in consulting. It is this very half that the NUS MBA Consulting Club aims to assist in their journey towards the career of their preference.
Being an entirely student-run body, our mission is to help our members get an insightful picture of the Consulting industry and make informed career related decisions. Working towards this purpose we organize various events of differing scale and magnitude throughout the year. These events can be classified as different points on a 3-dimensional plane; with the actual dimensions being: scale (small vs. large), subject (industry insights vs. career related) and speaker (internal vs. external).
i-Speak is an example of a series of small scale internal speaker events focusing on industry insights provided by students from within the batch who have extensive prior experience in the Consulting industry. These sessions provide an informal platform for students to share their concerns, experiences and opinions about the prevalent work culture, the specific processes, training programs, projects and skill sets.
Diametrically opposite to i-Speak is Consultant Unplugged. An annual NUS MBA Flagship event, it takes the form of a panel discussion between elite members of the Consulting industry in Singapore; with the actual subject of the discussion ranging widely from the panelists’ experiences to insights about the trends in the industry etc.
Between these 2 ends of the spectrum lie a whole plethora of events including talks by alumni on a wide range of topics; resume reviews, mock interview and case analysis sessions; periodic blog and website updates, career interest groups and fun consultant-meets to name a few. All these events serve specific purposes; so while resume reviews & mock interview sessions are intended to better equip our members in their internship/job hunts; fun-consultant meets are just an opportunity for members to let their hair down and de-stress.
As a club we try to attain the optimum balance between the various events, so that at the end of the program, our members feel better informed and equipped to build a career in the consulting industry, while ensuring that they relish the experience of having been a part of the program and a member of the club
-Shipra Gupta
President- NUS MBA Consulting Club
Class of 2010
[ Click Here for the Original Joka-Strategist Edition]
Getting the Interview Call
Friday, March 13, 2009
[ 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
Eg. how did you work across cross-functional teams? In international teams? Etc.
“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”
-Sendhuran Govindan
MBA Class of 2009
UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School
NUS Business School (exchange)
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
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