The NUS MBA Consulting Club

Second Year exchange student Govindan Sendhuran shares his strategy for finding jobs in the Consulting Industry....

First Step in getting a management consulting job?
Find the jobs that are out there!

The way I see it, there are basically 3 steps in getting a management consulting job.

1. Finding the jobs that are out there
2. Applying for the jobs you like and getting interview calls for those
3. Converting the interviews into offers

In this blog entry, I’ll discuss the first step, finding the jobs that are out there. Many people, when they think of management consulting, think it’s just McKinsey, BCG and Bain. However, there are many other firms as well. And in this economic climate, it’s important to cast your net wide. Below are three good references you can use to find other management consulting firms.

1. Wetfeet and Vault Guides to the Consulting Industry
This is a great start. Your university’s career management center will normally have hard copies or access to the soft copies of these. Theses guides usually have a list of top 50 consulting firms ranked in terms of reputation, functional area expertise, quality of work/life balance, etc.

http://www.vault.com/nr/consulting_rankings/consulting_rankings.jsp?consulting2009=2&ch_id=252

http://shop.wetfeet.com/Browse/Consulting-Careers/25-Top-Consulting-Firms.aspx

2. LinkedIn
Vault and Wetfeet will only get you information on the top 50 consulting firms. But what about the rest? The smaller boutique firms? There are thousands out there! LinkedIn is a great source for this. If you don’t have a LinkedIn account yet, get one now! It’s an essential tool for all MBAs!



If you browse “Management Consulting”, you will find thousands of results for management consulting firms across the world. Just click on the names to learn more and find if you are connected to any of the firms’ employees.




3. Google
And let’s not forget good ol’ trusty google. If you have a background in a particular industry, just google for consulting firms in those industries. It can be quite powerful, but you’d need to filter out the noise. Just searching “Management Consulting – Telecom”, lead me to the following firms:

a) Consequi Group:
http://www.consequi.com/pages/1/index.htm

b) Greenwich Consulting:
http://www.greenwich-consulting.com/templates/home.php?NodId=57

c) Teleconvergence:
http://www.teleconvergence.com/en/Strategic_Telecommunications_Marketing

d) Dao2:
http://www.dao2.com/

I suggest you create an excel file to store the information you collect about the companies. Be sure to capture, their names, their industry focus, their website address, recruiter contact, application process, and very importantly, the resume/application deadlines. This will allow you to plan your application process in order to give yourself enough time to prepare the applications and also to ensure you don’t miss any deadlines.

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

When I started my MBA, I was not very sure of the career that I wanted to pursue post MBA, let alone stand for Consulting club President. My inspiration to contest elections for the post came from "Consultant Unplugged", an event which was organized by the club in September 2007 and had made everyone associated with it feel proud. This event made me realize that the consulting club had a lot of potential.

Before being chosen as the President I had a broad outline of what I wanted to achieve with the help of executive committee and club members. I should be candid in stating that when I was chosen, I did not imagine the amount of detailed planning and effort each event could involve. Even after sound planning, execution was filled with a number of challenges at times. Conducting events keeping in mind the timetable of students, MBA office & CSO events and schedules of external speakers; and yet ensuring a good attendance turned out to be a humongous task. I personally felt a lot of satisfaction with the successful execution of each event and appreciation received afterwards.

We started the season with a speaker session in which Mr.Torgeir Kruke the regional Director of CapGemini Norway, spoke about technology consulting and his experiences in Cap Gemini. He was an exchange student at NUS MBA with around 20 years of work experience and we realized that NUS MBA offers numerous opportunities to learn from fellow batch mates who come with a lot of practical work experience which if shared using a common platform can be highly useful.

We organized external speaker sessions where our alumni working in various top management consulting firms were called to share their experiences. Our alumni have been very supportive in sparing time from their hectic schedules and their encouragement made us all believe that with the right kind of preparation and attitude it isn't tough to get into top notch consulting firms like Mckinsey, BCG etc.

We had always felt that case practice was an area in which many people lagged and when they got interview calls from consulting firms, getting through the first few rounds could be a tough battle without gaining the required skills and practice. Keeping all these things in mind we tried and successfully organized two Case workshops -one done by the alumni and other done by an external professional. These events were time consuming and tiring but they were worth the effort.

Consultant Unplugged 2008 was one grand event that my team and I did try to organize but we could not make it happen due to numerous reasons that were beyond our control. We look forward to the next team to make it happen.

Apart from the events that I have stated above, consulting club tried to bring people together so that they could share their experiences and perspectives about management consulting in whatever ways they could(internships, past jobs, google group).

My experiences as the Club President have been very fulfilling. The responsibilities were challenging at times, but with the support of ex-co, faculty, MBA office and my batch mates I achieved success and I can say this because of the sincere appreciation that the club received from everyone.

I have full faith in the new team that is heading the club and I wish to see club rising to new heights and taking more initiatives to create a mark for itself and the school.

On behalf of Executive committee-2008

Former President, Consulting Club,

Isha Gupta