I previously wrote a similar article for those in consulting coming from undergrad. Now I want to highlight the outlook for those who joined consulting from grad school. Although there are extensive parallels, the grad school pool is decently different because they tend to be older (ballpark around 28 or so when they started their […]
Author: Hall Wang
Last year, after 2.5 years in management consulting, I transitioned to a Fortune 50 US company in an internal strategy role. Having had about a year on the new job, I want to highlight the benefits of this transition to give the many consultants out there some perspective. Before outlining the benefits of internal strategy, […]
With the tight professional services market in the US, everyone I know in consulting has talked about how they know people who jumped consulting firms (this does not count those who changed firms after attending graduate school). I have heard some stories of when firm jumping became a highly stressful endeavor, and occasions when it […]
MBA consulting recruiting season starts every fall. For a few falls now, in my capacity as a volunteer career advisor, I have had to uncomfortably tell incredibly intelligent MBA students from highly respected schools that they are utterly ill-informed about entering the consulting profession. It isn’t that they did anything wrong per-se or that they […]
One aspect of consulting career development that I don’t think those new to the industry sufficiently appreciate is the importance of having a community of mentors. Yes, most firms have a system whereby each consultant is required to have a designated mentor to be an official guide (formally titled Coach, Counselor, etc.). Yet, beyond that, […]
A constantly reoccurring conversation I have heard discussed about the management consulting industry is if the preference for talent is in favor of “poets” (those that come from more of a humanities background) or “quants” (those that come from more of a technical or hard sciences background). Of course, the best position to be in […]
At about the 3-year mark after entering consulting most consultants who matriculated directly from undergrad begin to seriously consider their next steps. For prospective and current consultants alike, I want to highlight the reflections and career pathways taken by such consultants. 1. Stay in Consulting and Maybe Shoot for the Partner Track In consulting, it […]
When I talk to my friends in consulting (across all firms and types of consulting), it amuses me that the early career mistakes we have made and witnessed are eerily similar across the board. I want to share four of them to help you avoid the most common mistakes and possibly course correct if you […]
As someone currently in management consulting who has previously done tech sales for a major software company, I was amused by Martin Keller’s article championing tech sales (sometimes known as consultative or customer success driven sales) over management consulting. Both are great career options and anyone starting their career or doing a career pivot would […]
Although a majority of people start their consulting career straight from undergraduate or graduate studies as their first full time profession, there is a substantial number of consultants who are experienced hires, coming from a prior career. For experienced hires, the dynamics of pivoting into consulting can be jarring, especially for the uninitiated. To better […]
In nearly every consulting firm, sooner or later you’ll have to prioritize a specialty to formally begin establishing a focus area for your consulting career. Just to be clear, by specialty, I mean a specifically defined industry (e.g. industrials, pharma, etc.) or functional area (e.g. cost cutting, organizations, etc.) that the firm has built a […]
Looking back to consulting recruiting in graduate school, I always think about how interesting it was that so much of the conversation among candidates was about getting an offer from a top consulting firm. Yet, I don’t remember many conversations about succeeding within a consulting firm after joining. I want to shed some light on […]
As a regular mentor to new consultants, I regularly find myself addressing some challenges of consulting life by simply recommending gear acquisitions based upon my personal experience. After much extensive feedback about how helpful my recommendations have been, I thought it would be helpful to share the wealth with a wider audience. For those who […]
In graduate school, I had a classmate who had previously worked at a boutique firm. She enthusiastically advocated that everyone interested in consulting should only go for boutique firms. Today, having acquired more perspectives from friends and colleagues with boutique firm experience, I have a greater appreciation of what it means to start a consulting […]
When it comes to recruiting, consulting firms have a roster of schools’ from which they source the majority of their summer interns and full-time employees. This dedicated school-based hiring is generally referred to as “campus hiring”. Most firms also hire students from ‘non-core schools’, but these are usually a small minority of campus hires. Students […]
Everyone I know in consulting entered it in large part as a means of career advancement, be it through the ranks of the consulting industry or with the intention to pivot into a different career down the line. Yet, what does it mean to get the most out of the consulting experience for career advancement? […]
By no means do I pretend to see the future, but I think I can take an educated stab at how consulting life may change once the COVID crisis is over. Many prospective consulting candidates are probably keen to know what to expect. I want to highlight that I speak not only from my own […]
As someone who does volunteer career coaching, I have unexpectedly been fielding some questions from prospective consulting candidates about how best to manage a second job while attending to a consulting career. The people I talked to wanted to continue doing something they were passionate about, things like running a start-up or bartending. I’m sure […]
Dear University Student Seeking to Enter Consulting, Let’s be honest. Due to the global economic and health impacts of COVID-19, getting any job offer just got a lot harder. The consulting industry at large has scaled back hiring, and so securing a consulting opportunity will be difficult. For many of you, the realistic challenge is […]
I don’t remember anyone talking about it back when I was recruiting for consulting, but I have noticed that one major contributing factor to consulting workplace satisfaction is having friends at the firm. By friends, I don’t mean the typical “workplace friends” that you get along with at work, get coffee with, and maybe go […]
As a volunteer graduate school advisor, I often get asked if acquiring an additional graduate degree in addition to an MBA as a dual degree student improves consulting recruiting opportunities. As a dual degree myself (MBA and MPP) who has encountered numerous MBA dual degrees in consulting of all types, I thought it would be […]
During the recruiting process, it was interesting to hear consultants talk about how much of their job is about conducting learning activities. By learning activities, I am not speaking about on-the-job-training. I am specifically talking about structured formal learning events such as classroom learning (including online), instructor led workshops, and interactive lectures. For prospective consultants […]
First of all, I am not going to presume that I can see the future, but I’m going to base my thoughts upon two broadly appreciated assumptions about COVID-19’s impact on the future. Any recessions brought on by COVID-19 will have effects that persist at least through 2020. Aspects of social behavior initiated as part […]
During both consulting recruiting and the initial months working in consulting, experienced by myself and my friends, the top priority for a consulting career which has been consistently emphasized has been delivering excellent client work. Arguably, the second priority has been persistent learning. Both of these are pretty self-evident to understand and appreciate. However, there […]
This past New Year’s Eve, I was surrounded by people sharing what they were thankful for in 2019. Since then, I have put much thought into thinking about how thankful I am to work for a consulting firm that empowers me to make time for my personal life’s priorities. Maybe I was overly pessimistic about […]
Throughout the consulting career recruiting process, I found it memorable that in both informal conversations and formal presentations, the issue of personal life management did occur as a poignant topic of conversation. The unifying message that was put forward was that the consulting lifestyle can easily strain any relationship if it wasn’t properly managed. I […]
One of the more memorable parts of the consulting recruiting process was witnessing people attempting to network with consulting firms. What stood out was that people didn’t seem to have a commonsense understanding of networking best practices. Consequently, I witnessed some networking maneuvers that were simply bad form. I thought I had buried those amusing […]
When I started graduate school three years ago, I had only a marginal interests in pursuing a management consulting career. Low and behold, I’ll be starting my first day in management consulting in New York City a month from now. I sometimes chuckle in reflecting on my unlikely path into this field. My story is […]
As addressed in my article from last week, non-MBA graduate students face a comparatively more challenging journey in their quest to enter the management consulting industry. That being said, I know plenty of non-MBAs who have received offers from prestigious consulting firms, and so I thought it would be helpful to share some strategies that […]
An MBA degree has long been known as a robust pathway towards accessing management consulting career options. Yet, what about other graduate degrees in comparison to an MBA? Having been a student ambassador for a program at my university’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, I have had plenty of conversations with prospective students asking […]
During the recruitment process for consulting internships and full-time positions, I went to countless presentations given by consulting firm representatives who explained the consulting industry and made sales pitches about their firms. They brought up important points, such as diversity of work opportunity, mentorship structure, and even frank conversations about work life balance. Yet, what […]
For those of you who signed a consulting offer, congrats! The hard part is over. Now there are just two more important decisions that you need to make. What start date should be requested and what should be done with the soon to be very scarce free time prior to starting? Post-graduation start-dates generally range […]
Leadership. We are all told it is important. There are libraries worth of books written about it. Yet, more often than not, people have a hard time defining it and understanding its relevance because of its all-encompassing nature. For prospective consultants, this blog post will provide some clarity on what leadership means in a consulting […]
Hypothetically, the fastest way to secure a consulting role after higher education is to do a consulting internship and then get a full time offer, or transition into another consulting offer with the ability to demonstrate you know what consulting is about. Yet, just because you didn’t do a consulting internship this past summer doesn’t […]
The fundamentals of doing well in a case interview are pretty well known and accessible. It is essentially everything that is in the case interview bibles of Case In Point or Hacking the Case Interview. As an aside, as someone who did not have prior consulting experience, I personally found the lesser known, Crack the […]
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Picking Among Consulting Offers
When fortunate enough to have more than one consulting offer, a common sentiment is to go for the firm that is more prestigious or pays the most (oftentimes those go hand and hand). However, I always recommend that anyone who gets more than one consulting offer should think beyond prestige and pay. It is wise […]
The clients won’t be household names. Compensation for your volunteer consulting work is at an exciting zero. Worst of all, it will be just another project that competes with school work, networking, and sleep for a piece of your time. Yet for graduate students seriously considering a consulting career without prior professional consulting experience, I […]