It is said that to really understand somebody you have to walk a mile in their shoes. Analysing a customer journey, from prospect to buyer, allows the business to step into the customer’s shoes and experience the whole process from their perspective. Professor Bernd Schmitt of Columbia Business School is credited with creating the concept […]
Category: Consulting
You might have been given an opportunity to have a coffee chat with a firm representative or with a Partner at your dream consulting firm. However, one observation that I have made as both a potential hire looking for a job and as a consultant guiding others is that oftentimes, we are not prepared for […]
Applications can be a stress inducing process when pursuing a consulting career or opportunities from consulting firms as a student. Especially when you are competing against your peers who offer a diverse pool of skills, experiences, and backgrounds for consulting firms to cherry pick from. Selection criteria for candidates may differ from firm to firm […]
Categories
4 Top Tips for Networking at Any Event
Networking can be a frightening process but a necessary one since it gives you a chance to meet new people who are the biggest asset you can have in life. Through successful networking one gains a multitude of benefits such as strengthened business connections, introduction to fresh ideas, access to jobs opportunities, more confidence and […]
A vast portion of a management consultant’s career is spent analyzing data, summarizing information, extracting insights, and helping to convert knowledge to action. So, a few minutes into your case interview, the recruiter slides a chart across the table and asks what you can tell from that particular exhibit. The objective of the chart is […]
What is Consulting? Many of us have heard the term consulting before, whether it comes up in a chat with friends about making money or just throwing around the term loosely when trying to come up with an entrepreneurial idea. What does consulting actually mean and is consulting right for you? The term consulting is […]
I vividly remember the last consulting interview during first-year MBA recruiting season. I was tense. My confidence was dwindling. I had managed to get interviews with three firms but only made it past the first round with this final company. The recruiting coordinator mentioned she’d get back to me by the end of the day. […]
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with another blog contributor to the SpencerTom community, Jason Oh, to share our experiences about the consulting recruiting process. More specifically, we were able to go over a few common questions about the differences in recruiting at a ‘target university’ and a ‘non-target university’ […]
Categories
What is consulting?
When people think of consultants, they tend to visualize professionally suited employees, degrees from the best schools, high pay-checks and fancy travel stories. Some people also call consulting a ‘talk-job’ – you go to the clients, you talk about what the ideal world scenario would be for a particular project, product or market, and your […]
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 […]
University is a difficult journey for anyone, regardless of major. Oftentimes, it takes a lot of navigating to truly understand what you want from your experience and where you want to end up. For me, I was fortunate to study at a Canadian business school and interacted with numerous small and large companies from a […]
Before reading this article, check out “Due Diligence by Management Consulting Firms”. What is due diligence? Due diligence is one of the most overused and understated terms in business. Due diligence is the process of being able to evaluate and understand a prospective investment, such as an acquisition, by gathering as much information as possible. […]
The question of how to join a management consulting firm as an experienced hire from another industry or another consulting firm is one that is often asked. The traditional route is to apply and go through the standard interview process as an MBA summer intern or post-MBA consultant. However, there aren’t a lot of sources […]
Consulting-style case interviews are highly effective, and the same format is being adopted more and more widely. The major consultancies have converged on a largely identical interview style, precisely because it excels in picking out the most genuinely capable candidates from the huge pools of applications received. However, consultancies are not the only oversubscribed employers […]
Many consulting, corporate strategy, and corporate development roles require the interviewee to go through an M&A case study. Depending on the firm and specific role this case could be very strategic and operational like doing a market entry/growth-type case or very technical (i.e. building financial models like DCF, accretion/dilution, LBO, etc.). But before we dive […]
Categories
Breaking down the M&A Case Study
M&A case framework Now that you have a high-level understanding of why companies buy each other in the first place (refer to M&A deals – benefits and drawbacks), let’s discuss the framework you should use to analyze the transaction. Firms typically look at four areas when working on M&A cases. Let’s step through them one […]
Categories
Cracking Pricing Strategy Case Studies
Pricing strategy is one of the easiest levers CEOs can pull to increase revenues in their company. For instance, retail banks can raise interest rates (the price they pay customers for depositing funds at the bank) to quickly attract new balances and acquire new customers. They can then lend out this money at even higher […]
Congratulations! You’ve passed your interviews and you’re now a consultant. However, while you may have momentarily rejoiced and thought “I’ve made it!”, you probably quickly came to the realization that this is just the beginning. Being a consultant is a constant challenge and struggle. It will never be “easy,” but if it were, you would […]
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 […]
These are a few tips and tricks that I’ve picked up from my own personal experience as well as anecdotes for consultants a few years out. There are a lot of things to note when first starting your career, but these are the most broadly applicable. 1. Be open-minded While not all consulting firms are […]
As with most other competitive professions, breaking into consulting roles has a lot to do with networking. Unfortunately, candidates get one chance to make a first impression. Meeting people early before you are polished will end up burning a lot of bridges. For example, after a very disorganized meeting the consultant will come back and […]
Categories
Product Roadmap Explained
A roadmap streamlines business goals into strategic and executable paths. In the context of project management, a roadmap can span across multiple timelines for continuous product development. Why do you need a product roadmap? A roadmap is crucial for visualizing a product’s strategy that is aligned with your business goals, while incorporating customer insights for […]
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 […]
Product management is at the heart of any modern business and today’s product managers need to have incredibly strong quantitative skills and intuition to build products or features that customers will find truly useful. They must focus on quality outcomes and not quantity of output. This brings us to the four goals of product management : […]
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 […]
Categories
PM Career Paths
Being a product manager requires taking responsibility. You are the ambassador of the product. You’re responsible for it from its first fuzzy idea, to concrete concept, through production, launch, and all the way to maturity stage. In order to successfully get there, you need to have a good understanding of the market as well as […]
Properly preparing for strategy consulting interviews doesn’t just mean learning the process, memorizing frameworks, and casing all-out; in order to ensure success it’s also critically important that a mindset shift occurs. Good candidates get to the right answer. Excellent candidates do so in a very particular way – and this is the best way to […]
Like a consulting interview, a product manager (PM) interview consists of multiple parts, including a case study and a behavioral portion, which looks for communication, management, and prioritization skills. But what’s different is that it adds a twist by having product-related questions as well. Unsurprisingly, PMs should love products. They should be able to recognize […]
Question “Give me an example of a good product and not so good product. Why is one better than the other?” What is this question about? This product management (PM) interview question tests whether you understand product design principles. Is your evaluation of products guided by principles of good design? Are you able to articulate […]
Associate Product Manager (APM) positions are well known in Silicon Valley as rotational, mentorship-focused programs designed to accelerate the careers of young aspiring product managers. Typically, they feature perks like rotations on various teams, face-time with leadership at the company, and strong alumni communities with robust networks. But how do you filter and come down […]
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 […]
Categories
4 Types of Consulting Firms
If you’re trying to get into consulting, it can be more than a little confusing trying to understand the various types of firms and their practices. In this post, you will learn about the 4 major types of consulting and the firms that are typically associated with them. 1. Strategy Consulting This is the type […]
Amid the intensity of recruiting for consulting, few stop to think what it will really be like once they’ve achieved their mission to get into a top-tier consulting firm. With their eyes on the prize, and a single-minded focus, many gloss over the details of what day 1 and 300 will look like. I’m included […]
Categories
Introduction to Case Interviews
If you’re applying to a consulting firm, be ready to get acquainted with case interviews. Almost all consulting firms include the case interview as part of their recruitment process. In fact, it can play a huge role in deciding if you get the job. Even non-consulting firms are utilizing case interviews as part of their […]
Management consulting is a professional service offered to organisations which aims to help internal management improve operating performance. Consultancies are brought in to tackle individual problems (falling revenue, rising costs, geographical expansion, product launch, M&A) or to evaluate the company through a deep dive analysis. The management consulting value chain encompasses strategy (idea origination, analysis […]
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 […]
Let’s face it. A major portion of the consulting case interview tests your quantitative skills. Why? Consultants work with a lot of data and can spend a significant amount of time crunching numbers. So your interviewers want to know that you’re comfortable with math and have strong analytic reasoning skills. Here is a play-by-play of how you […]
Having a great mentor is critical for personal skill development, especially early in your career, and so I wanted to share the guidelines that my mentor provided me to follow in 2019 to become a better consultant / strategist. As a brief introduction, my mentor spent two summers at Bain & Co. as an Associate […]
When two companies are going through a merger or an acquisition (M&A), the branding strategy is often the last thing that senior management thinks about, wrongly assuming that it’s more a creative decision than a business call. This is a huge mistake. There’s no clearer signal to the market regarding the intentions behind the M&A […]
Is a job in consulting really what you expect it will be when you are a student, knee-deep in case prep and coffee chats? In this series, we hear from new consultants who were recently in those shoes, and what their experience has actually been like during the transition from the dream to the day-to-day […]
In an ideal world, your business would be judged on the quality of your service. However, humans are visual creatures. A nicely designed business proposal suggests 3 things: You are a true professional You pay great attention to detail You take pride in your work The three things above increase the likelihood of winning work. […]
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 […]
In my last blog post I wrote about how new grads can navigate interview season when they finally receive a consulting interview they’re excited about. You can find the full article here. After this post was published, students reached out to me asking for examples of ‘fit’ questions. Interview questions are commonly split up into […]
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 […]
Categories
Tackling the Case Interview
“Case study interviews put you in the driver’s seat: you’re given a real business problem to work through and solve. The logical reasoning you use to work through the case is just as important as the conclusions you reach” (The University of Sydney, 2019) Every year, consulting firms get hundreds of applications and the human […]
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 […]
Back in 1985 when Back to the Future II was first released, we all thought hoverboards and flying cars would be our future. Flash forward over 30 years, much of the tech that the film predicted has come true. But one thing it didn’t get right was the flying cars; instead, the closest thing we […]
Despite their expertise, many consultants struggle to close deals. Writing a consulting proposal that closes a sale can be challenging, and as a result it may be difficult to figure out why your proposals are getting rejected. In this article, we will look at seven tips that will improve your success rate so that you can […]
‘I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.’ — Elon Musk, founder of PayPal, Tesla, […]