Breaking into management consulting is hard.
I have been there and struggled with it. I wanted to shed some light on the process so you can have an easier time breaking into it. I’m a new grad who is working in Strategy&. I studied at Ivey Business School with summer experiences in a search fund, a middle market private equity boutique and an early-stage venture capital — all with no experience with management consulting.
While there are many resources around consulting, this resource aims to prepare you with the right mindset to approach consulting recruiting, especially if you have never worked in consulting before.
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There are 3 main ways to transfer into the management consulting industry. You can join them
- Out of Undergraduate Studies
- Out of High Education / Business School (MBAs / MSc / PhD)
- After years of industry work in industry
This article is focused on the first one, for undergraduate students looking to break in right away.
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Most consulting firms adopt an apprenticeship model, which means they value slope (ability to learn and adapt) over inceptions (industry knowledge or experiences). In management consulting firms, juniors will be responsible for driving the bulk of the analysis and the seniors will be guiding the juniors with the analysis and output.
As a junior, you get to be in the same room with veteran executives across multiple sectors and work on complex problems ranging from operations to GTM strategy to commercial due diligence to M&A, and you also work very long hours in comparison with industry jobs, so be prepared for that. To learn more, my friend Jason Lai has a lot of amazing content about what the job is about.
Now let’s talk about how to get the job.
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Before you decide to prepare for consulting recruiting, it is critical to understand what they are looking for. To me, after starting my role in consulting, I will bucket them into four categories:
- Intellectual Horsepower — You are not expected to bring industry expertise to the table as a new graduate, but they want to know that you have the ability (and work ethic) to work hard and solve problems
- Intellectual Curiosity — You will expect lots of context-switching between sectors and problems, you need to ask a lot of questions, build a lot of hypotheses and figure them out, which all require curiosity
- Client Readiness — You will be put in front of senior executives even though you are 22–23 years old. Be poise, polished, and well-versed in business subjects to develop relationships with stakeholders
- Team-Oriented Mindset — You will be working long hours for months with your project team. Being able to facilitate team discussions, make effective prioritization decisions and support teammates when needed
When preparing for behavioural and case interviews, showcase these attributes whenever you find fit. Sprinkle ideas with teamwork, client-facing activities, projects and analytical rigour.
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How I prepared myself for recruiting season with no summer internship experience
There are three pointers I wanted to highlight about the recruiting process for management consulting.
- Keep up to date with their timelines
In consulting, firms recruit in cohorts at specific periods of the year. The catch? They all do it roughly at the same time. You want to gather information around the timeline by
(1) attending information sessions by consulting firms
(2) taking previous year references from upperclassmen
(3) asking directly with consultants during your coffee chats
(4) checking in with a few close friends who are also recruiting
On some occasions, diversity programs will kick off earlier than the regular recruiting season. If you can do these four things, you will not miss any applications and have the time to get ready for these applications.
2. Optimize your recruiting 3-pillar strategy
Before nailing the interview, you have to get an interview. This is the most competitive process ever.
Recruiters at these companies have to vent thousands of resumes and there are three pillars you can work on to improve your chances: (1) Grades / GPA, (2) Extra-Curriculars, (3) Networking.
At the top firms, you need to be in the top quartile for every category to make it to interviews. They are all critical to your chances of landing an interview.
Work hard during your 1st and 2nd year of university, invest in extra-curriculars and network hard with consultants ~4–6 months before recruiting season begins.
3. Case Prep and Mocks
Once you have made it to the interview stage, you would be greeted with case interviews, where you have to walk through a 20–30 minute case with the interviewer. You have to utilize structured thinking in approaching the problem, demonstrate business acumen in communicating with the interview and show resiliency in adapting to high-stress scenarios.
The advice here is to start doing interview mocks early. I found doing mock interviews with peers drives the greatest improvement in the shortest amount of time. It is going to look ugly at the beginning but the velocity of improvements is so high when you keep doing interviews, you get better in every aspect of the interview from first impressions to body language to walkthroughs.
Some resources I’d recommend are Case In Point, Victor Cheng’s Case Interview Framework, Darden Case Book, Michigan Case Book, etc.
My Experience
I had about two months to prepare for the recruiting cycle with zero professional consulting experience. It was at the end of my venture capital internship and I made up my mind to try consulting.
The first thing I did was talk to 2–3 of my close friends who are currently in consulting to understand their process. Figure out what kind of resources they used to prepare for interviews, and any advice with preparing the process.
The second thing I did was create a spreadsheet with all the firms with a track record of hiring undergraduate students, and a special note for companies with strong alumni presence or no alumni presence at all.
After that, I began doing mock cases about one per 2–3 days with a different person, always asking for feedback on what you did that particularly stood out in a good way, and what are the key areas of improvement.
Then when I applied for full-time positions on the company websites, always triple-check the format of the resume they are asking for, from naming conventions to merging your resume, cover letter and transcript into one PDF. Being detail-oriented is key when submitting your online application.
On the day of the interview, if possible, block the entire day for the interviews. Avoid doing too many mock cases the day before the interview, make sure always remind yourself that they are looking for slope, not intercepts. Do a few mental math exercises in the morning (i.e. Rocketblock) and make sure you are all dressed up / look ready for the interview, it applies to both virtual and in-person interviews.
After the interview, make sure to send a follow-up email to thank the interviewer for taking the time, mention 1–2 things specific to the conversations you all had and keep it concise.
Note: Most of the advice here applies to a wide range of consulting jobs, however, there are a few things you want to understand on an individual basis. For example, when you are preparing case interviews, you want to know which interview style your firm uses, usually between interviewer-led and interview-led. Another example would be the variation of interview rounds, some firms would require you to work on a take-home case, some firms would require you to participate in virtual assessments, and some firms would run their interviews in a super day style (multiple back-to-back interviews in a single day) — if you can, obtain this information before you were told when you applied. It would leave you with more time to prepare.
🙏 I hope you enjoyed reading this article. Reach out to me at alex.ha4121@gmail.com or Twitter if you have any questions!
