Good reads from the consulting blogosphere, plus a great site for case interview preparation

Readers will notice that the posting rate here at MC has slowed a bit recently. Have been working on several related projects (the Consulting Bible among them) and will be excited to share with everyone soon!

Later today, I’ll post about “How management consultants assess interviews”. For now, here are some quality reads/resources from the consulting blogosphere:

Considering a career in consulting? Avoid these 5 stupid mistakes – from Ramit’s blog. A few factual errors but points well made
Why Consultants? – an old post from Bnjammin’s blog that provides insight into the nature of consulting
Jack Bauer’s Guide to Investment Banking Success – from the Inquisitor’s blog, despite the title, much of the advice applies to consulting as well (especially #2, 3, 6, 7, and 9)
Plane Etiquette Refresher – from the Crazy Consultant blog
Booz & Co enters India – no surprise here. Even in times of overall hiring downturns, specific regions are expanding quickly, especially strategy consulting in India

Finally, I’ve been recommending this site to interview prep clients. It’s written by a former McKinsey consultant, with great FAQs and videos on how to approach and conquer case studies.

Thanks for reading! If you’re new, here are some recommended posts: The Consulting Industry 101; Investment Banking vs Management Consulting; Day in the life of a Management Consultant; Overview of the recruiting process; The Management Consulting Dictionary

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Tagged as: Booz Allen, case interview, case prep, case study, consulting blog, mckinsey, Mergers and Inquisitions, The Consulting Bible

Consultant99

Not sure what factual errors you refer to in “Avoid these 5 stupid mistakes”, but the assertion that the “Big 5″ includes both Bain and Accenture is quite the whopper. I think you have a good post on this in your archive, but FWIW…

The Big 5 are Accenture (spun-off from Arthur Andersen), Deloitte, PwC, Bearing Point (spun-off from KPMG), and Cap Gemeni (acquired Earnst & Young’s spun-off consulting biz). Their favorite projects are giant IT systems integrations, anything employing armies of coders, big outsourcing deals, and other giant projects that deliver smooth, steady returns to their public shareholders. A typical project could be $50M to $5B and deliver a single-digit profit margin. They hire literally tens of thousands of analysts a year. They use strategy projects as loss leaders to win systems integrations and outsourcing work.

The “Big 3″ strategy shops are McKinsey, Bain, and BCG. The term “Big” is a misnomer, as these “Big 3″ are together less than 1/5 the size of Accenture. Their hiring is in the few hundreds to low thousands a year, which makes them extremely selective. These are private partnerships, and a typical project is $2-10M with margins of 25-50%. Strategy is their bread-and-butter, but they’ll offer operations and organization advice if it helps with the strategy stuff they’d really rather do.

In other words, the firms couldn’t be more different. Their work, their clients, their approach, their comp models, and what people do at these firms are entirely different. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the fact that they’re called “consultants” is all they have in common.
kgao

@Consultant99 – that was the big one (in fact, I commented on that post noting precisely that). But this is a helpful description for MC readers. Thanks!