This is post #1 of my series on recruiting. Below, I’ll touch upon the main components of the consulting job search and what I believe are the key do’s and key don’ts. Feel free to post comments below or email me with any questions and followups. I want to thank my readers for making these first 2 weeks of blogging a very interesting time – blogging is a 2-way street where the writer learns as much as the readers.

I’ve also lined up my first “personalized consultations” (for one college student preparing for summer internships and one recent grad interested in switching industries) and will be posting updates on how these sessions go in the coming weeks

Now, on to RECRUITING. The key components are:

Note that each of these sections is worth a long post alone (similar to my first post, Management Consulting and the Consulting Industry 101). This is a Cliff Notes version for now

#1 Company presentations/mixers/information sessions

Far more common if you’re currently in school (undergraduate, MBA) where consulting firms ranging from Boston Consulting Group to Mercer HR to Kurt Salmon will swarm campuses, giving presentations, holding social mixers, etc in an effort to publicize their firm and identify “high-potential” candidates. Handling a company presentation is like, as a quick sports analogy, being the heavy favorite as a nationally ranked, Division 1 team in a game against an unranked, Division 2 team. In other words – there are 10,000 ways you can mess up, but very few ways to truly beat expectations.

Key Dos:
-dress sharp (refer to my Interview Tips page, tip #2)
-meet at least 3-4 consultants/recruiters present, ask for their business card, and FOLLOW-UP to ask for advice/interview tips

Key Don’ts:
-spend the entire time talking to your friends
-spend the entire time by the snack bar
-hand your resume to recruiters or consultants unless SPECIFICALLY ASKED
-ask 50 questions – people remember the ANNOYING APPLICANTS

#2 Application – resume + cover letter

This is where the wheat begins to be separated from the chaff. At this point, you’ve decided management consulting is a potential career path for you. You may not be 100% sold over other options (eg banking, accounting, corporate, etc) but are interested enough to invest significant time. There are many variations of how this process works: if you’re currently enrolled in school, there are typically resume submission periods followed by a selection process to determine who receives interviews. If you’re not in school (or your target firms do not recruit at your school), it typically means submitting your resume through internal friends, HR and recruiting contacts, or even in-person at job/career fairs and waiting indefinitely to hear back. Either way, a top notch resume will ALWAYS STAND OUT. Cover letters, on the other hand, present significantly more room for error and have limited upside.

Key Dos:
-build a consulting-ready resume (refer to my Resume Tips page)
-make sure you have the RIGHT FIRM, ADDRESS, ETC on your cover letter
-follow-up with recruiters if you haven’t received confirmation upon submission
-let contacts within firms know that you have applied – they can send a positive recommendation to recruiters if they are inclined to do so

Key Don’ts:
-send more than 1 email asking about the status of your application
-have more than 1 page for either your cover letter or your resume
-send additional materials (eg, portfolio work, letters of reference) unless SPECIFICALLY ASKED

At some point you may need to narrow your scope – I recommend submitting resumes/cover letters to as many firms as possible, but if you’re lucky enough to receive tens of interviews you should really consider which firms are best for you so you can focus on the ones that matter. This post on global management consulting firms versus boutique firms may help

#3 Interview (phone)

Self-explanatory. Phone interviews are usually fit-oriented, and if done are either because #1, the firm doesn’t have enough resources to immediately hold in-person interviews or #2, you’re a “borderline case” and they need additional information about you and your background to decide. The approach with phone interviews should be to focus on answer quality, and less on building interviewer rapport given the difficulties of doing that over the phone. Cover the bases below and you’ll do fine.

Note that not all consulting firms will have phone interviews. Some may skip directly to in-person interviews. Some may have several phone interviews before any in-person meetings

Key Dos:
-place the call in a QUIET AREA WITH GOOD RECEPTION, preferably a land-line
-ask for time if you need to collect your thoughts – but don’t take longer than 30 seconds
-have a notepad handy for technical questions
-ask for their email address to send a THANK YOU NOTE/FOLLOW-UP EMAIL

Key Don’ts:
-conduct the phone interview while on a train from Lumsford, New Mexico to El Paso, Texas
-be too casual – its easier to make this mistake on the phone – remember that it is a JOB INTERVIEW. No excessive laughing. Keep discussion of personal matters to a bare minimum unless directly asked

#4 Interview (in-person)

Also self-explanatory. If you’ve made it here, congratulations! They clearly think highly of what you’ve accomplished and now want to know you as a person – your communication skills, your on-the-spot thinking and analytical abilities, your presence and personality. This is truly the most difficult part, as I can guarantee that at this point you’re up against some very qualified candidates. To stand out, the keys in management consulting interviews are to really ACE THE CASE, have well-rehearsed but NATURAL RESPONSES to non-case questions, and be well-informed about current business news. Sounds simple, but takes many many many hours of solid preparation to make this happen.

There are two components to interviews (both phone and in-person) – the case study, and the fit/behavioral questions. I will dedicate separate posts to each, but the important thing to know is that the case study accounts for at least 50% (and usually more) of your final “score” in determining whether you get an offer

Key Dos:
-everything I wrote on my Interview Tips page

Key Don’ts:
-forgetting everything I wrote on my Interview Tips page

#5 The Waiting Period

Like #1 Company Presentations, there’s not much upside but you can do a lot to ruin your prospects. Be patient and focus on other priorities – and NEVER STOP LOOKING FOR OTHER JOBS.

Key Dos:
-wait patiently and if you have upcoming interviews, prepare for those
-if you have no response after 1 week of the “final interview”, send an email to the recruiter asking if they need anything more from you regarding your application; CC one or two consultants you interviewed with or talked to extensively in the process

Key Don’ts:
-assume you have an offer and stop the job search process
-send an email a day to recruiters/consultants at the firm inquiring about your status

#6 The Offer!

CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve done it. It’s extremely difficult to receive offers from management consulting firms – their scale is simply an order of magnitude smaller than financial service firms (as an example, McKinsey’s New York office, one of their largest, occupies about 10-15 floors of one skyscraper. Goldman Sachs in New York has 3 skyscrapers all to itself). Now is time for thorough due diligence and diplomatic negotiation if necessary regarding final terms, start date, etc. Again, congratulations on a job well-done and welcome to the challenging and wonderful world of strategy and management consulting.

Key Dos:
-thank them nicely for the offer
-send an email to firm contacts that you’ve met through the application process and thank them/notify them as well. Setup time to discuss the offer and ask questions of them
-gather as much information as you can from current and former employees, friends, books, etc
-ask your primary HR contact with any “administrative questions” eg salary, benefits, etc

Key Don’ts:
-accept the offer immediately unless you are 100% sure that’s the job for you
-ask non-HR contacts any “administrative questions” unless you know them well
-immediately negotiate details of your offer without fully informing yourself first. And as a general rule of thumb, don’t negotiate anything that won’t SIGNIFICANTLY change your decision or satisfaction in the job

This is an important question for prospective applicants (in particular, undergrad/MBA students) looking for summer internships and fulltime jobs alike.

The decision was easier for me than for most people. The cons of investment banking – the long hours, the repetitive and unengaging nature of the work, the lack of non-finance exit opportunities – mattered far more to me than a 6-figure salary. I seriously considered sales & trading (in fact, I spent a summer at Credit Suisse First Boston in NY), and was tempted to continue in that line of work post-graduation.

Instead of defining the basic characteristics of each job (there are plenty of resources out there for that, including the Vault and Wetfeet Guides), I will address a laundry list of defining differences between the two professions.

Let me caveat by saying THESE ARE NOT YOUR ONLY OPTIONS. People get carried away into thinking that’s all there is.

#1 SALARY

This is the biggest superficial difference. That’s not to imply that salary doesn’t matter. Banking salaries average 50-100% higher than consulting salaries, with the difference increasingly significant as your seniority increases. Consulting compensates with perks that banking does not offer – from better travel allowances to more generous health and retirement packages.

Consultants always like to say this:

“I know investment bankers make more money. But from a cashflow perspective, it’s exactly the same!”

This simply means that consultants and bankers make comparable base salaries, and at the end of the year, bankers are awarded a bonus which can comprise more than 50% of their total annual compensation. Cashflow or not, the extra money is substantial and a defining driver of why many people do investment banking. This is also a difficult issue for consulting firms with respect to employee retention. In my time at McKinsey, easily half the people who left the firm went into the financial world (from hedge funds to PE), and salary was undoubtedly a major factor in the decision.

My advice is this – if after considering all 5 factors I’ve listed here, you still think the pay difference (for 1st yr analysts, averaging between $30-60K/year) would mean a substantial difference in your personal and professional job satisfaction, choose banking.

Further reading: Consulting salaries from analyst to partner

#2 LIFESTYLE

The key differences here are:

-Hours. Bankers work brutal hours, no surprise. They can average 14-16 hours/day but it can get FAR WORSE.

My roommates in New York (both investment bankers at Goldman Sachs) would sometimes go several weeks before we’d even exchange a word. Which meant not only were they getting in after I went to sleep (around 2am), but going back to the office before I woke up (around 7am).

Your second year as an investment banker gets better – in the 10-14 hours/day range but also with unpredictably tough periods.

Consultants average 12 hours/day, with the typical variations depending on client, team goals, etc

-Travel. Bankers do some for roadshows, due diligence, etc but spend 90% of their time in one office until you’re partner-level (this is investment banking; you can expect more travel in private equity and investment management). Consultants – depending on firm – travel anywhere from 25-75% of their time. At the Big 3 (Bain, Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey), you can expect travel 50-75% of the time. I’ve heard of boutiques

-Relationship with coworkers, managers, and firm. This is less discussed but equally important. Consulting firms have a very collegial atmosphere, where the focus is on getting the work done but also ensuring your professional success. This attitude permeates all interactions. Managers rarely yell, coworkers try to help each other out whenever possible, and companies are organized to provide consultants support with training, expertise, etc. Finally, networking is important at consulting firms, and social events are focused on helping consultants build contacts and relationships throughout the firm.

Investment banks, on the other hand, have a more competitive, hierarchical setup. You can expect more tense relationships with your bosses, you’ll probably be yelled at from time to time for mistakes, and coworkers are much less willing to help each other out (they’ve got enough on their plates, and your success means theres more competition for the biggest bonuses). In addition, you’ll have limited exposure across the company to other groups, departments, etc – less ability to network across the company.

Further reading: Consulting travel; Day in the life of a consultant

#3 SKILL DEVELOPMENT

Call me biased, but I received the best years of business training possible in my time at McKinsey. Thorough and at times intense exposure to textbook business principles and practices. In addition, the project team model leads to mentorship opportunities with managers, partners, and coworkers. Finally, you have constant client interaction which develops “client skills” – from managing client teams to running meetings to learning how to navigate different corporate environments.

That being said, here’s a quick list of what you can expect to learn in both fields:

By “hard skills”, I mostly mean software (ie Microsoft Office Suite), analytics (ie financial valuation). By “soft skills”, I mean the interpersonal, qualitative interactions that you have with coworkers, the broader firm, clients, etc

CONSULTING

Hard skills:
1) Microsoft Powerpoint – you will (and have to) become a master at this, and will eventually have the ability to produce presentations quickly, concisely, and meaningfully
2) Microsoft Excel – less exposure than investment banking. Still, “modeling” is a meaningful component of a consultant’s work, and something every consultant is expected to have significant exposure to. Note -firmsodeling” done in case work may not be directly comparable to the financial modeling more common at investment banks
3) Business knowledge – typically broad exposure across different topics like strategy, operations, organization and several areas where you’ll have expertise. This expertise may be as broad as “operations turnaround” and as specific as “benchmarking for insurance companies”.

Soft skills:
1) Client interaction (explained above)
2) Heavy team interaction
3) Presentation skills – this is a cornerstone of consulting work. After all, findings don’t mean anything if you can’t convince the client to believe in and adopt them
4) Project/workflow planning and execution – this is subtle but important. Much of the time at investment banks, you are given incremental work – eg, add these updated numbers to the model, bind these presentations, insert a graph on chart 11. Consulting is focused on you OWNING a piece of the entire project, setting your own deliverables and timeline, and executing against that framework. This helps you develop the ability to be “standalone” in consulting lingo.

INVESTMENT BANKING

Hard skills:
1) Microsoft Excel – clearly you will become a master at this, and is a mandatory for success. You’ll know the ins-and-outs, every keyboard shortcut known to man (and then some), and so forth
2) Microsoft Powerpoint – much less exposure here depending on the focus of your work (for instance, more in Corporate Finance, less in Mergers & Acquisitions). Very little experience in building a presentation from scratch.
3) Financial valuation – self-explanatory. Differs based on group/focus, but at the very least you’ll understand financial statements inside and out, and have strong knowledge of how companies are financed

Soft skills:
1) Work endurance – this is the upside to those 100+ hour weeks, which is the ability to work incredibly long and incredibly hard. Basically, every job you take post investment banking will feel somewhat like a vacation. It’s a great trait to have
2) Seeing deals get done – investment bankers have, at times, better access to the leading business leaders of the day. As a junior banker, you may not have direct interaction but will be exposed through countless meetings, conference calls, etc to these people and see how deals are done and groundbreaking changes in business emerge day-to-day.

Further reading: 5 big mistakes that will get you fired

The last 2 points in this post are shorter, because I plan to write separate entries on each of them in the future

#4 NETWORKING

Less discussed but important. Consultants move on to a vast array of fields – from industry to academia, government to non-profit. Investment bankers do so less – most continue within the financial world. Your professional network and future career opportunities will be heavily influenced by your colleagues and your firm alumni.

In addition – my perspective is that consulting firms (similar to point #2) facilitate more interactions between alumni and current employees as well as future networking between alumni than investment banks. However, bulge-bracket investment banks have a much larger alumni base, and it certainly isn’t impossible for you to build strong connections provided you are proactive and innovative enough.

Further reading: How to get a consulting job in a tough economy; Networking 101

#5 EXIT OPPORTUNITIES

Corollary to point #4, this is influenced by your firm’s alumni and also the following:

-the different recruiters/headhunters that reach out to you
-the different paths your “hiring class” takes and the knowledge and opportunities you share with each other
-the relationships you’ve built with more senior colleagues and the doors they can open for you

When it comes down to it, the conclusion is similar: if you want maximum career flexibility, consulting provides that in spades. If you want maximum career flexibility WITHIN finance (and corporate financial roles), investment banking provides that.

Interested in sales & trading? Click here for the major differences between consulting and trading.