I’ll admit, Management Consulted has been somewhat stale over the past year – very little new content, no new products, no improvements to the site’s look/feel. Quite a few of you guys shared your disappointment, and it was completely deserved.

One of my favorite comments:

“Have you dropped off the face of the earth?? I sincerely hope that for the last 6 months, you haven’t been just relaxing in Bali or some other obscenely nice Pacific Island sipping coconut juice and mai thais on the beach…although that would be great marketing material for why to get a job at McKinsey!”

That’s all about to change. I mean it.

Mea culpa and an introduction

The reason why this site sort of froze over the past year was because I completely invested in a new project – creating iPhone applications! Along the way, we launched one app (CauseWorld) which has now donated more than $1M to 30+ charities. We recently launched another app (shopkick) which will revolutionize the shopping world and works with Best Buy, Macy’s, American Eagle, among others.

If you have an iPhone, download both and tell me what you think!

About a week ago, I left that team, so I could go back to building my own websites once again. And the one which I’ve neglected the most has been this one.

Along the way, I also added a few members to our team. Some of you have been fortunate enough to work directly with them already through resume editing and interview prep. They are:

Jenny Rae – Jenny joined our team this year. She graduated from the University of Virginia and then joined Bain Consulting after traveling around the world, writing a book, working on financial public policy in South Africa and sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. In short, she’s done everything we all wish we could do, but never get around to :) At Bain, Jenny Rae worked primarily in the U.S. for companies covering health care to entertainment to financial services to death care, and since leaving to co-found a company she has pursued global entrepreneurship and advised over 45 different early- and mid-phase companies around the world.

Jerry Chi – I’ve known Jerry since our Stanford undergraduate days, where he majored in Management Science & Engineering. He joined Management Consulted in 2009. Jerry worked at two bulge-bracket investment banks, as well as consulting, and also started his own firm in Beijing focused on investing in global capital markets.

Our team will be working closely to make this site the best it can be, and most importantly, help you land management consulting jobs!!

Hint of things to come

Given my newfound time, and an awesome new team, here’s a taste of what’s coming:

-New articles! From using LinkedIn to find jobs, to more interviews with consultants from leading firms around the world, to titles like “Why management consulting is the worst career move after college”. I’m excited to get back into writing mode

-Do-It-Yourself (DIY) guide to the perfect, consulting-ready resume and cover letter! For those who can’t afford our personalized services, or simply want expert guidance in dramatically improving your key docs for the recruiting process (resume and cover letter) – it’ll include checklists of do’s and don’ts, easy-to-use templates (just copy and paste away :), examples of the best resumes we’ve ever seen, and even videos showing exactly how we do the editing ourselves. Stay tuned.

-Job board + job postings! We’re constantly contacted by recruiters looking to hire, and we know the ultimate goal for every reader is to land a consulting job. The job board will collect all the opportunities we hear about, and best of all its free!

-Management Consulted e-newsletter – over the next 2-3 weeks, you’ll be able to signup for a free e-newsletter written personally by our team. It’ll cover topics presented here on the site in more depth, as well as offer exclusive articles, tips, and insights that you won’t find anywhere else. We know people like to get their info in many ways, and this is just another avenue for us to provide you compelling education on how to land, and then kick ass, at your consulting job

So here’s my ask of you

Thanks for reading through this. I’m excited for what’s coming, and I hope you are too! I need your help on a few things:

1. What do you guys want to see the most over the next year? Let me know, and we’ll make it happen. It can be anything from a feature to an article topic…whatever you feel you need the most help with

2. What burning questions do you have right now about consulting, the lifestyle, the firms, etc? I plan to do a MASSIVE FAQ post in the next few days.

3. If you’re on Facebook, please like my site and posts!! This is huge for helping me grow the site, which has been driven so much by your word of mouth

Comment away, and thanks again to all of you – none of this would be possible without your readership.

-Kevin

We’ve been offering a resume editing service since site launch. In this time, we’ve had the fortune to work with hundreds of clients.

Below is a list of 5 more common resume mistakes we’ve noticed. You can also refer to the previous posts: Top 10 consulting resume mistakes and Top 10 resume tips.

1. Overly small font for your name

Your name at the top of the resume should be 18 pt or 20 pt font; bold font is optional and depends on the font you are using. Your name is the most important part of your resume, since you want recruiters to remember who you are.

Also, make sure the name you use is exactly the same in all communications, including your cover letter and emails.  This is sometimes a problem for those with both an official name in their mother language and another unofficial name in English.

2. Getting “creative”

Some people feel like they need to express creativity in order to get the job. While this is sometimes true, the risk of looking unprofessional almost always outweighs any potential benefits of looking creative.

Make sure that you do not:

• Use colors or shades of gray. You should use only black and white
• Include pictures or icons
• Use unconventional fonts such as Comic Sans

Don’t worry about not being able to express creativity in your resume. The interview is a better time to prove your creativity.

3. Imperfect date/location alignment

In Microsoft Word, if you need to align part of the text on a line to the right, like the date of a work experience, do not just use a bunch of spaces or tabs. Either use tables or right-aligned tabs. Aligning by just pressing the space bar several times will invariably produce dates that are not aligned correctly; even if it’s off by half a space, it will be noticeable.

4. Using overly technical terms

Did you use a Maxwell-Boltzman distribution to help model the in vitro effects of anti-mitotic drugs on endometrium cells? It doesn’t matter if you understand this; it matters if the recruiter can understand it.  Keep jargon to a minimum unless it’s something that an average consultant can understand (e.g. saying you used CRM software is fine). You should rephrase what you did so that it’s understandable and make sure any reader can see why it was significant.

For example, the above example might be re-written as “Modeled effect of an anti-cancer drug on human cells using advanced statistical methods, resulting in 40% more accurate cancer cell growth predictions and $50,000 additional budget allocation for drug research.”
Speaking using too much technical jargon will mean that you lack the communication skills necessary to interact with a diverse array of people that you would meet in a consulting career. One way to double-check your resume is showing it to a friend outside your current field or industry and seeing if, for each bullet point, they can understand 1. what you did and 2. why what you did was significant.
One caveat to the above: you also don’t want to make your description overly simplified. As an extreme example, “Conducted biology experiments using math” would be almost meaningless.

5. Creating overly long lists (of any kind)

As a consultant, you will definitely need prioritization skills. Making overly long lists of any kind is a big no and shows that you don’t know how to prioritize. Usually, this overwhelms the reader, and it will also be unclear which list items are more important and which are less important.

For example, you should not:

• List out 15 different software packages you know how to use. Instead, you should reduce this list to under 8 items (preferably less) by picking the ones you are best at, or the ones you think are considered valuable skills.
• List out 5 different scholarships you received. Instead, you should highlight the one or two most important scholarships, their selectivity, and how much funds you received in total.
• List out 10 different points under one work experience without sub-bullets. You should delete the less important points and optionally expand on the more important ones, or move some points to be sub-bullets under other related bullet points so that your resume looks more organized.
• List out 8 different student clubs you were involved with. It’s impossible that you were able to contribute significantly to every one of them. Instead, explain more about the clubs where you demonstrated leadership, teamwork, and initiative. It’s OK to list out 2 or 3 clubs in the Additional Information section if you don’t have space for them in the rest of your resume.

Stay tuned for more resume and cover letter tips coming up in future posts!

Management consulting resumes are a frequent topic here.

For one, about 50% of reader emails are related to resumes. For two, you can’t land a consulting job without a good one.

While we’ve covered resume topics like key tips, tactical errors, and even how consultants read resumes, today’s post will be a comprehensive “catch-all” to address frequent reader questions.

We’ll cover:

• How to write a consulting-targeted resume from scratch
• Advanced tips in building an eye-catching resume
• Strategic mistakes that will derail your resume from getting the fullest attention
• The skills, experiences, and specific keywords that consultants and recruiters look for
• 10 “tactical” tips in composing your consulting resume

Finally, due to the 100s of questions received on this topic, we’ll have an honest discussion about what it really takes to get an interview at places like McKinsey, Booz, and more.

It’s a long article, so get ready for some scrolling!

How to build a consulting-targeted resume from scratch

If you don’t have a resume, your first step is to check out example resume templates.

In general, all resumes/CVs should include:

• A header section with personal information
• Sections for work experience, educational background, and miscellany interests/skills/activities
• Bulleted text as opposed to text paragraphs
• Key information on each experience such as your title, the location, and length of time involved

In addition, most consulting resumes do not have a lead “summary” or “objectives” section as is common in international CVs. Two reasons:

1. Your summary and objectives should be communicated clearly through your achievements
2. Resume readers are busy – a summary section adds little additional value

Finally, 99% of consulting resumes are one page long. Same goes for the cover letter!

If you have more than 5 years of experience, or have switched industries abnormally often, 2 pages is ok. Anything longer than that is recruiting suicide.

Advanced tips in building an eye-catching resume

Put yourself into a recruiter’s or a consultant’s shoes. At most, you have 5 minutes to review the resume. That’s actually pretty generous – average review time is probably more like 2-3 minutes.

You need to make a decision about whether this person deserves an interview in that timeframe.

You have very little time…so:

1. You focus on the candidate’s 1-2 most impressive achievements
2. You hope it’s in PDF…so you can avoid annoying formatting issues and document-opening errors

You need to determine whether you deserve an interview…so:

1. You look for the specific consulting skills that are needed in the job (more on that below)
2. You read the Interests/Hobbies section because, let’s admit, it’s the most interesting part!
3. You do an overall review of the resume’s professionalism, paying attention to alignment, grammar, and typos

Now take those steps, and think about how you can improve your resume from the consultant’s perspective.

Strategic mistakes that will derail your resume from getting the fullest attention

We’ve discussed common resume mistakes before.

Here, we won’t be discussing tactical errors like using “Justify” alignment. Instead, we’ll talk about resume-wide strategic errors.

Strategic error #1: Focusing on education without sufficient backup

It’s a bad idea to dedicate half your resume to your educational background if you don’t have the big school name or the technical/graduate degrees to impress readers.

This hurts because with only 2 minutes to review your resume, you don’t want 90 seconds of that time to be focused on your Bachelor of Arts degree from University of North Dakota (no offense).

Strategic error #2: Throwing everything but the kitchen sink

This is not new advice, but with resumes less is more. Less is much, much more.

Every recruiter and consultant can tell you about the outstanding resumes they’ve seen that were barely one page, at 12-point Times New Roman font, with 1″ page margins.

Why is this?

Because you enjoy reading them more. You can quickly analyze the key skills and successes. And most importantly, you remember them better. When it comes to resume review time, you immediately know the candidate’s story and strengths.

Finally, it shows a degree of professionalism and self-confidence to execute such a strategy.

While you don’t need to be that bold, the worst thing you can do is list 20 bullets under each job, 9 different hobbies, and 15 skill certifications.

Ask yourself this question: if a resume reviewer will only remember 5 things about my resume, what are they? Then put them front and center. Everything else is, more or less, window-dressing.

Strategic error #3: Lack of self-promotion, when your achievements can’t promote themselves

It’s great that you’ve been a software engineer for 10 years. But will a string of technical jobs at Oracle, Salesforce, and Intuit be sufficient to attract BCG recruiters?

Highly unlikely.

In this situation, you’ve got to sell yourself loud and clear. Cover letter aside, you only have your resume to impress a reader enough to be considered “strategy consulting material”.

Highlight your biggest achievements. Exaggerate a little when quantifying impact. Use words like “managed” and “developed” often.

Identify precisely what skills consultants are looking for, and rewrite your resume to display those skills.

Regardless of your career and industry, you can exhibit the same parallel skills that are employed by Bain consultants every day.

Research and analytics? Check.

People leadership and project management? Check.

Client sales and relationship management? Check-plus.

The skills, experiences, and specific keywords that consultants and recruiters look for

Consultants are generally looking for the following skills and experiences in resumes:

• People management and team leadership
• Client interaction – both sales and relationship building
• Technical and quantitative analytics and research
• Proven-track record of success at prior jobs as demonstrated by promotions and increasing responsibilities
• Quantifiable individual and team-oriented results

This will vary by academic background, years of work experience, and so forth.

To demonstrate the above, great key phrases include: directed teams, led meetings, managed clients, proposed and implemented, increased performance by, reduced costs by…

You get the idea.

Further reading: Insider secrets to Bain recruiting

What it really takes to land an interview at the best firms

We’ll avoid a discussion of specific accomplishments, because with consulting hiring, there are exceptions to every rule.

Hundreds of Princeton graduates are rejected sight-unseen by Bain Consulting every year, while a University of Wisconsin grad was able to secure a first-round McKinsey interview.

As a broad rule of thumb, the following will help differentiate your resume from the rest of the pile:

-A top-tier educational institution (undergraduate or graduate)
-A prestigious role at an industry-leading Fortune 500
-Starting a venture-funded company
-Doing something truly world-class (such as receiving a Marshall fellowship, publishing research in Science/Nature)

Without one of the above, you’ll need to focus on the following:

1. Make your cover letter and resume air-tight
2. Network at every available opportunity. As Ramit Sethi likes to say, great networkers build relationships before they need them
3. Consider graduate educational opportunities that will “upgrade” your candidacy
4. Search low and high for boutiques and regional consulting firms that have more idiosyncratic hiring rules
5. Start your own consulting shop!

That said, here are the 10 very specific tips to apply when writing a consulting-ready resume:

1) Read your resume for typos. Then read it again. Then have a friend read it. Then read it again. It is critical that there are no mistakes of any kind – grammar and spelling both. While you think mistakes can be overlooked, the funny thing about consultants (and this applies to other industries as well) is that once they find a mistake, it’s all they remember.

Last year, I was doing a resume review and noticed someone had mispelled “consulting” into “consluting”. While the rest of the resume was good, I didn’t forget this typo – and when we were on a resume review call, the team lead brought it up, and you know what? Everyone else on the team had noticed it too.

2) Align everything and space everything equally. Everyone’s seen those left-by-the-road-to-die resumes, the ones with horrible spacing issues, 3 different font sizes, looking like it came out of the printer crooked. While that is an extreme, proper spacing and alignment make a resume more visually appealing and are indicative of an attention to detail that are critical to any consultant’s early success. One of my mentors during the recruiting process put it best when he said:

“If someone’s resume doesn’t have properly aligned columns, it tells me that they either don’t care or don’t pay attention to detail. And if they don’t pay attention to detail, then how are they going to build a model that has the right numbers? Or a presentation that’s ready for the client to see?”

3) Put your name in a large font. This is often overlooked, but do not put your name in the same font size as the rest of the resume. If your resume is typed in standard 12 font size, I would recommend a name at least 24 font size. Why? Because recruiters/interview screeners can churn through 200-300 resumes within 3-5 hours (giving 1-2 minutes per resume!). The last thing you want is for them to mentally think “hey, this person is fairly qualified”, move on to the next resume, and then forget your name.

This is just for safety purposes. Most screening processes compile resume scores in Excel spreadsheets, and this systematic process ensures your resume won’t be overlooked even if your name is.

But there are many application situations where this will be helpful – think boutique firms, random resume drops, headhunters, etc. You want your name to stand out so people connect you with your qualifications.

4) Make sure your contact info is updated and you check your email frequently. I’ve heard horror stories of applicants for financial service jobs submitting resumes with emails that bounce, phone numbers that are disconnected, and so forth. While the firm may eventually get in touch with you, a first impression is set and you’ll get off to a bad start. Use your primary email address and a working phone number.

As a small but important detail, try to avoid outdated email domains (like AOL). Consultants pride themselves on being technologically savvy, and seeing an applicant with a name@aol.com address raises several questions, such as “does this guy still use dial-up?”; “has she not heard of gmail?”; and so forth. Remember, readers – covering all bases is the name of the recruiting game.

5) Avoid conspicuous gaps in your education and work timeline. A few months is ok. Anything longer than 6 months is a no-no. This is another situation, like typos, alignment, etc – where questions lead to more questions and peoples’ impression of your resume can take a turn for the worse. My blanket advice here is that 9/10 times, you can fill in the timeframe with something substantive (eg, nonprofit work, part-time schooling, global travel). For the 1/10 times where you can’t easily explain your situation (eg, family issues), do not mention this in your consulting cover letter. You want to downplay, not emphasize. But make sure you have your story straight and response ready, because there is a very good chance it will come up during a first round interview

6) Keep it to one page only. Obvious to some, but a very common mistake. Nothing says “I don’t know what I’m doing” faster than a 4 page resume.

If you absolutely cannot fit the things that you want to say to one page, play around with font-size, line-spacing, character-spacing (all features within Microsoft Word). But I guarantee you should be able to.

Some firms ask that you convert your resume to PDF prior to submission, or have an online submission method that automatically converts to PDF. Please check the results of both to ensure that your resume stays at one page in length.

And leave white space! Do not make your resume too “text-heavy”. Interviewers are quickly turned off by resumes that are packed with content. This will make them less interested in reading your resume AND cause them to overlook important pieces

There are exceptions to every rule as indicated above. Those with sufficient work experience and/or high job turnover can spill over onto a second page.

7) Have a line on personal interest/hobbies and keep it sensible and specific. One line only.

“Good” example:

Interests: Competitive tennis player. Avid hiker (climbed Kilimanjaro last year). Amateur pastry chef.

“Bad” example:

Interests: Likes to play lots of sports. Loves hiking mountains and has hiked Kilimanjaro in the past. Enjoys cooking.

As you can see, the “Bad” example:

#1 lacked specificity – everyone “enjoys cooking”. few can call themselves an “amateur pastry chef”. it makes you stand-out and increases the chances that reader who also likes making desserts will relate to you

#2 rambled and used flippant language – avoid the words “like” and “love”, as they can sound trite. do not turn the “Interests” line into a personal statement or paragraph

8) Focus on results. Preferably quantifiable results. Consultants are very “results-oriented”. They will be looking for similar attributes in your resume.

Instead of saying “Re-built online database to reduce errors and increase entry speed”, say this: “Constructed new online database, resulting in 50% fewer input errors and 33% more entries in an average day”

Instead of saying “Edited Human Resource interview questions to correct grammar, typos, and to tailor them for summer interns”, say this: “Optimized HR interview process by eliminating grammar and typos in questions; created the first-set of questions tailored at internship applicants resulting in 3 internship hires

Not every impact has to be quantified – but consistently focus on the impact of your work and not the steps taken, a very common mistake. This will convey that not only did you get work done, you did important work that showed clear results for your employer. High-five.

9) Do not include high school - SAT/standardized test scores are an exception. Whether you just graduated college or have 10+ years work experience, high school information does not belong on a professional resume. Place your SAT/standardized test scores in your “College” section. If there are major awards/prizes received while in high school (and this is only of the Westinghouse Science Prize magnitude), you can place them in the “College” section. An “Elks Lodge Scholarship” does not count.

10) Focus on the rule of 3 - 3 major work experiences, 3 bullets on each one. Simple “guiding principle”. Only exception is your primary job (the one experience you would like to highlight to any resume reviewer) – you should have more than 3 bullets. Have an “education” section with 3 bullets. And so forth. This rule ensures you don’t include 8 bullets for each experience, which is a sure-fire way to signal that you don’t know what you’re doing and overwhelm the reviewer with unnecessary information.

That rounds up our comprehensive review of management consulting resumes.

Do you have more questions about how to make your resume the best it can be? Want more insight into the candidate selection process at M/B/B firms? Check out our Consulting Resume and Cover Letter Bible - 98 power-packed pages, including 24 easy-to-use templates, to take your resume from good to great!

Buy The Consulting Resume & Cover Letter Bible NOW

Time for a major content injection. In the next 3 posts, I will add to prior articles on management consulting interviews.

The first post will focus on the biggest mistake you can make in consulting fit interviews – and how to avoid that pitfall.

The second post will focus on case study interviews. Finally, the third post will focus on consulting interview preparation, and post-interview to-do’s.

So, what is the biggest mistake you can make in the fit portion of management consulting interviews?

Not providing anecdotes and takeaways in your responses

I’ll confess – this is 2 separate mistakes, but both fit into the category of “not going above and beyond” to provide distinctive responses.

Let’s start with anecdotes. Poor consulting interviewers give generic responses without anecdotes. Witness the following:

What is your greatest weakness?

My greatest weakness is that I tend to lose interest quickly in specific projects. I need to develop the ability to focus consistently on one task for long periods of time, even if it’s not the most interesting thing I could be working on.

Why are you interested in management consulting?

I’m excited about the intellectual challenge of the job, and the ability to work closely with smart, ambitious people to solve tough business problems.

Generic responses. No anecdotes, no stories, no references to personal experiences.

Why is that bad?

Stories are what make you stand out. In providing a generic response, your answer will be like everybody else’s. You won’t get an offer, just like everybody else.

When consultants finish interviews, they have group discussions about each applicant. The strongest applicants are the ones who gave memorable, personal responses – responses that interviewers can relay back to hiring committees. In the answers above, your interviewer will have very little to say about you.

Let’s add an anecdote of only one sentence to each response to instantly make it better:

What is your greatest weakness?

My greatest weakness is that I tend to lose interest quickly in specific projects. In my time at Genentech, I was known as the research analyst who was constantly pursuing new ideas and experimental procedures in the lab, but as a result, my progress on the core research questions suffered slightly. I need to develop the ability to focus consistently on one task for long periods of time, even if it’s not the most interesting thing I could be working on.

Why are you interested in management consulting?

I’m excited about the intellectual challenge of the job, and the ability to work closely with smart, ambitious people to solve tough business problems. In my asset management internship, I was impressed with the abilities of my colleagues, but I didn’t feel challenged by my daily work – I think consulting can provide both.

The responses now are much stronger. The interviewer will remember you as the innovative Genetech researcher who needs to learn patience, and as the asset management intern who wants to be challenged by tough business problems.

The answers are still incomplete, which brings us to the need to add takeaways in consulting fit interviews.

By takeaways, I mean conclusions, lessons learned, retrospective insights, whatever you want to call them.

In both of the original “bad” answers, there weren’t any takeaways. The interviewer is left without a satisfying conclusion!

Let’s add a takeaway of only one sentence to arrive at a final, strong response.

What is your greatest weakness?

My greatest weakness is that I tend to lose interest quickly in specific projects. In my time at Genentech, I was known as the research analyst who was constantly pursuing new ideas and experimental procedures in the lab, but as a result, my progress on the core research questions suffered slightly. I need to develop the ability to focus consistently on one task for long periods of time, even if it’s not the most interesting thing I could be working on. My experience at Genentech taught me that innovation needs to be balanced with smart prioritization – and in my current healthcare research job I’ve been working hard to do just that.

Why are you interested in management consulting?

I’m excited about the intellectual challenge of the job, and the ability to work closely with smart, ambitious people to solve tough business problems. In my asset management internship, I was impressed with the abilities of my colleagues, but I didn’t feel challenged by my daily work – I think consulting can provide both. In my career, I’d like to be at the forefront of progress in the business world, and I’ve realized that you can only get there by working with the smartest teams on the hardest challenges.

The greatest weakness response is stronger, because you communicate that not only do you understand your weakness, you’re applying that lesson in your current work.

The management consulting interest response is stronger, because you communicate a reason for your interest in working with smart people on tough problems – you want to change the business world.

There you have it. A strong consulting resume will land you an interview, but you won’t get the offer without acing fit questions.

Include anecdotes that personalize your responses, and include takeaways that demonstrate your ability to see the big picture. You’ll conquer management consulting interviews in no time!

Want to get ALL our tips and hints on mastering your interviews? Check out The Consulting Bible – with 92 outline and instruction pages covering every conceivable topic central to consulting interviews. From general preparation tips to why interviewers ask specific fit questions, from tips on analyzing charts to bottom-up approaches for sizing questions – The Consulting Bible is the top global resource on consulting interviews.

Click here to buy it now and start landing consulting jobs!

This blog has been growing my leaps and bounds. I’ve really appreciated meeting readers and helping people in their quest to break into the consulting industry.

For new readers, consider subscribing to my RSS. It’s the most convenient way to receive blog updates – and expect a slew of content in the next few days

Here are my 5 favorite posts since starting Management Consulted

• Management Consulting versus Investment Banking – a time-honored question for undergraduate and MBA students across the world. I break it down into the 5 primary dimensions upon which these careers differ
• Day in the life of a management consultant – the day described here is one of the easier ones you’ll face, but provides a good view of client relations, team dynamics, and a typical day’s ebb and flow
• Life as a Consultant: An interview with a consultant from Booz Allen- one of my favorite interviews thus far, past ones have included McKinsey, ATK Shanghai, and Nortel. Booz guy does a great job discussing issues ranging from public sector consulting to the Booz recruiting process to career paths within the firm
• Overview of the management consulting recruiting process – ground zero for prospective consultants, this article gives a comprehensive view of each component in the typical recruiting cycle. While the perspective skews towards those currently in school, there are valuable insights regardless of your current position
• The Consulting Bible – no round-up of resources is complete without a plug for my in-depth interview guide. It’s not free, but there’s a 60-day return policy, plus free updates for life. My 2nd update will be coming in a few weeks!

Here’s a very useful case study primer, courtesy of Bill Blackwell and the Jesse Jones School of Management Consulting Club at Rice University. Pay particular attention to the case frameworks – there are a few very good ones

An interview with Social Geekette

I recently did an interview with Serena Wu on Social Geekette. We cover topics such as why I started Management Consulted, my experiences at McKinsey, and my views on blogging and the internet. Check it out here.

Questions for readers on a new project

After helping more than a hundred people with resumes and interview prep to break into consulting, the biggest issue I’ve noticed is that many people don’t have access to useful recruiting channels

It’s easy for Ivy Leaguers, for most MBA students, and for those already in consulting. But there’s a huge audience – experienced hires from different industries, those that go to non-target schools – that don’t have access to key resources like information sessions, campus recruiters, and the attention of consultants at their target firms.

The tentative title of this project is “How Anyone Can Break Into Management Consulting, Regardless Of Your School Or Current Job.”

It will be a comprehensive directory of consulting firms and emails/phone numbers for recruiters AND consultants at each firm. I plan to include tactics that people can use to get their resumes noticed and land interviews – such as actual call scripts and email templates. The focus is on boutique firms – because the big guys are much tougher to break into through non-traditional methods.

Having said that, I’d love to get reader feedback on 2 questions:

1. If you want to be a business consultant, what are your biggest concerns in breaking into the industry?
2. Have you entered consulting through non-traditional means, and if so, can you share your story? I’d love to feature some successful case studies

Thanks a million! I’d prefer if you contacted me directly with answers, particularly for the case studies. To incent responses, I’ll provide this book for free to anyone whose concerns, insights, and stories are incorporated (along with a free copy of The Consulting Bible, 2nd ed).