The second part of the live networking podcast with Brian from Mergers and Inqusitions will be coming shortly. While we didn’t get much feedback on the first session, what we did hear from readers and commenters was positive. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me directly!

Favorite recent posts

International Management Consulting 101 – we discuss what it’s like to work in an overseas management consulting office. Everything from recruiting to lifestyle, daily work to client relationships.

Points and Per Se: Management Consulting Perks – discover the non-salary benefits of a life in strategy consulting, including laptops, expense accounts, and Starwood points.

Berkeley undergrad who received Navigant and FTI Consulting offers – our interviewee shares insights on recruiting from a large public university, and his thoughts on the relative merits of Navigant Consulting and FTI Consulting

10 Steps to Sizing and Estimation Questions – an oldie but goodie. From my interview sessions these days, it’s apparent that many of you are uncomfortable with sizing/estimation questions and the assumptions-based arithmetic in tackling these problems. Read closely if you’re interested in breaking in!

Great reads from around the consulting blogosphere

The new Booz & Co to acquire Katzenbach – I distributed this via Twitter several weeks ago. Originally reported in ConsultingMag.com. Pretty big news in the strategy consulting space!

From Consultant Insider – thoughts on why you should go to business school. I think #1 and #2 are particularly high on my list!

From the Killer Consultant – a 2-part series on how you should manage client relationships. Critical reading for new consultants. Part 1 here. Part 2 here.

Mentioned in Marquis’ Weblog – a link to a great post on LinkedIn and how to use it to find jobs. Original source here. My own guide to doing this is still in the works.

From Steve Shu’s blog – a crash course reading list for new consultants. Rain Making is on my reading list.

A few reader questions

“I’m a recent graduate (have been in industry for 2 years). Is there a bias in recruiting, if I can still do the standard on-campus recruiting, against people who have already graduated as opposed to current students?”

In short, not really. Several years of work experience – assuming you’re comfortable looking for the same analyst/associate-level positions – is generally a plus during the recruiting process.

Recruiters and consultants will wonder two things:

1. Why you wish to do strategy consulting now – what changed your mind over the last several years

2. Did you produce good work in your most recent job – what results did you show, what skills did you develop, what responsibilities did you handle

It can be possible to be pigeonholed as “unsuitable” for consulting if you have extensive work experience in niche/non-relevant areas (eg, accounting), but generally speaking, a few years of work experience post-undergrad will only serve to help you in the campus recruiting process.

“I’ve been in strategy consulting for a West Coast boutique consulting firm for 3 years now, and an contemplating a move into corporate strategy (for a Fortune 500 consumer goods company). Any thoughts on the respective differences between the two?”

This is a great question – something I’d like to write a full post on eventually.

Off the top of my head, here are some key differences:

1. In corporate strategy, you serve one client (the CEO and his/her C-level team). In strategy consulting, you serve multiple clients in multiple industries

2. In corporate strategy, you work with the same team (as is true of most corporate environments). There are pros and cons to rotating teams in strategy consulting, but I really enjoyed that diversity

3. In corporate strategy, you’ll have a thinner talent pool. You may be lucky to work with a strong strategy team, but you can bet that the operating/finance/administrative folks you interface with will be much more variable along the capability scale.

4. In corporate strategy, travel is reduced. There are exceptions, of course – but travel should be no more than 25% of your day-to-day unlike management consulting travel.

5. In corporate strategy, you’ll have more clearly defined daily and long-term responsibilities. This depends on the company and the particulars of your position, but corporate strategy folks are often responsible for both project-based and recurring work (eg, setting benchmarks and doing performance analytics). Strategy consulting work is inherently more variable – each project is a completely new beginning.

Stay connected:

I offer resume editing and interview prep. Through one-on-one sessions, I’ll help you stand out from 1000’s of other applicants and land consulting jobs

Some background: I’ve been reading Marquis’ blog for several years. He is a prolific and insightful poster who truly cares about his readers. Head over to his blog to read tons of great articles about consulting, business school, and general career advice.

Now on to the interview! I’ve bolded a few things that are particularly helpful for prospective applicants

Please note, the personal views and opinions expressed are strictly those of the interviewee and do not reflect the views of the interviewee’s employers or affiliated entities.

1. For the benefit of readers, can you give us a summary of your background?

I’m originally from a small town in Virginia and, through some miracle, I ended up at Princeton University, where I earned an A.B. in Computer Science. After college, I worked as a Software Engineer for a couple of companies (a internet consulting firm in NYC and a software and systems engineering firm in the DC area), focused primarily on Java development. While at the second company, I earned my first graduate degree, an M.S. in Management of Information Technology from the University of Virginia, as the first step toward stepping from behind a computer to learning about management. After five years as a Software Engineer, I attended the Stanford Graduate School of Business and completed a joint-degree program, earning an MBA and an M.A. in Education. Following business school, I spent a couple of years as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where I worked on projects in a range of industries/functions. In late 2008, I left McKinsey and started an exciting new gig in Chicago, where I’ve been for two months now.

2. You run a popular career-advice blog over at Marquis’ Weblog. What inspired you to start this site?

I started the site back in Oct. 2003 as a tool to help other B-school aspirants by sharing stories of my own B-school process. I didn’t know any MBAs while I was applying, which made the application process a huge mystery for me. I figured that, if there were other aspirants who didn’t know anyone in the MBA world, they could rely on me as the person that they “know”. Over time, I learned that telling my story was giving a lot of people hope because, “if someone as silly as [me] can get into and through a top B-school, then just about anybody can” (that is a direct quote from a reader I met a few years ago). After graduation, the site continued to morph into its current form where I help readers even more by answering their questions on just about any topic they generate for me, including career, education, and business. It hsan’t been easy to keep my site going for so long, but, as long as it’s helping people, I’ll keep on doing it…well, as long as I’m also having fun doing it, that is :-)

By the way, I wrote up a much longer response to this question in a past entry on my blog, which can be found here.

3. You went to Stanford GSB for business school before working at McKinsey. Can you tell us why you chose Stanford GSB?

Hmmm…why did I choose Stanford GSB?…That’s basically what the first three year’s worth of entries in my blog are about :-) That exact question was posed to me in an entry from last October, so I’ll copy over what I used to respond to that reader:

At a high-level, I was looking for the following things in a business school and Stanford offered all of them:

–

a. Strong general management program –> My goal was to finish B-school with a strong overall understanding of business, so I targeted general management programs when selecting schools. Stanford is among the top general management programs out there, so it immediately make the short-list of schools for me.

b. Small class size –> I wanted a school where each incoming class was small enough for me to really get to know my classmates over my two years. I was trying to find a place that would allow me to be a name and not a number and Stanford’s average class size of 370 made it a great fit in this metric.

c. Strong “transformational” and diverse culture –> Every business school has a strong culture, but not every school’s culture will be a fit for everyone. I was looking for a culture that embraced diversity of thought, background, nationality, and perspective among its students. Even more important to me was finding a school whose culture left its students feeling like they’d reached their full potentials and had been transformed by their MBA experiences. As I researched Stanford and spoke to students, I learned that the GSB scored off the charts in both of these areas, cementing its position as my #1 choice school.

–

4. What sparked your interest in McKinsey as a career? Can you tell us about your recruiting experience with the firm?

My interest in McKinsey was sparked prior to applying to business school as I researched the management consulting industry. During this research, I found that McK had a reputation for creating CEO’s and other business and organizational leaders, which is what I aspired to become. Also, I learned that it was known for tackling mission critical issues for its clients, which also appealed to me. Finally, I thought that having a stint at McKinsey would do wonders for my own professional brand since my first employer collapsed after the dot-com bubble burst and my second employer was too small for anyone to have ever heard of.

My recruiting experience with the Firm was very straight-forward and positive overall. It started during the first year at Stanford by attending several events and getting to know people, which confirmed my liking for the place. I was dinged for the summer internship after second-round interviews, but several people from McK stayed in touch with me during that summer, which made me put McK back at the top of my list for the full-time recruiting process. Fortunately, I did better the second time around and was able to secure a full-time offer. My experience was so good that I devoted significant attention to recruiting once I joined the Firm in order to have a positive impact on the recruiting of other candidates.

5. During your time at McKinsey, you were based in Atlanta. Did you notice any differences between working in a smaller office like Atlanta versus a larger office like New York?

There wasn’t a difference in terms of the actual nuts and bolts of what I did day-to-day, but I did note a few differences, including:

1. Types of projects available within the office and region — Different offices have core sets of clients, which have different needs from teams, so I found that I’d have different options (topic areas, industry, function, etc) for studies than my friends in other offices…it is possible that there’s a correlation between variety of available work and office size, but I’m not certain about that.

2. Ability to connect with other Associates in the office — I found it much easier to build good friendships with the majority of my fellow Associates because there were fewer of us and we’d hang out quite often. I imagine that it is more difficult to get to know as high a proportion of the Associates in a bigger office like New York.

3. Social options for outside-of-work times — Often, it doesn’t take long to see what there is to see and do what there is to do in a city with a smaller office. Whereas, in a huge city like NYC, there are any number of social outlets and they change all the time, which provides more options during one’s off-time.

MC note: these themes echo my global firms vs boutiques post

6. What do you think are the most important lessons you took away from McKinsey?

It’s difficult to give a short answer to this question because I learned a lot in my years at McK. A few lessons that come to mind are:

1. The Consulting Toolkit — Structured problem solving, analytics, frameworks to think about business issues, methods to effective present/lay-out arguments/analyses, etc

2. Ways to leverage both EQ (emotional quotient) and IQ (intellectual quotient) — I’ve heard it said that EQ gets you through life and IQ gets you through school. I’ve always been an killer EQ guy, but McK taught me how to effectively leverage IQ to be even more effective

3. Importance of developing a network of supporters within an organization/office/etc.

4. Ability to get spun up on a particular company, industry, function, or topic very quickly and develop a perspective on it

5. Understanding of the impact of professional presence and tools to develop that presence

6. Importance of maintaining a strong work-life balance (I was terrible at it, so I learned from the downside of it…more on this below)

7. I know this question is huge for readers, and you seem as well-placed to answer it as anyone: what would you say are the biggest differences amongst the Big 3 (McKinsey, Bain, BCG)?

This is a great question, but one that I’m cautious about answering because I’ve never worked for Bain or BCG. From what I’ve heard, all three companies tackle the same types of questions for their clients and bring tremendous intellectual power to every client situation. The two biggest differences I always hear about are the methodology/approach used by each firm and their corporate cultures. I’m sure many of your readers have heard about “The McKinsey Way”, the McK approach to problem solving and delivering client value…a few books have been written about it, so there’s a lot of information about it out in the market. I’ve heard that Bain and BCG have their own methodologies that, while different, provide a similar guideline upon which to rely when doing client work. I imagine that there are nuanced differences between the three though. And, as for the culture issue, I’d suggest that your readers attend a few info sessions for each firm and talk to some of the company representatives. That process should leave them with a good idea of each company’s culture.

8. What motivated your transition from consulting to finance?

Actually, I didn’t really make a full-on transition into finance, which I’m very happy about considering the state of the finance industry right now. Rather, my new company is a strategic advisory and capital investment firm and my current work is still strategy-based, just with a different focus and in a different arena. But, I’ve been diving into company financial statements (to learn about those companies) more than I have since taking my Corporate Finance course at Stanford GSB. As I looked at my options, I was trying to optimize on several factors, including my interest in the work, what I’d learn in the role, and how it would fit into my overall “story” in the long-term, and this gig fit the bill perfectly. Plus, it didn’t hurt that it is based in Chicago where I had a lot of friends, so I wouldn’t have had to build a social network from scratch like I did in Atlanta.

9. Any last words of advice to prospective consultants?

As you can imagine, many of my reader requests are for advice about consulting, so I’ve thought and written about this a LOT. You know that consulting people like to use structure whenever possible, right? So, I’ll break this into two parts: getting the job and then nailing the job.

Winning an offer in consulting is no easy feat, so prospective applicants need to be on point from the beginning. Here are a few lessons that I learned along the way in my own process:

1. Start preparing for case interviews as early as possible (case prep guides, practice cases, mental math exercises, etc)
2. Do as much due diligence on the different firms as possible (leverage company websites, recruiting sessions, industry publications, etc)
3. Develop your “Why Company X is a fit for me” and “Why I am a fit for Company X” stories early on and continue to sharpen them as you find out more about the firms during the due diligence process
4. Take stock of your professional, educational, and life experiences and figure out how to concisely describe them in depth (this will be helpful in the fit interviews)
5. Remember that you have a lot to offer wherever you end up, so, if you don’t get a consulting offer, the world will not end, your life will not be over, and it doesn’t mean that you’re not a high-quality candidate

Once a person gets their consulting offer, they should immediately shift their mindset to preparing to do well at the job. To address this point, I’ll leverage some content I wrote for an entry a while back because the readers here might find it useful. With that in mind, my top-10 list of tips for soon-to-be consultants are:

1. Be confident, but humble
2. Get really good at Excel modeling (or any other core skill to the job) as early as possible
3. Always present the best “you” as possible
4. Be prepared to be pushed
5. Don’t be afraid to seek help when needed
6. Build a support network within your office as early as possible
7. Show enthusiasm and interest
8. Always execute on deliverables
9. Don’t be afraid to be active/vocal in team settings
10. Sign up for frequent flier, hotel loyalty, and rewards credit cards as early as possible (if you’re going to be living out of a suitcase, you might as well benefit from it, right?)

And, one last piece of advice…be prepared for the strain that the job can put on real-life relationships with significant others, family, friends, colleagues, etc. I underestimated this point going in and was totally unpreprepared for the difficult process of balancing the job with the personal relationships I valued. I still wonder how things might have turned out differently if I’d been more prepared for this issue from the beginning.

10. How should readers get in touch with you?

Readers can contact me at the email address that I set up for my blog. I often have a long backlog of messages, but I always send a response, even if it takes me a month or more to do so.

Like what you’re reading? Subscribe to my RSS feed here to learn more about management consulting jobs.

UPCOMING POSTS: Reader questions; Why companies hire consultants

“A consultant is someone who takes a subject you understand and makes it sound confusing.”

It’s a common perception of management consultants. From “bucket” to “scope”, from “sniff test” to “circle back”, to excel in the industry is to master a new and often entirely job-specific vocabulary.

I received a lot of feedback when I published my first post on consulting lingo.

Now I’m happy to announce the most comprehensive, yet still-useful dictionary of consulting terms on the internet. I want to give a quick shout to bnjammin’s Blog, which covered a lot of these terms in previous posts.

I’m hoping this database of words will grow with time – through reader feedback and my own research

So here it is!

5,000 mile view: a phrase used to describe a high-level, summary view of the situation. 5,000 can be replaced by any large number to indicate the same thing

80/20 rule: belief that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes; in consulting, this term is used to imply that 80% of an assignment can be finished in 20% of the time

adding value: quite simply, that value is being added. See also “value-add”

at the end of the day: a phrase used to attempt summarization, introduce an air of finality and perhaps close off certain avenues of discussion; since most consultants

I’ve gathered the data from my own experience, consulting colleagues, and public sources. They won’t be 100% accurate but should be pretty close.

One resource I’ve found valuable is the Consulting forums at WallStreetOasis.

First year out of undergraduate:

• Base salaries: $50-65K
• Signing bonuses: $5-10K
• Relocation/moving expenses: $5-10K
• Year-end bonus: $5-10K depending on firm.

That’s an average of $70-75K in first year consulting pay. As a summer intern, you can expect a comparable, pro-rated salary minus bonus. This does not include retirement contributions.

First year out of business school/MBA:

• Base salaries: $110-140K
• Signing bonuses: $20-40K
• Relocation/moving expenses: $10-20K
• Year-end bonus: $20-40K depending on firm.

That’s an average of $160-200K in total first year consulting pay. Again, consulting summer interns should expect a pro-rated portion minus bonus. This does not include retirement contributions. My original estimates were a bit lower, but have been adjusted upward based on emails and the comments below.

Progression track through partner:

My numbers have a higher risk of being inaccurate as this is only from personal anecdotes, so if you have better information, email me or comment below

• Engagement manager/Project leader: $175-250K
• Associate principal/Senior project leader: $250-400K
• Partner/Principal: $500-800K
• Senior partner/Director: $1M plus

Senior consultant salaries becomes increasingly variable and performance-based

How consulting salaries lose to finance:

At almost every level, your salary will be 30-50% lower than a comparable position in investment banking. This is variable by year and median salaries in non-banking departments (such as research, asset management, sales & trading) are lower than in banking. But as mentioned in the consulting versus banking post, consulting is not a profession to make big bucks.

How consulting firms compensate for the lower salaries:

• Better benefits – healthcare, life insurance, etc
• Retirement contributions – this one is important because at MBB, they’ll contribute an added 5-10% of your base salary to your retirement funds, effectively a 5-10% year-end bonus! (A reader just informed me that his MBB retirement contribution starting fulltime in ‘09 was 4.5%, which is lower than I’d seen in previous years)
• More generous expense/reimbursement policies, travel perks, etc

Stay connected:

I offer resume/CV editing and mock interview preparation. I’ll help you stand out from 1000’s of other applicants, land consulting job offers, and break into management consulting.

Liberal arts and humanities majors are often criticized for being “soft majors” – with unchallenging classes and lack of “real world” skill development leaving them unable to land competitive business jobs. Fortunately for all the budding English and Philosophy majors out there, that’s simply not true.

This is the second of my series on entering consulting from “non-business” backgrounds

It’s very common for those from a liberal arts/humanities background to be interested in management consulting. It’s a great introduction to business and opens many doors – from non-profit to government service, from corporate management to further schooling (eg, MBA, grad school, etc).

I’ve been receiving some feedback that much of this advice is tailored towards current and recent undergraduate students. I believe much of the advice to be broadly applicable but it’s most useful for this group because their career tracks are less restricted. If you’ve been a journalist for 10 years or a geneticist for 8 years, it’s tough to break into management consulting unless you shoot for an MBA or are in the top 1% of your field

As a liberal arts and humanities major, you may have the following concerns about your suitability for a consulting career:

• You don’t have enough business experience on your resume
• You don’t understand the consulting industry sufficiently
• Recruiters won’t give you a fair shot since they assume you have insufficient analytical/quantitative preparation
• You are nervous about the interview process, in particular, how to conquer those tough, complex case studies

In this post, I’ll address each of the above concerns, discuss what strengths you should market and develop, and share tips that will serve you well during the management consulting recruiting process.

What options are available as a liberal arts major?

• Global management consulting firms – while the industry is increasingly quantitative and analytical, the cornerstone of success is simply logical thinking. Plus, there’s a definite premium for creative insight. Some firms (eg, BCG) have a reputation for innovation in “out of the box” thinking
• Boutique consulting firms – the choices here are plenty, from industry specialists like Kurt Salmon in retail to functional specialists like Katzenbach in strategy and organizational issues

What are your strengths as a liberal arts major?

• Extra time outside of classes (assuming they’re less time-consuming) – hopefully you’ve leveraged this to tackle more extracurricular work, part-time jobs, and leadership opportunities
• Creative “out of the box” thinking – always tough to test/measure, but can be highlighted by showcasing your entrepreneurial initiatives, significant academic and professional risk-taking, etc
• Strong written and presentation skills – skillset #1 for consultants; opportunities to showcase these include in your cover letter, resume, and interview process

How do you mitigate perceived weaknesses as a liberal arts major?

In the order listed above, and this does not differ much from my post on engineers:

• Business experience – if you’re still in college, find business-related summer internships and part-time jobs during the school year (provided you can manage the workload). If you’re not, tailor your resume to focus on skills and experiences that consultants look for, such as people-leadership, quantitative impact, and entrepreneurial initiative
• Insufficient understanding of management consulting – its your responsibility to learn as much as you can. Check out Management Consulted; email me with questions; read the Vault Guide to Management Consulting; network with contacts in the industry
• Recruiting biases against liberal arts majors – a good GPA will go a long way towards addressing doubts about your analytical chops as it shows you can work hard and work smart; highlight analytical/quantitative jobs and experiences in your resume; become an expert at case studies so you can dominate them during the interviews. I will be writing posts about case studies in the future
• Insufficient recruiting preparation – like the second point, it’s dependent on the time and effort you invest; I offer a coaching service that you can look into; read this article and follow its advice

Stay connected:

I offer resume editing and interview prep. I’ll help you stand out from 1000’s of other applicants and land consulting jobs