This was a previously published article that I’ve since updated and expanded on, to include not only books and magazines but great resources from around the web.

It’s important to be well-read when you apply for a consulting job, for several reasons:

1) Your knowledge of current business issues will be tested (directly and indirectly) throughout the recruiting process

2) Gaining exposure to business issues – the situations, problems, solutions, etc – will be a litmus test for your own interest in consulting as a career (if you don’t like reading about, for example, how the U.S. automobile industry got into the pickle it’s in today and all the areas they need to fix in order to get out, then it may not be a great sign for a future consulting career…unless you hate cars of course :)

3) You get a faster start at the new job and sound smarter from Day One

Consulting-Specific Books

The McKinsey Way and The McKinsey Mind, by Ethan Rasiel. Written by a former McKinsey consultant, gives you a great in-depth on firm culture and practices. You’ll learn things like 80/20 thinking, hypothesis-driven problem solving, etc – things I will write about in future posts, but here’s stuff that’s already out there. Plus, the lessons here are equally applicable across any consulting firms.

The best part of the books is that they’re fast – you can skim them quickly and pretty much extract what you need to know. Even if you aren’t applying to McKinsey, you should still read these. They will help you in interviews and in understanding management consulting (and in particular, McKinsey’s) culture.

BCG on Strategy – I was recommended this book via the comments below, and had the opportunity to browse through it at a local Barnes & Noble the other day. It’s a good read – and very useful for understanding broader strategy frameworks and, to a lesser extent, the evolution of the consulting industry itself in which Boston Consulting Group played a large role (Ever hear the term “cash cow”? Well, BCG invented the growth/share matrix which underpins it :)

General Business-Interest Books

Anything by Jim Collins – personal favorites are Good to Great and Built to Last.

Collins does a great job shaping the zeitgeist of current business thinking. Ideas generated from his books are often conversational fodder for consulting teams and influence the way consultants understand their clients and corporations analyze themselves. Phrases like “BHAG” (big hairy audacious goal) are often thrown around in client and team settings, and understanding what it means can go a long way towards making you look good.

The Tipping Point and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. He also has a great list of free articles from The New Yorker. I particularly liked “How David Beats Goliath” and “Late Bloomers”.

You’re not going to learn anything specifically relevant to consulting from Gladwell’s books, but his thinking, concepts, and terminology are incredibly popular in business conversations (in particular, his framework in The Tipping Point for understanding how trends spread via archetypes of information-mavens/connectors/salesmen). He’s a great writer, and his works are thoroughly enjoyable and relatively fast reads.

Case Prep

Beyond The Consulting Bible, which I think is an easily digestible entry to the world of case studies, there are much more comprehensive treatments. Here are the top 2 I’ve been able to find:

Case In Point, by Marc Cosentino. This is probably the “seminal book” on case studies, if there is one – it’s been around a long time, Cosentino is highly respected, and while I did not personally use it during recruiting, I know many people who have and have had generally good results.

Pros include a thorough, systematic approach to identifying cases (he has roughly 21 case “types”, I believe), and a ton of practice (which is ultimately the most important thing). I believe these case types can be even further distilled into less than 10, but that’s the focus of a future post. If you’re starting from scratch, this is a great entry point but be prepared to put in the effort and hours to get through it.

How To Get Into The Top Consulting Firms, a Surefire Case Interview Method, by Tim Darling. Heard great things about this from my readers, so I bought it and checked it out. I would definitely recommend it – fast, no-nonsense writing with some very practical tips on how to breakdown and tackle cases.

Magazines and Periodicals

Harvard Business Review. Every issue is worth a quick browse – I haven’t read a single one cover-to-cover. But the topics addressed – from how to encourage bottoms-up innovation to establishing the right organizational systems for retaining talented employees – are topics that consultants live and breathe. Reading this will also help you develop your own topical interests within the business world. For example, if you find that you really love innovation and how it’s developed within companies, that can be a great topic for cover letters, to bring-up during interviews, etc. Just some extra credit.

McKinsey Quarterly. Ditto.

The Economist. Through my McKinsey tenure, I’ve been surprised by the number of people who regularly read The Economist. It’s the one magazine I consistently subscribe to, and will serve you well in understanding the key global issues (and in particular, finance, economics, and business) of the day. Reading The Economist consistently will give you the ability to intelligently discuss current events with recruiters, interviewers, and eventually in the course of your job.

Fortune Magazine. A more personal recommendation – Fortune has consistently high-quality articles and in-depth pieces on leading business thinkers and companies, and is also a much more interesting read than the Economist.

Great Websites

Recommend via the comments below, Booz & Co’s strategy+business website. Similar to The McKinsey Quarterly, lots of great articles on tactics and strategy in the business world.

Consulting Magazine – the industry’s most comprehensive resource on consulting news, including everything from personnel shifts at the top firms (for example, McKinsey recently lost a well-known pricing expert) to awards for the industry’s top consultants (nominated by their peers).

This article was guest written by my friend Zeke Lee, a fellow former management consultant (Booz & Co.) and Stanford graduate who offers some great real world advice on the realities of recruiting. Zeke is also the founder of the GMAT Pill Study Method, a great GMAT prep resource for those considering the MBA route for their career aspirations – more on that at the end of the article.

Those of you who follow Management Consulted know the 2 most common ways to get into the industry are through

1) undergrad recruiting at a target school

2) business school recruiting at a target MBA program

Well, let’s say you missed the boat with #1: undergrad recruiting. Your school wasn’t a “target” school or you had no clue what management consulting was until now. How would you use #2 to get into management consulting?

Let’s first take a look from the firms’ perspective.

You see, different firms have different hiring practices between these two options.

As a management consultant at Booz & Company, I trained alongside with the rest of my hiring class. 95% of my class were MBA hires. Booz happens to have a much more “diamond” shaped hierarchy with lots of MBA level hires, but only a few undergrad hires.

Other firms like Bain & Company, on the other hand, hire a lot more undergrads and have a more “pyramid” shaped hierarchy. So a class of consultants will likely include a few more undergrads than MBA hires at a place like Bain.

Knowing the organizational structure of various firms helps you understand which firms have a higher demand at which levels. As an undergrad you may not research much about a place like Booz, but certainly at the MBA level the firm would come into mind because of the greater opportunities there.

Many of my colleagues at Booz were hired from MBA and so I naturally learned how many of them broke into the industry.

Let me give you an example of an MBA hire who leveraged his previous industry exposure to get into a specialized team of Booz & Company.

This fellow consultant (we’ll call him Jim) used to work at Boeing–the aerospace company full of rocket scientists who design the 787′s and 777′s for continental and intercontinental airflights you’ve all been on. Realizing he wanted to branch out of the nitty gritty details of what he was doing at Boeing, Jim decided he wanted a more business oriented career. He tried getting into the management consulting industry but couldn’t even get an interview.

After getting the career advice he needed, Jim took his GMAT and entered a top MBA program.

During a random networking event, he met a Booz & Company employee who actually was not a management consultant—BUT he happened to work right next to the group of management consultants at his office~ These consultants happened to specialize in aerospace! This referring employee told the group that they might be interested in someone like Jim who came from a big-name aerospace company like Boeing.

It’s important to note that Jim wasn’t an aerospace engineer—he had some assistant project manager position. But the fact that he came from a big company with a big brand name like “Boeing”–which also happened to be one of Booz’s key clients–made it that much easier for the referring employee to make the referral. You see, branding is that important.

As a side note, for anybody looking for a job right after undergrad, I highly recommend starting with a company that has a STRONG BRAND name. I would almost say that from a career perspective, it matters LESS what your job title is and MORE what your company name is–at least when it comes time to finding your next job in the early stages of your career. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule but this is generally true. A strong brand helps people associate you with something familiar and makes the referral process much easier–it’s just the way human beings are wired up.

Anyway, back to Jim. So Jim got his interview with the Aerospace team because he came from Boeing, a key client for the aerospace team. His interview was actually delayed over a long period of time because the hiring managers were in and out of town traveling from engagement to engagement. Jim followed up and eventually met in person.

During the interview, Jim shared stories of how he became VP of the consulting society at his MBA program, how he led teams at Boeing and made presentations to 200+ colleagues, etc. Negotiations went on for quite a bit, but eventually Jim got the job.

You see, this wasn’t even through the school’s official recruiting program! Definitely make use of your school’s recruiting channels, but do not overlook random networking events that might point you in the right direction like this one did.

From this story, we can summarize Jim’s progression that you can also follow:
Jim…

1) Realized he wanted to get into management consulting

2) Took the GMAT exam

3) Got into a top MBA program

4) Networked and leveraged the brand name of his company wherever he went so people could identify who he was (the Aerospace guy)

5) Got the interview with a very specialized team (generally less competition) that he had exposure to.

6) Closed the deal

Consulting firms love hiring people with industry experience + MBA. Whether you work at Intel (semiconductor industry), Amgen (bio-engineering), or L’Oreal (luxury retail), getting an MBA can position yourself as a potential hire with the specific industry experience that firms love.

There’s much less risk for the firm to hire you if you already have a sense of who the major players are in that industry and how the competitive landscape looks. Instead of spending the first few months reading reports on what is happening in the industry, you can just jump right into the real work–saving the firm time and money!

Ok ok, I know. There are a lot of assumptions there.

Just because you work at a semiconductor company does not necessarily mean you understand the semiconductor industry in the high-level way that consultants do. This is true. When I was at Lucent Technologies, for example, there were plenty of people who had no clue what was going on with the company simply because they weren’t exposed at that level.

“Huh? Quarterly Earnings? Today? What’s the CEO’s name again?”

So you can’t really say that by working in an industry you automatically understand what is going on.

However, for the purposes of finding a job what matters more is your PERCEIVED understanding of an industry rather than your ACTUAL understanding of an industry. Your mere background of coming from an industry automatically raises your PERCEIVED value as someone familiar with that industry. And it is this PERCEPTION of industry expertise and industry fit that can help you get into a specialized team within management consulting. This is especially true when everyone else is pitching themselves as a “generalist.”

Be careful, though! It’s not as convincing (though still possible) if you try to change industries in the process. For example, if you worked at Intel and want to do consulting in the retail industry, you’re going to be competing with people who already have retail experience and may be a better fit.

Having said that, IF you like your industry and just want to shift over to the business side of that same industry, then the GMAT/MBA route will position you well for a career in management consulting for those who missed undergrad recruiting.

For those of you who plan to take the GMAT exam, I highly recommend you check out a great GMAT prep resource, the GMAT Pill Study Method, especially if you want to maximize your time efficiency when studying. The site’s been getting good reviews around the web and even has a 60-day money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. In fact, if you decide to enroll, Zeke is letting ManagementConsulted.com readers in for a generous 25% discount –a great bargain and excellent alternative to Kaplan or Princeton Review.

Today’s post departs from its usual focus on recruiting to take a 5,000 mile view of the consulting industry and its purpose.

Consultants can have a negative reputation – charging $2 million for 12 week’s work
that results in stacks of PowerPoint slides, all of which are archived into a dusty closet (digital or otherwise) soon after McKBain Group leaves the premises.

When consultants’ recommendations are implemented, employees often argue that the actions are not beneficial and don’t reflect day-to-day business realities.

That’s one side of the story.

Below, I’ll paint a more positive (and personally held) view on the 6 reasons why companies hire consultants. Through it, you’ll have a better view on business consulting and the consulting industry as a potential career.

1) Staff augmentation – the least impactful role that consultants can play and self-explanatory. Companies often have short to medium-term staffing needs (in the case of government work, this can extend for several years) due to a variety of factors (eg, recent downsizings, sudden expansion). Consultants in this situation “plug a hole” for the company by filling the role of full-time employees. While expensive, it’s common work for operational consultancies (eg, Deloitte and Accenture) and, to a lesser extent, for government consultancies (eg, Booz Allen)

Further reading: Interview with a Booz Allen consultant

2) External change force aka “political cover”. It can be hard for companies to do what’s right (sacred cows and all that jazz) – particularly when it comes to job layoffs, salary and benefit changes/reduction, major operational and strategic shifts. Hiring consultants can be a way to reach the desired conclusions with sufficient political cover in case certain parties are unhappy (eg, a displeased Board or disgruntled employees) or things go wrong (“Despite the significant cost uptick, we implemented BCG’s recommendations to the letter – I’m not sure what we could have done better”)

3) Best practices across industries and functions (eg, organization, supply chain) – consultants have the rare privilege of:

• Serving multiple clients in the same sector (eg, Beverages, Enterprise Software)
• Serving multiple clients facing similar problems across different sectors (eg, Latin American expansion, Southeast Asia outsourcing)

This enables them to recognize common attributes of effective solutions, applying lessons learned in applicable situations. This knowledge is partially institutionalized at each consulting firm (in the form of white papers, databases, post-project reviews, etc); however, much of the information exists in the collective heads of partners and to a lesser extent, senior consultants.

A former McKinsey partner put it best when he called business consultants “masters at reinventing the wheel”

4) Analytical horsepower

A corollary to staff augmentation, companies may need help solving issues and executing strategies where their skillsets and knowledge are insufficient. Consultants can be of great value given their training and capabilities. A note here on big vs boutique: big consultancies have a breadth of resources that they can bring to bear on problems (eg, data mining and analytics, primary market research). Boutiques may have specialized expertise on specific dimensions (eg, retail pricing best practices, financial industry benchmarks).

Further reading: Global consulting firms versus boutiques

5) Fresh perspective

Companies often need a fresh set of eyes – you’d be amazed at the amount of value consultants can add based on the most mundane observations and insights. Critics contend that this is an example of consultants selling “glorified common sense”, but for front-line client employees, it can be easy to fall into daily routines without a critical eye towards measurement, analysis, and improvement.

6) Training and skillset augmentation

I’d argue that every consulting project – particularly ones with heavy client interaction – incorporates client training as a major ingredient. The best recommendations are worthless if clients can’t implement and maintain suggested changes. Thus, a large part of what consultants do is educate client employees on necessary knowledge, skills, and mindsets.

Readers will notice that the posting rate has slowed here at Management Consulted. The reason? I’ve been developing a “Consulting Bible” – an insider’s guide to consulting interviews that will cover:

• More than 50 fit/personality interview questions with example answers for each. I’m shooting for quality and not quantity – so mastering these 50 will give you the content, preparation, and flexibility to answer just about any fit or behavioral question thrown at you
• 3 technical “sizing” questions and multiple solutions – including secrets on how you can conquer any sizing question no matter how complex or unstructured
• 2 extensive, never-before-seen case studies – testing you on the 5 case study principles that all top candidates instinctively know and which you must excel at to receive an offer

Below, I’ll give you a quick preview of the 2 most common and most important fit/behavioral interview questions

#1. Take a few minutes and run me through the key things I should know from your resume

They’re looking for: this question is usually asked for several reasons -

• The interviewer was too busy and didn’t have time to review your resume
• The interviewer wants to see what you think are your most important experiences and accomplishments
• The interviewer wants to test your presentation skills and ability to give an effective soundbite

The secret to this question is to prepare in advance. I guarantee it will be asked of you multiple times in your interviewing life. It’s that common and it’s something that the successful candidates nail

You should:

• Briefly highlight your educational background
• Highlight at least 2 work experiences touching upon at least 2 bullet points in each
• Focus on results and not process (eg, “I implemented a new process that saved each employee 30 minutes/day” and not “I worked on creating a new process for how employees would document how they spent their time”)
• Speak slowly and calmly

You shouldn’t:

• Speak quickly and rush
• Spend all of your time talking about your educational background
• Focus on only one work experience – unless that’s truly all you have

Sample response:

No problem. Let’s start with the education portion of my resume: I graduated Yale in 2007, majoring in Economics and Political Science. During my time there, I was actively involved with both the Yale Finance Club – serving as its president while tripling the size of the group, and the school newspaper, where I worked for 3 years before rising to editor-in-chief in my last year. In terms of work experience, the one job I’d highlight is my summer as an investment analyst with Prudential. I spent 3 months with the firm analyzing stocks, providing buy/sell recommendations, and doing fundamental and technical research on a large portfolio. In fact, one of my recommendations ended up being their “stock pick of the month”. It taught me alot about financial markets and how to value companies and their equity.

#2. Why are you interested in management consulting as a career?

They’re looking for: a solid understanding of the job and industry. An appreciation for the skills/personality traits needed to be successful in management consulting. A “subtle sell” of your strengths – as opposed to “direct sell” (an example of a subtle sell would be: “I’ve always been a very curious person with a passion for learning. My understanding of management consulting is that learning is an integral part of the job.”)

You should:

• Include components of the items listed above
• Keep the answer to a minute or less
• Mention the people – it’s a very reliable response to mention the talent/intelligence/ambition/hard-work of management consultants. Not only does it compliment the interviewer indirectly, it tells the interviewer what personality traits you respect and emulate

You shouldn’t:

• Forget any of the above 3 components
• Discuss the particular company you’re interviewing with unless specifically asked – their question is not why you want to work for them, but why you’re interested in their line of work
• Discuss the superficial characteristics such as pay and perks. Travel is OK

Sample response:

I

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People make fun of consultants constantly for their lingo. Whether justified or not (I will restrain from turning this blog into too much of a soapbox), it’s important for anyone interested in the industry to understand SOME of the terms (because as an applicant/interviewee, the last thing you want to happen is for you to mention how much you love consulting and for the interviewer to ask you what being “on the beach” means)

As good coders code and great coders reuse, I came across an excellent post from a fellow blogger, Benjamin Tseng (who currently works at a Big 3). It’s reproduced in near entirety below (see original post), with two tweaks:

#1 I’ve split the terms between those that are “good-to-know” for potential applicants (with my rationale in yellow boxes) and the rest, which are useful only “if-you-have-too-much-time-on-your-hands”

#2 I’ve added links if there are any terms/concepts that relate to previously written posts

As an interesting aside, I once assumed that while consulting lingo existed at every firm, each firm had unique phrases for many of the concept. Thus after reviewing the terms below, I automatically thought Ben was a fellow McKinsey consultant. This was not the case, and it goes to show the degree of commonality in day-to-day that you will encounter regardless of firm. Remember that, prospective consultants!

The “good-to-know”:

boil the ocean: to embark on an apparently impossible, wasteful or fruitless task, usually preceded by an exhortation not to, as in: “Let’s not boil the ocean here, an 80/20 should be enough”; this term suggests that the amount of effort to be expended is not worth the potential payoff

Interviewers may bring this up to suggest that you reduce/focus your analyses – take hint that you’re either thinking about way too many things, or thinking way too broadly about the problem at hand

development opportunity: a weakness, flaw or shortcoming that should be rectified, usually by the subsequent suggestion

Pay close attention when interviewers/recruiters/anyone mentions this phrase and work to correct the problem (eg, “I think one development opportunity for you is to develop more succinct responses to questions about past work experience”)

directionally correct: essentially wrong

Don’t feel encouraged. You’ve got a long way to go in getting the right answer

on the beach (term not included in Ben’s post but added here): a consultant with no dedicated project(s). being “on the beach” rarely indicates free time (much less beach time); rather, being “on the beach” will indicate that for an undetermined period, you will worry constantly about your next long-term project while you’re shuttled from one short-term assignment to the next

Just know what it means. Integrate into comments casually if you want brownie points (eg, “I’ve heard from consulting friends that many have been on the beach recently”)

view from 30,000 feet: a very high-level, preliminary or cursory look at a particular situation, often used to suggest that pertinent details are inappropriately glossed over; however, one never speaks of the view from, say five or six feet, which might be more appropriate given the average height of a human being

Depending on context, interviewer either a) doesn’t have additional details, b) wants you to provide additional details, or c) wants you to provide a summary/high-level answer

The “if-you-have-too-much-time-on-your-hands”:

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’ days do not end with the setting of the sun, at the end of the day most of them are still working

bandwidth: capacity, free time, ability to do (additional) work; generally used to indicate that speaker cannot or would not prefer to do additional work, as in: “I don’t think I’ll have any bandwidth this Friday”

buckets: categories; this is the extent of this word’s definition, so it remains a mystery why people choose to employ the former term; also used as a transitive verb to mean “categorize”

buttoned-up: to indicate that a particular piece of work or analysis is comprehensive, accurate and capable of withstanding close scrutiny; this is an example of opposite terms with identical meanings

buttoned-down: see buttoned-up

buy-in: agreement, support; it is unclear why “buy-in” has come to supplant these terms, as no actual purchasing occurs

circle back: to follow up with indicated individuals at a later point in time, usually to review progress on the current topic of discussion; this phrase is somewhat redundant, as it is impossible to trace a circle that does not connect back with itself

crisp: an adjective indicating that the referenced work or analysis is thorough and complete, perhaps by gastronomical allusion to food that is fully prepared; it is duly noted that crisp objects, while ostensibly finished, are also far more brittle and prone to shattering

granular: a detailed level of abstraction; often used in the context of increasing the fineness of the analysis, as in: “We need to get more granular here”

hands: often prefaced with “client,” indicates the interpersonal skills of an individual in relation to a particular group of people, as in, “That manager sure has great client hands”

hard stop: used to indicate that after the time indicated, the listeners are on their own, because the person stating that they have a hard stop sure isn’t going to be around to help after then

hope you’re doing well: a generally well-intended but insincere interpolation used at the beginning of most voicemails to replace the standard pleasantries that would be present in verbal communications; use of this phrase does not indicate actual interest in the well-being of the recipient; also found with alarming frequency in electronic mail

key: critical, essential, required, important, central; the key analysis is generally the linchpin; often used as a noun, and with such frequency that its significance has been diluted, since everything is now “key”

let me play this back: said when the listener wants to refract and color the conversation through his or her own perspective, under the pretense of reviewing the transcript of what’s been said; in this manner the listener can pretend he or she is a tape recorder

low-hanging fruit: the initial opportunities, areas of exploration, etc. that are easiest to cover; intended to evoke visual imagery of fruit-laden trees, suggesting that much remains beyond the lowest boughs; syn. quick win

provide color: a directive that translates roughly to “This is perhaps the most boring thing I have ever read, with the possible exception of certain lengthier legal disclaimers, and even then it’s pretty close”; this bit of jargon is nevertheless somewhat of an advance, since, back in the early days of consulting, people were encouraged to provide black and white

push back (verb form) or pushback (noun): formerly the sole domain of airplanes leaving their gates, this term is now used to indicate resistance and/or disagreement, without actually using those terms; this phrase attempts to avoid any negative connotations of controversy

quick question: the answer will be anything but; bizarre since the adjective “quick” is intended, by implication, to be transferred to the answer to said question and does not necessarily have any bearing on the length of the question

rock star: an individual whose performance in a given area or success at specific endeavors is highly impressive, unique and/or admirable; this appellation is generally used sparingly; although the term is sometimes used frivolously to express purportedly extreme gratitude, as in: “Thanks for picking up my mail for me, you’re a rock star”

sea change: in between lake change and ocean change

sniff test: as in evaluating food for rancidity, this term is used when gauging the viability or reasonableness of a particular analysis; var. smell test

space: a market, arena, field of endeavor, or general area, not to be confused with the area beyond Earth’s atmosphere; use of this term usually adds nothing in the way of descriptive value, as in “I don’t think there will be many opportunities in the technology space”

straw man: a humanoid comprised entirely of the dried above-ground stalks of any of a variety of grasses; also, a construct presented purely for the sake of argument, with the implication that it is not designed to withstand repeated attacks

take the lead on: a clever phrase often used by more experienced consultants when they wish to delegate a menial task, as in: “Why don’t you take the lead on putting together this document,” which may translate to, “I’m lazy and probably not smart or energetic enough to work on this, so go do it”; often appears in utterly irrelevant settings, as in, “Why don’t you take the lead on making dinner reservations for the team,” a manifestly silly request, since one is asked to “take the lead on” something which doesn’t require leadership of anyone and on which they will certainly be working solo

takeaway: in other settings a British term referring to carry-out food, here this word has been transmogrified to indicate the salient point that should be retained upon the conclusion of the discussion, often prefaced with key

to be transparent: in indication that what follows will be particularly revelatory, although it often is not especially so; the troubling implication of this usage is that the speaker has heretofore been opaque

value-add: quite simply, that value is added, mashed into a hyphenated noun form

wordsmith: to make trivial or generally unnecessary edits to text that may only subtly change the meaning, if at all; incorrectly implies that one is a craftsman on the order of a blacksmith or goldsmith; sadly, wordsmithing rarely involves the deletion of jargon

I’m sure there are many more – feel free to leave comments below!

Thanks for reading! For more background info and if you’re just starting to read my blog, here are some recommended posts: Management Consulting and the Consulting Industry 101; Investment Banking vs Management Consulting; Day in the life of a Management Consultant

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