Consulting toolkit consulting careers
- 1. CONSULTING TOOLKIT
Consulting Careers
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- 2. AGENDA
•Consulting vs Management roles
•The landscape
–Types of consultant
–Types of business development role
•Consulting Interviews
–Cases
–Behavioral
•Q&A
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- 3. Some people are better suited as consultants, others as line
managers
CONSULTING vs MANAGEMENT ROLES
CONSULTING LINE MANAGEMENT
Love…… •PROJECT LIFE •STABLE LIFE
•100m Sprints •Marathon running
•Problem solving •Managing people
•Ideas and concepts •Getting stuff done
•Blank sheet of paper •Building things
•Learning •Meeting goals/objectives
•Exploring and understanding •Having responsibility
•Living on a plane/travel •Living at home and friends
Good at….. •Analysis •Follow-up and persistence
•Going up learning curve fast •The detail of implementation
•Working in a team of peers •Managing diverse types of people and
•Intellectual cutnthrust motivations
•Building and relationships trust •Organisational politics
quickly •Building long term relationships
•Intellectual leadership •Real leadership
•Producing powerpoint packs •Producing results
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- 4. Consulting is not a career choice to be made lightly………
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the
strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done
them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives
valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is
not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive
to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion,
who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the
end the triumph of high achievement and who at the
worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.
So that his place shall never be with those cold and
timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
120112 © Chris Doran
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- 5. There are several different types of consultant
TYPES OF MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT
Generalist Functionally related
TOP TIER IT-RELATED •IBM Global Business Services
•Bain & Company •Accenture •Infosys
•Boston Consulting Group •Booz Allen Hamilton •Logica
• McKinsey & Company •Capgemini Consulting •Tata Consultancy Services
•HP Enterprise Services •Wipro
SECOND TIER ACCOUNTING-RELATED
•A.T. Kearney •Deloitte Consulting •KPMG
•Booz & Company •Ernst & Young •PriceWaterhouseCoopers
•L.E.K. Consulting •Stern Stewart
•Monitor Group
•Roland Berger
•OC&C Strategy Consultants
•Oliver Wyman
BOUTIQUE/LOCAL e.g. HR-RELATED •Towers Watson
•ZS Associates (Sales&Marketing) •Hay Group •Headhunters (e.g.Egon
•Eden McCallum (UK retail) •Hewitt Associates Zehnder, Heidrick&Struggles,
•Greenwich Associates (Finance) •Mercer Russell Reynolds, Korn Ferry)
YYDDMM Syndicate Case_name
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- 6. TOP MANAGEMENT CONSULTING COMPANIES
BY REPUTATION
McKinsey 8.4
BCG 8.1
Bain 8.0
Booz 6.5
Monitor 6.3
Mercer 6.2
Deloitte 5.8
Oliver Wyman 5.8
PWC 5.6
LEK 5.4
Ernst & Young 5.4
A.T. Kearney 5.4
IBM 5.4
Accenture 5.3
Parthenon 5.3
KPMG 5.2
Katzenbach 5.1
Towers Perrin 4.8
Capgemini 4.8
Gartner 4.7
Source: The Vault Survey © 2007-2012 IES Development Ltd. All Rights Reserved
- 7. There are many different types of corporate development roles
with different skill profiles required
TYPES OF CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT ROLE
Strategy CEOs Office Business Development
Internal consultant on CEO’s go-to person, follow-up, High level sales, managing
strategy projects composing reports and partners, reputation
Key skills: presentations building
consulting, problem Key skills: Organisation, Key skills:
solving, analytical, solo writing, getting stuff done Sales, relationship
operator building, drive
Analysis and Planning Also consider HQ vs Regional vs Deals
BU roles
Benchmarking, analysing Supporting
•HQ: Corporate Initiatives
performance, optimising M&A, JVs, alliances
•Regional: Regional CEOs “fire
Key skills: brigade /SWAT team” Key skills:
Modeling, analysis Valuation, commercial
contracts, relationship
Always ask: building
“What is the career path?”
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- 8. There are many different types of corporate development roles
with different skill profiles required
CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT ROLES IN ASIA
1) Regional roles for Western Multinationals investing
heavily in Asia, especially:
• Finance
• Industrial, Chemicals
• Pharmaceutical
• FMCG
Very fragmented, so
• Hi-tech/software job-finding approach:
• Research!
2) China roles for big Multinationals where you have
• Mandarin
• Network!
OR • Kiss lots of frogs!
• Special industry expertise/connections
3) Corporate roles for the few MNCs with Asian HQs (e.g.
HSBC/Cathay Pacific/SCB/AIA)
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- 9. To succeed in consulting interviews you will need to prepare
CONSULTING INTERVIEWS
• Recruiting is a consulting company’s core competence – they are
only as good as their worst people, so they invest greatly in their
recruiting process
• Not just looking for good consultants… looking for potential
partners
• Two routes:
–Milk Round: Typically 2-3 on-campus rounds, with 4+
interviews per round, partners final round, anyone can veto
–Write-in: Each firm/office has different rules/criteria
• Key points:
–If you miss the main annual process, it will be much harder
–Which office will you apply to? Usually – the one where you
have the best chance
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- 10. McKinsey looks for competency in 4 areas and a “spike” in one
McKINSEY INTERVIEWS
Area Yardstick question
Problem Solving “Would I be worried if this person worked for a
competitor?”
Personal Impact “Would I be happy to have this person Require
representing McKinsey in a meeting with a CEO?”
competency in
Interpersonal “Would I want this person on my team at 2:00am
Skills with a meeting at 8:00am?” all 4 and a
OR “spike” in 1
“Would I want to have breakfast, lunch and dinner area
with this person for a week?”
Drive/Energy “Do they have a record of outstanding
achievement?”
•Every interview has a case, and one interpersonal area to dig into in a
behavioural interview
•Team “wash-up” session afterwards - Hire yes/no, backed up with
facts (so arm your champion with evidence!)
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- 11. Most consulting companies use case interviews to test your
problem solving skills
CASE INTERVIEWS
• Purpose: To understand how you think, how you solve problems
• What hirers are looking for:
– Structured, logical thinking
– Broad cross-functional business fluency and common sense in a new situation
– Numeracy Best case
– Passion for problem solving interview
• Methodology: website
– Provide an outline of a business problem, usually drawn from their consulting
experience
– Ask an open-ended question: “How would you approach this problem?”
– Note how the interviewee thinks – flexibility, structure, depth, insights,
response to being wrong
– Depth, not breadth, spend 15 minutes on one situation
– How to succeed: Take a moment to think, apply frameworks (e.g. issue tree), enjoy
the process, be intellectually curious, PRACTICE 50 TIMES!
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- 12. Most consulting companies use behavioral interviewing to probe
non-problem solving skills/competencies
BEHAVIOURAL INTERVIEWS
• Purpose: Drill down on a specific skill to understand how you work, your style/
motivation/values
• What hirers are looking for:
– Honesty – depth enables you to spot bluffing
– Proactive approach to problems
– Reflection and learning Recent HBR Blog
• Methodology:
– Ask about a specific situation in their past when they used a skill e.g.“Tell me
about your worst team experience?”
– Establish a full grasp of the situation
– Elict interviewee thinking: “What did you do?” “Why did you that?”, “What was
the result?”, “What would you do differently?”
– Depth, not breadth, spend 15 minutes on one situation
– How to succeed: Prepare some real life stories to illustrate skills that are required
for the job you are interviewing for
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