Case Interview Preparation & Management Consulting | Strategy | Critical Thinking

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews. Undergraduate clients constitute ~14% of our clients at any one time. Our youngest client in this group was 18 when she joined. A key feature of our training for this client group is helping them understand the real-world implications of consulting cases, by explaining our own engagement experience. Undergraduate students tend to be weaker at brainstorming and hypotheses development which becomes a focus for this group.

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews. Approximately 15% of our clients at any one time are PhD candidates. The training program is designed to teach PhD’s skills for the team-based cases, handling estimation questions, brainstorming and full cases. Networking is another area we spend much time grooming PhD clients to handle.

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews. Experienced hires will have the longest training program, due to the longer networking cycles. Approximately 15% of our clients are experienced hires and they work with us for between 3 to 8 months. This is a broad group including entrepreneurs, graduates with a few months experience to senior executives in Fortune 500 corporations. Our oldest client is in this group was 45 with 15 years of experience in banking. Cases tend to be heavily focused around office choices and sector specialization like BTO. Though this does not apply to younger experienced hires whom we will position as generalists.

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews. Female candidates: We admit no less than 50% of female candidates per month’s intake. This is a Firmsconsulting decision to improve the placement rate of female candidates. We apply the same screening standards as that applied for all applicants while having a broader screening pool. Our training for female clients is tailored to cater for the obstacles/challenges females consultants will encounter.

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews. MBA clients are the dominant group we train. We serve clients from over 30 MBA programs worldwide with a wide range of backgrounds. The majority of our teaching techniques are designed with this group in mind and tested with our core clients at the Harvard Business School. “The Consulting Offer” for example, was designed and tested with this group, and modified for all clients.

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews. How we select candidates: We select candidates from a wide variety of schools: the Ivy League schools to regional schools outside the U.S. and have worked with clients from over 50 different schools. We have a policy of balancing each month’s intake with stronger candidates and Firmsconsulting Emerging Fellows. At least half the intake is from the emerging markets and is female. Our most important criteria is whether a candidate could be taught the skills to obtain an offer, maintain our very strong value systems and rise to leadership in consulting or their chosen field.

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews. This is a selective program run by former principals/senior partners of McKinsey and BCG who conduct all the training and mentoring. We prize client confidentiality and never disclose client relationships, and clients are expected to reciprocate and never disclose our extensive support of their careers.

In this podcast, by the editor, we discuss the very counter-intuitive manner in which McKinsey and BCG partners manage engagements, teams and clients. We present 5 crucial differences which may seem nuanced, but have a powerful ripple effect in managing client relationships. Set in the Brazilian interior, this book follows an engagement team as they assist Goldy, a large Brazilian gold miner, in diagnosing and fixing deep and persistent organisational issues. This book will follow an engagement team over an 8 week assignment and explain how they successfully navigate a challenging client environment, develop hypotheses, build the analyses and provide the final recommendations. It is written so the reader may understand, follow and replicate the process. The book is 252 pages in length and written by former management consulting partners and case leaders. This is the only consulting guide taking readers on a day-by-day and step-by-step journey through a complete engagement. MBA students contemplating a career

This is a related podcast to our mining book.

This detailed podcast, by the engagement partner, discusses a striking reality of most engagements: a problem is never what it appears to be at first. In this Succeeding as a Management Consulting book, the engagement begins as a broad study of the agricultural sector in Canada and the economics of various business models. The study quickly focuses on the physical retail operations as this appears to be the main opportunity to fix this organizations decline.

This detailed podcast, by the engagement senior-partner, discusses the most challenging assignment Firmsconsulting took on to advise a client in preparing one of the Succeeding as a Management Consultant books. The client was a state-run electricity utility in Latin America which was undergoing a significant build program to add capacity for a burgeoning economy while dealing with an aging asset base causing power outages, impacting foreign-direct-investment and decimating national productivity.

This detailed podcast, by the engagement partner, discusses the difficulties faced by many European State-Owned-Enterprises during the 2008-2011 recession when many simultaneously saw a drop in revenue and state subsidies. The engagement team in this book led the work to develop a strategy for the courier business of a heavily-indebted European Postal service.

This detailed podcast, by the engagement senior-partner, discusses the challenges and complexities of running an engagement to advise on the economics and strategy of a large micro-finance enterprise.

In this podcast we discuss the detailed effort which goes into preparing the multimedia/premium management consulting books. We discuss the engagements we run and the client issues faced, the development of hypotheses, data collection, analyses, model building, client management and preparation of the final recommendation. We thereafter discuss how all of this, including the extensive video footage, is brought together to produce each of the 4 multimedia books.

In this podcast we isolate the 5 most important and counter-intuitive lessons from the popular book.

In this podcast we introduce one of our most popular books, Partnership. This is a memoir written by partner who served in that position at 2 of the big-3 firms.

This detailed podcast introduces Firmsconsulting and our distinctive heritage which is best exemplified by these three quotes: "Business properly conducted could be as high a calling as anything." Marvin Bower "If you are not willing to take pain to live by your principles, there is no point in having principles." Marvin Bower “Management consulting is no individual's right as a career. It is the single greatest privilege of a business professional to earn the trust required to advise a client on his/her most pressing issues.” Michael Boricki

Peter is a PhD candidate from the USA who joined McKinsey Middle East a year ago. The striking thing about Peter is his level of confidence and the fact that he does not sound like a PhD. He is a candidate who initially pursued the USA and thereafter opened interviews at another highly competitive office where he was successful. Peters interview is more for the journey he goes through to build his confidence and learn about his potential. I have personally admired this candidate because he seems to closely follow the strong values-based path Firmsconsulting expects of our alums.

Edward is one of the most effective networking clients in our program. Although a relatively-older candidate from a non-target school, he was able to meticulously follow our advice on networking to eventually build a very effective support network of partners and consultants at his preferred offices. This wide-ranging interview is important because it demonstrates the primacy of our networking approach. Firmsconsulting believes that if you take the time to do the appropriate due-diligence and build sincere reasons for joining an office, this sincerity will come through in any discussions. It is interesting to see how Edward developed this approach over a 5 month period through trial and error to eventually secure strong endorsements from very senior partners. On a personal note, I do believe Edward is one of the most impressive alums of our program. He is steeped in our tradition of values and ethics before all else and to us, that is what matters the most.

Sanda is a brilliant commerce graduate from South-East Asia. She is the first person in her entire family to attend university. She taught herself English at university by watching "Friends" and "The Good Wife" among other shows, especially in-depth business media, and is the very first person from her university to ever join MBB. In this extensive interview, Sanda describes her tough background and experiences as well as her smart strategy for joining the elite consulting firms.