Case Interview Preparation & Management Consulting | Strategy | Critical Thinking

We get this question more times than you can imagine. We also get a chorus of Accenture people telling us we are wrong, and they are “eating McKinsey’s lunch.” I think the question posed is incorrect and the defense of Accenture is incorrect. This podcast explains why. BBM are good at advising decision makers on general management issues. They excel at that. They are pretty much no-where in the implementation space. Accenture, Deloitte SO etc have their areas of strength, but it is not in the general management advisory space. They are both good at different things. Decide what you want to do and then pick the firm. However, don’t assume a firm is good everything, and if you have never worked at BBM, don’t believe everything your Accenture/Deloitte/[add your firms name here] partner says. Get first-hand information. FYI – Kennedy Research, the Economist and IDC Research are not first-hand information and neither is getting the opinion of a junior person or someone with just one or two years experience.

Not all BCG engagements begin via a call from the CEO or Chairman of the board. Many do, but life is not that simple. Some, unusually, begin with a call from a middle-manager who does not speak English well. What differentiates BCG, and McKinsey, from Tier-2 firms, however, is how we handle these calls, understand the deeper problems, and cascade the issues upwards until, when the time counts, we are in front of the board. Most Tier-2 firms receiving the same call would settle to try to sell the middle-manager a $100K project or simply dismiss him as unimportant. BCG uses it has an opportunity to learn.

I have had many people emailing me the Goldman Sachs letter to tell me that, “Michael, this is exactly what you teach us.” It is not. I fundamentally disagree with what Greg Smith did. It goes against the consulting culture, values and ethos, at its very fiber. Here is why, and I would welcome your comments on this.

Based on offers made to our candidates in the Fall 2011 full-time recruiting, we present the ranges of packages offered. The sample size, 48, is large enough to offer a good approximation of all offers extended. Listeners are cautioned not to extend these numbers outside the USA, where salaries differ significantly. As expected, Accenture and Deloitte dramatically out-offered Bain, BCG and McKinsey.

An earlier podcast discussed a fairly labor-intensive case where we needed to literally roll-up our sleeves to find and extract data. This is the opposite engagement. It is the glamorous engagement all aspiring consultants dream about and imagine consulting is about. In this engagement, we worked for the largest company in the world, in its sector, to understand how to increase its share price. We were based out of The City in London and had to change conventional wisdom about value creation. I had the good fortune to lead this engagement.

Many, many see fit as just 15 minutes of the full case. That is a dangerous myth. You are always being assessed for fit, even when the formal fit portion has ended. Provided you understand this, you will be fine in cases. Moreover, do not memorize answers. The main part of the fit is not the initial answer you provide, but the cross-examination which will follow, especially with McKinsey, and you can never be prepared for that.

This podcast addresses some of the common misconceptions candidates have, and the mistakes they routinely make for this McKinsey path. Many of this mistakes commonly arise due to the nature of the work done in BTO. We advice applicants to focus less on "what" is done and much more on "how" it is done. This is also one practice we have been most successful in placing older candidates.

A continuation of a podcast series we regularly update which looks at new traits and examines some in greater detail. In this posting, we spend more time looking at experienced candidates. Experienced candidates face unique and material challenges such as being out of an university recruiting cycle (out-of-cycle), having to prove their analytic skills, having to prove their ramp-up rate etc. We discuss how successful clients in our program have met these challenges and thrived.

This podcast provides some behind the scenes numbers about MBA program in the Great White North, as well as some tough questions candidates should ask themselves before applying. The headline is that the traditional power-house schools like Ivey and McGill have essentially fallen dramatically behind and largely rely on their alumni success versus any real weight in the current placement numbers.

This podcast looks at the profile of an older MBA candidate who has extensive oil and gas expertise. We offer some counter-intuitive advice to this candidate for their career and planning. While we use an oil and gas profile, this advice is relevant to any experienced hire and we caution candidates to think very carefully about the quality of their backgrounds when applying this advice to their own needs. The quality is what matters - not the time spent in a sector.

This podcast presents some proven strategies candidates can apply this summer. We will discuss actual internship examples from our own experiences in consulting firms, and the characteristics of the successful candidates. In particular, I will discuss of the very earliest interns I had the opportunity to hire as a principal and discuss their widely diverging careers, largely built of their internship performance.

Too many aspiring consultants stick too closely to the feedback provided by consulting firms after an interview. The problem with this strategy is that it assumes the feedback is truthful, useful and even designed to help you. This podcast explains how you need to go about critically evaluating the feedback you use, what to use and what to discard. This is an important podcast lest you end up chasing fictitious development areas.

In this podcast we extract the most important mistakes, best-practices and lessons learned from our clients who interviewed and are still interviewing through the January 2012 US MBA internships.

Far too many candidates think public sector work is boring. In fact, just the opposite is true. Public sector work typically falls into 4 categories: national government, regional government, state-owned-enterprises and state initiatives. This podcast focuses on national government and state-owned-enterprises, and we want to show you that these engagements are among the most eminent, significant, challenging and career enhancing. We will discuss specific engagements (scrubbed for detail) and why they are in many ways more exciting than private sector projects.

We have responded to the bolded out part of the question below: “As a person from a big emerging market interested in the long term career in my region, I am thinking about which strategy makes more sense for a person like me: 1) start at BBM in his own country 2) start at BBM in the US, transferring after some time back to his country (to BBM or directly to industry). I can think of the following pros of the first option: a) better chances for success at BBM due to the absence of cultural barriers, higher growth of BBM in that country b) better exit opportunities c) the earlier opportunity to start building professional network in that country d) better experience at BBM due to higher chance of being staffed on “crown-jewel” clients. Pros of the second option: a) the prestige of the US experience b) better training c) better experience due to exposure to the American companies which on average are higher quality organizations than emerging market companies. I think many people would be interested in your opi

We have responded to the bolded out part of the question below: “As a person from a big emerging market interested in the long term career in my region, I am thinking about which strategy makes more sense for a person like me: 1) start at BBM in his own country 2) start at BBM in the US, transferring after some time back to his country (to BBM or directly to industry). I can think of the following pros of the first option: a) better chances for success at BBM due to the absence of cultural barriers, higher growth of BBM in that country b) better exit opportunities c) the earlier opportunity to start building professional network in that country d) better experience at BBM due to higher chance of being staffed on “crown-jewel” clients. Pros of the second option: a) the prestige of the US experience b) better training c) better experience due to exposure to the American companies which on average are higher quality organizations than emerging market companies. I think many people would be interested in your opi

We get a variety of queries from all levels of consultants: analysts up to principal. This question came from a female engagement manager in the USA. She was distraught after having worked very hard to build her career, and not sure how to handle this ultimatum from her husband. She was afraid that any changes to her work schedule would affect her partner track. We offer some helpful considerations for managing this delicate situation. Should you have a colleague in a similar situations it is essential not to judge either partner and NEVER offer the solution. Always offer options and discuss the considerations. In personal matters, the person in question must always make the decision. If you make it for them, they become reliant on your and that is not appropriate nor healthy for any relationship, personal or professional.

Unfortunately, in management consulting this is something everyone should plan for. Performance or economic conditions can lead to the up-or-out policy being applied. We have had several requests to help mainly associate (MBA-level) admits. The key thing is not to panic. Not to lose any leverage. Not to make rash decisions and rush off resumes. Not to do anything until this has settled in and a strategy has been developed. The decision should not affect your self worth in any way. In all fairness, consulting firms do treat candidates well during this painful transition. Full disclosure, I was the architect of many such decisions and can understand the difficulty for candidates. Here I present a blue-print to follow which worked very well when I released candidates. With the economy already softening , recruitment down worldwide for 2012 and fees down in several major offices, this podcast is timely.

This is such a great dilemma. The answer is going to surprise many people. Therefore, pay attention to the logic we apply to answer this question, as well as the real examples we will offer. The options are a) going back to Deloitte as a manager, or potentially a lateral move as senior consultant in another country, b) going to industry or c) moving to BCG. The path you want to take is important, and leads to some surprising conclusions. Far too many applicants simply assume BCG or McKinsey are better than Deloitte S&O. All other things being equal, they are if you are pursuing corporate strategy and particularly their training and value systems. However, things are rarely equal and you have to isolate those things which are not and understand their impact on the attractive of each firm to you and only you.

Many of our candidates are still interviewing, but we can, with a fair degree of accuracy, determine how they will do. We project a 60%-65% placement rate, which considering that internships slots are far fewer than full-time slots, is expected. In this podcast we segment our candidates and present some important lessons for those who want to pursue the full-time cycle in September 2012, as well as candidates in other countries and US undergrads.