Case Interview Preparation & Management Consulting | Strategy | Critical Thinking

Most readers have a vague understanding of the lifestyle of a management consultant. It is cultivated by the images consulting firms work very hard to keep up. In this podcast we explain the issues found on a typical engagement, and most importantly, why the lifestyle is tough.

The problem with advice for female management consultants is that most of that advice is centered on telling females consultants they need to change to fit into consulting firms. That is bad advice, because you can never be happy if you change into something you are not. In the short-term, you may need to compromise, but you should always, always be trying to get the organization to adjust and accept you for who you are. That is essential.

Oddly enough, very few candidates critically evaluate their learning styles before embarking on case training. To be fair, those who are weak at learning, present the most challenging cases for us. This podcast looks at the different stages of learning: 0 – learning how to receive, capture and apply feedback, 1 – learning the hard skills, 2 – learning the communication skills, 3 – learning to apply both, and 4 – application of both in successively more complex environments.

The power and privilege of management consulting:I was in my lower 20′s when I was given my first engagement to interact directly with the COO of a major European multinational. There is no greater privilege in the world than gaining permission to sit across the table of an executive officer of a firm, and have a discussion about his operating model and its cost implications.

Unfortunately, this is a common question and dilemma for many candidates. They try desperately to gain experience at Deloitte or LEK, hoping this will offer an advantage when applying to the big three. In fact, this strategy is encouraged by many misguided MBA counselors and well-meaning friends who do not know any better – but should.

Our book, focuses on the day-in-the-life view on management consulting. There are two other books I would strongly urge you to read. “McKinsey’s Marvin Bower” by Elizabeth Haas Edersheim is the single most important book to read. In fact, many McKinsey consultants should read this book as well.“The Mind of the Strategist” by Kenichi Ohmae is the other. Both these books are with me all the time. In this podcast we discuss why you should read these books, and avoid the McKinsey Mind, Way series.

Most people have a romanticized view of management consulting work. Usually wrong. I wanted to talk about my typically day/week as an associate (MBA level) consultant, and particularly how that changed as I moved up the ranks to the partnership. It will help you understand why mental math is so useful, as well as the extreme stresses of the job. Keep in mind that I was a very, very driven partner. It was very normal for me to work most of Saturday and Sunday and I typically traveled on a Saturday night so I could arrive in a new city the day before the week began. This allowed me to adjust and prepare adequately for the week ahead. Many partners could, and do travel less. I still maintain an aggressive work and travel schedule and have never formed a family. It all depends on priorities and client demands.

Just about every potential candidate we screen talks about the impact management consulting has on major corporations and governments around the world. Indeed, that remains an alluring reason to join BBM. In this podcast, I wanted to discuss the true impact of management consulting, by reflecting on one of my own projects, and discussing the real power and responsibility of management consulting. This will help you understand why cases are so tough. When thinking about the role and impact of management consultants, you must always remember the law of scarcity. There is never ever enough investment and jobs to go around. Therefore, when we advise on a plant being built in Poland versus Romania or entering Brazil today and Indonesia later, there will be winning families and losing families. There is no way around it. In the short term, someone will suffer. Your job is to make sure the client benefits no matter the emotional fallout. And there is always emotional impact. It cannot be avoided, though junior consu

Podcast: Day 0 with a tough candidate Early this year, we spent a week in Middle East helping a candidate prepare for his case interviews. The son of a former client, this series of podcasts outlines the difficulties of placing someone starting from a zero base of preparation. I mean zero. We have changed some details but all the insights and examples are real. We were brought in to spend an entire week taking this candidate through a crash course in case preparation. In this first podcast we clearly outline the challenges we would need to overcome.

Many candidates are confused between the different types of cases: interviewer led, interviewee led, brainstorming, market entry, market sizing etc. In this podcast we will discuss the different types of cases you will face and where you will likely encounter them.

McKinsey, BCG, Bain and Roland Berger use similar but not the same case styles. Within even one firm, styles may differ. Each firm uses a very different interview style. We discuss the different styles to expect and how to handle the questions you will encounter. We also rank the difficulty of the cases from each firm. Expect some counter-intuitive ordering.

How do you pick the firm to build your career: prestige, ranking, salary, feedback from friends or friendliness of the interviewer? Actually none of these will help you. In this podcast we explain how outstanding consultants build their careers and what you need to consider when choosing a firm.

We were forced to prepare this podcast after realizing how poorly candidates prepare for the arithmetic rigor they need to display. For some reason candidates believe practicing hundreds of math problems make them better at math. This is not how to learn math in cases. This podcast gives you proper guidance on learning arithmetic for cases, and how to communicate this competency.

On Monday this week, we had an early lunch at Crush restaurant at King West in Toronto. We wanted to advise a recently placed McKinsey associate who was struggling to make the transition. The challenges he faced provide an interesting perspective on what skills you will need as a consultant, and related to this, what you need to show in an interview.

We would say 90% of candidates with whom we speak do not understand what is confidence, how to build it and how to demonstrate it. We will talk about experiences we have had with candidates with weak confidence levels and what you need to consider when preparing for your own interviews.

MBA programs want you to believe that joining a school like Stanford, Harvard etc in the MBA program will dramatically improve your chances of success. It will not and that is a huge myth.

This is a topic which is very dear and close to me. In fact, it is why we started Firmsconsulting and run it the way we do. Very, very few people truly understand the culture of management consulting. Many existing consultants also struggle to understand the culture. Consultants are professionals, not business people. I would strongly urge you to listen to this podcast.

This is an important podcast because it explains how a consulting career should fit into your overall career planning. Most candidates want to work at BBM because everyone says they should. They also think they know the exit opportunities but have a very weak, and sometimes fantasized, view on exit options.

You are unlikely to pass a McKinsey case interview unless you can brainstorm. Consulting interviewers are ALWAYS testing for poise, confidence, structure and logic in your response. Most candidates do this well everywhere – except when it comes to brainstorming. Learn how “not” to brainstorm. This podcast looks at one of the most common brainstorming problems. A problem so common, that many simply assume it is the way to brainstorm. Fixing this problem can improve your brainstorming skills by between 5% to 30% percent.

McKinsey, BCG et al engagements are very different from the stories typically depicted on blogs etc. Too often the writer seems intent on explain how long the hours are and the need to do analyses. That is part of the picture but far from the entire story. Many of these stories are also written bottom-up with an associate or analyst seeing things from their relatively narrow view without a proper feel for the higher level discussions.