Roadmap To Consulting: The Guide I Wish I Had
There’s a ton of free resources online on how to get a consulting job.
Thing is, a lot of them give generic advice. They miss out all the interesting bits that actually go into preparing for such an arduous task.
Instead of writing yet another generic 4-step listicle, I will be writing about my own application journey into consulting.
Hopefully, actual experiences makes for a more compelling guide and a more useful benchmark.
You can also find tips and hacks that I figured out during my preparation journey. You’d be hard-pressed to find these anywhere else.
Lastly, I’m assuming that you have a baseline understanding of the consulting application process. If you don’t, this and other Googleable resources should help.
Beginnings
I first came across management consulting in 2009 through a “comprehensive personality test” (read: MTBI). Over the next 3–4 years, it would consistently appear in conversations time and again. Each encounter stoked my interest in the path until I finally decided to apply.
I mentioned this brief pre-application period for a single reason. Consulting is just like any career — some people like it, some not so much. Make sure you give yourself ample time to consider it carefully. Looking at the daily tasks of an associate at a consulting firm should excite you, above all else.
Hunkering Down
Despite first applying in 2013 (my sophomore year), I would not gain any traction till my junior year, when I landed a tech consulting gig. I spent junior summer immersing myself in core consultant work and watching other consultants from afar. That summer perspective sealed the deal for me — I wanted to be in consulting for the long haul.
With new-found impetus, I started gearing my entire focus towards landing my dream consultancy.
Below is a simple graph charting my course:
Basics From Books
I started out with Case In Point (Marc Consantino), during my junior year. It gave me a basic understanding of the process and equipped me with some simple frameworks.
A book, however, was unable to bring out the nuances of an actual scenario — that was something I had to listen and watch.
After reading and rereading Case In Point, I moved on to Victor Cheng’s podcasts. This was sometime during the early weeks of junior summer.
Podcasts: A Reliable Template
The Look Over My Shoulder podcasts (Victor Cheng) were immensely valuable. They were instrumental in forming my early case-tackling methodologies. I got a sense of the pace; when and how to ask questions; how to read an interviewer’s comments, pauses, and tone; and much more.
I listened passively and took notes during the first two podcasts. Subsequently, I adopted an active listening strategy where I would pause at prompts and answer them myself before hitting play. Through that strategy, I slowly learned how to drive a case.
I painstakingly worked through taking a case from vague prompt, to a question-answer framework, to data synthesis, and finally to an actionable solution.
It was only when I was confident in driving my own case that I moved on to live case interviews — the crux of my preparation.
Live Case Preps — Where The Polish Begins
I began my live case preps using various case books (MasterTheCase), sometime during the middle of my junior summer.
It was the biggest jump in difficulty yet. Understanding the direction of a case was vastly different from actually working through a case administered by an interviewer.
Despite learning how to drive cases from the podcasts, I stumbled through some embarrassing first few rounds.
Nevertheless, I kept pushing through, and slowly gained the perspectives necessary to refining my case approach.
I received a total of 74 case interviews, which represented 76.0% of my overall preparation time. I administered roughly an equal number of cases. And I fully believe that the practice I got swung it for me in a big way.
To break it down slightly further, here’s a chart of my progress.
I thought I peaked at about 20 cases (first local peak). I was getting most of the solutions right, and my interviewers had only good things to say.
Alas, as I pushed into my 30s and then 40s, I started fumbling interviews up. I would miss out a critical part of business operations, or forget information, or else make mistakes that I hadn’t made before. One time I missed out costs entirely — that wrecked the case up big-time.
I took in a lot of feedback and made many adjustments to the process. At about 45-ish cases, I bottomed out. Problem-solving got smoother; carelessness decreased. I started nailing cases at 100% at the 60-ish mark. From then, I only did cases as a warm-up before an interview. I wanted to sound fresh and excited at every new case, not mechanical and bored, and so I was careful to not overdo the preparation.
Not everyone has this path. Some have a much more linear learning curve. The important thing here is to push through if you’re feeling stuck in a trough.
Some concluding thoughts on live case prep:
- Don’t just limit your partners to consulting candidates. Try to get actual consultants or people who have gone through the process as well. This keeps you on the right track. I had about a 7-to-1 ratio here.
- Other than working through the cases, discuss feedback, strategies, and progress with your partner. This was important for my personal growth and was also often encouraging.
- Be flexible. Try new frameworks, new ways of engaging your interviewer, etc., and get constant feedback. Each new case should be different and better than the previous one.
Final Key Takeaways
- It’s always advantageous to think about consulting early. The reason is because consulting firms tend to look for a specific profile; someone who’s had both academic excellence and solid accomplishments on the side. Deciding to pursue consulting early means you can start building your achievements earlier.
- Practice, practice, practice.
- I did all these while juggling a full-time internship/full-time studies. That meant practicing cases (1–2 hrs) after dinners on weekdays, and staying in on weekends (5-ish hrs) to run more interviews. You have to be willing to put in that kind of time in order to succeed.
Wanna share your own story? Let’s carry on the conversation.
Email: caibohan@gmail.com, Twitter: @bryancai91
