Hi I'm Jenny Rae Le Roux, the MD of Management Consulted, and I'm here today
to talk about networking and the resume review. Now in a previous video I talked
about the resume review process in great detail when I was talking about resumes,
but here I'm going to talk about, specifically, how networking is used in
the actual formal resume review. The focus today is in resume reviews that
happen for target schools on cycle. There are different processes that each firm
uses for off cycle, or experienced hires. So that's not quite covered today,
although, some of these same rules can still apply to that process. First I want
to talk about the pre review. This is not a formal part of the process, and firm
zone actually holds good lists and naughty lists – but they do have informal
ways of categorizing people, and I'm going to talk a little bit about that.
Basically your initial interactions with people from the firm can sometimes be
discussed afterwards. So after an information session or after a coffee
chat, a lot of times representatives from the firm will be asked who stood out to
them, in both the positive way and in a negative way. So we're going to talk a
little bit about how you get on the pro list and how to avoid being on the con list.
People that are on the pro list fit into one of a couple of categories.
Sometimes there is overlap between these categories. The first is that you've got
impressive communicators – people who are really dynamic, very smiley very
effervescent, and very able to impressively communicate their thoughts.
The second, are people who have a very strong background – both strong academic
background, as well as real strong work experience. The third are people who are
friends of friends. Someone who has a connection inside the firm or maybe has
a lot of legacy of friends that were upperclassmen who have now gone into consulting.
And the final area are people who have just great personalities.
Somebody that's very easy to like and easy to get to know. People who fall into
each one of these categories are generally going to be the ones that the
firm's notice. It's not necessarily the loudest, it's not necessarily the
pushiest people, it's just the people who are the most natural and close to a fit
for consulting as they can tell. On the con list,
the second side, you have people who they're generally saying – "look we used
our networking interactions to determine that you will not be right for the firm.
The impression that you made on us is not one that we would want to leave in
the hands of anyone else in the firm, or put you in front of a client. So we're
just going to go ahead and make sure that we don't interview you at a later
time, because we're considering this pre review interaction to be your actual interview."
There are a couple ways that you can get on the con list – and let me
tell you you don't want to be on the con list. Because it'll be very
challenging for you ever to get an interview with the firm if you are.
A couple of ways that you get on the con list include being a really awkward
communicator, being incredibly shy, not thinking through what you want to talk
about, not having a strategy, or just in general asking questions that you don't
listen to the answers for. The second thing is if you're an oversharer.
A lot of times people come to consultants and ask them questions that
really should not be asked of an actual representative of the firm. Things about
a difficulty in your background, maybe how to decide between an exploding offer
and what's happening in a consulting firm – just something that the consulting
firm doesn't really need to know about and really actually shouldn't know about,
that will really taint their impression of you. The third are people who are very
long-winded. Consultants are known for being direct, concise, and succinct – and so
if somebody is incredibly long-winded they generally say, look that's an
indication that you're not going to be a good fit. And finally is someone who's
pushy. This can be in the initial process just pushing to actually get an
interaction with a consultant, or later when you've gone through the process and
you're following up with someone –maybe they offered to do a resume review for
you and you email them 7 or 10 times reminding them about this resume review
that they offered to you. Their goodwill is likely to fade after email 2 or 3.
So just make sure that you're not too pushy in the process. Now I want to talk a
little bit about the actual resume review. So once the resumes have been
reviewed offline and each of them have been scored, a group of people will come
together to review the resumes – and generally you fall into three categories,
and networking is critical to all three of the categories. The first
category I'll call that a list – these are people who are generally guaranteed
interviews almost before the resume review begins, and we generally get here
through a couple of ways. First of all you can rank very high across the board,
you'll be one of the favorites in the actual ranking process. The second thing
is that you could go through partner networking – so you can have a very
powerful advocate inside the firm. Partners generally don't advocate for
somebody though they don't already know. So it's generally somebody who the
partner already has a relationship. If you're in that situation make sure that
you take advantage of it. Then the next area are pre-selected candidates. These
are often people who have interviewed before, but are now going through the
process again as they were going through the networking process. So they maybe
achieved an offer, or achieved at least final rounds and they did well enough that
the firm invited them to come back. So often times they'll give them an
interview slot before they even go through the rest of the resume review
process. And then finally people who are on the pro list – so people who in
networking they began to watch out for because they really liked them. So maybe
their credentials are okay, but there's somebody that they really think would be
a good fit for the firm. The second category is the abyss, and in the abyss
you generally have two types of people – first really low ranking candidates, and
second people who are on the con list. so somebody even who is high ranking or
medium ranking would sometimes fall into the abyss. And this is the people that
they don't even discuss, they're just people that they automatically exclude
from the process. So you don't want to be on the con list because it will mean
that you don't even get a shot to have a discussion about you in the actual
resume review. The final group and this is the group where a lot of time is spent
is the group that goes through a discussion. So they're a group that's
actually discussed in the resume review. In this group you have a couple of
different kinds of candidates. First you have medium ranking candidates, generally
people who are pretty, strong pretty well-rounded, but maybe not complete
standouts in any area. And second you have rescues from the abyss. This area is
where networking is incredibly critical, because either if someone was rescued
from the abyss because they had a very strong connection
someone, or if you met them through the process and they really liked you and
they want to advocate for you to go through and get an interview – then those
positions are going to be incredibly important. Oftentimes only about 25% of
the people that are actually in the discuss pile get an interview. So because
of the likelihood and the odds being so small in that category, it's really
important to bump up your chances, you have somebody who's willing to step up
for you. One common misconception is that in that resume review it's really
essential to have multiple people who will speak up for you. And it's fine to
meet multiple people, but generally you want one person to know that they're
taking the lead to really advocate for you. So you want to maybe have
conversations with multiple people, but make sure you focus your interactions on
one person who's likely to advocate for you. If you've got questions about this,
of which there are probably many, we have a lot of resources on our website to
help. First of all we published a networking Bible, which offers step by
steps on how to actually go through the networking process. We also have the
option to spend time with us in a half an hour – we call it a power half hour –
to discuss your specific networking strategies. In the meantime if you've got
questions we've got lots of resources on networking at
managementconsulted.com