Landing a consulting MBA internship. It's something that a lot of new MBAs think
about from before day one in their MBA. In fact, when I was at Columbia Business
School one of the panels that we had for recruit weekends was about consulting
internships. So people start thinking about it when they're even deciding what
school to go to. It's an important crazy topic and one that we're excited
to expand on a little bit in this video. I'm gonna do this in two parts. I'm gonna
talk a little bit about the process that you go through from the beginning to the
end, all the steps in the consulting internship process, and then I'm gonna
talk about case prep, and what you should and shouldn't do for consulting internships.
First of all, it's important to understand that I am a Bain
consultant who is focused on helping people get into top consulting firms, and
also helping top firms recruit great talent. So our focus at Management
Consulted is on doing that through our amazing team of ex-MBB coaches.
First of all, let me walk through this overview of the recruiting process. It's pretty
straight forward, but it does have a lot of steps in it that maybe a lot of
people don't know in the beginning. The first one is that the process begins
with networking. So a lot of the firms will target getting to know everybody
who is interested in consulting at some point, during that networking process.
They're gonna hold some information sessions, they're gonna hold events,
they're gonna hold dinners, they're gonna hold open cocktail hours, they're going
to have a lot of opportunities where each one of their people are gonna try
to meet each one of the people that are recruiting for the process. This is like
round zero. And that begins as early as in the first week of your MBA, during
orientation. And it goes throughout the fall semester. On the second part after
networking are invite-only events. So those initial events are all open. Come
to our dinner, come to our drinks event, come to our cocktail hour, come to our
info session. But then the firm's begin to peel people off, and they begin to say
we really want to cultivate a group of people that we want to get excited about
our organization. Because at the beginning, they're trying to make sure that
they have the maximum number of great people that apply.
So while step one is just this initial networking, step two is these invite only events.
After the invite only events where the firm has really tailored who
they would like to hear from, there's the resume drop. And people from overall
networking and from the invite only events can drop their resumes. The resume
drop usually happens in November. And the resume drop is a competitive process where
the firm will bring in large numbers of people from each target school to
evaluate the resumes. In addition after that, there are, after the resume
evaluation, interview calls that are released. Usually those are released in
December. The firm's will announce who they are going to interview and those
interview calls are your key to knowing exactly which firms in your case prep
you should be tailoring your prep toward. After your interview call you're usually
matched up with a buddy or a partner, who is somebody inside the firm who's there
to help you answer questions about how you should be preparing, what you should
be focusing on, what will make you successful in the process. The more great
people they have coming through, the better their pipeline will be. After the
buddy partner support, which happens throughout the month of December and
early January, there are first rounds. And first rounds happen usually right after
the winter break in January. So it'll be about a week before classes start around
Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. And that initial one week period is a really
intense period where you're gonna do first rounds, sometimes for multiple firms.
Usually first rounds are on campus. Then after that, you're invited to second
rounds. They are often one to three weeks later, usually on Fridays, usually
in office and this gets a little complex, because sometimes you have your two
favorite firms, in two different cities, on the same day, where they invite you to
the final round. So there's a little bit of juggling and negotiating that happens.
At this point, you might decide if you get a lot of second rounds not to
proceed with some of the firms. But in general, a lot of people try to do all of
the second rounds. After second rounds, which are in office, you're flown out, you
stay overnight, you do the interview you will
often have dinner tonight before, then after that you receive offers. Hopefully
lots of them! And then in the offer process there is a date set for a sell
weekend. The sell weekend is an opportunity for you to get to know the
other people that were approved inside the organization. Some people will say
I've already accepted, some will say I'm on the fence. The firm takes the
weekend to really explain why their firm is a great fit for you. And then finally
you make the choice. So overall, this is a long process. First networking. Then
invite-only events. Then resume drop. Then an interview call. Then the buddy
partner support. Then first rounds. Then second rounds. Then offers. Then the sell
weekends. And so we're talking about like nine-ish steps, in the overall process.
It can consume the majority of your entire year. If you're at a school that
doesn't grade, might be even better for you. Let me just end this video by
talking a little bit about case prep for consulting, for the MBA consulting
internship especially. One of the things that's really essential that you need to
know is that you do not need to start before you begin the MBA, unless this is
a hundred percent what you want to do. There is some time during your MBA, where
you can learn a little bit about the process. But you do need to carve out
your winter break. And if you don't start early, if you don't start in the summer
before you join your MBA, you're gonna have very little time in the fall and
the first half of your semester, to actually do much on the case prep
process. So make sure that you allocate time for a minimum of 20 cases. 20 is
actually a really great ballpark for top performers, to do them out loud with
excellent partners. Excellent partners are ideally people inside your class that
worked in consulting, professional coaches, or people who are really not gonna B-S you,
tell you that you're great, when they actually have no idea what they're
talking about. So ultimately you need to start the case prep really early, or you
need to carve out a good bulk of time in that one month period after your
first semester finals, but before the internships. Actual interviews are
happening and you need to carve out the rest of your time in getting to know the
firms, networking, building relationships, and that will be the bulk of your process.
From a case perspective we have a lot to share about that. We have a lot
of other videos here on YouTube, so subscribe
to our channel. And on top of that, we've got some great content that's MBA
specific focused coming out as well. Thanks so much for your time and we wish
you the best of luck in the all intensive consulting MBA internship process.