Welcome to Management Consulted. I'm Jenny Rae, the Managing Director and
today I'm going to be talking about whether or not consulting is right for
you with a specific focus on the education aspect of your background. This
is part one of a two-part series, and our key focus today is on the educational
segment. We have four key areas that we're going to walk through.
Basically when a consulting firm looks at education it's of paramount
importance especially at the McKinsey, Bains, and BCGs of the world, you won't
find people who went to non brand-name universities. There's a little bit of
latitude on exactly where you went from, but in general they're looking for a
core skill set. Why? Well the number one factor that the firms are looking for is
pedigree. They want to understand that you were trained by and alongside the
best minds on the planet. They will generally have a choice of the schools
that they target and any particular geography. The pedigree of the school
that you went to indicates that you were competitive at getting into the school,
it also indicates that you surrounded yourself with competitive people, and as
you see as I go through some of the other factors, the baseline of the
pedigree is really important - doesn't mean that smart people don't hang out in
other places, it just means that in general pre-consultants are likely to
congregate at some of these schools. So a firm is able to reap 80% or more
of their base efforts out of the consulting recruiting process at some of
these top firms, whereas the 20% may come from referrals or experienced
hires or other places. However still, the baseline usually ends up being that they
share a common pedigree with everyone else. The second factor is the relevance
of your degree. Here, I'm talking about both undergrad and grad degrees.
Now I've talked about different types of firms so there are some specific
differences in the types of degrees that you might have gotten, but in general,
firms are looking for one key factor - was your degree quantitative? Did you
demonstrate the ability to think about problems in a quantitative way - to break
them down into structured subsets and to answer questions that have a
quantitative nature to them. So the most relevant type of degree
would be, for example, a degree in finance or accounting or maybe even better would
be something a little bit general quantitative/qualitative, like economics.
However they'll also be engineers, there will be statisticians, there will be
people from many different walks that will be in your incoming class. On the
other hand, at the graduate level they are also interested in understanding
seeing specific expertise that's conveyed through your application.
So sometimes you still need to demonstrate that quantitative nature, but your
expertise can be a part of your specific degree program. The third thing that they
look for is performance. So along with this pedigree and the relevance of your
degree that you're doing, they're looking to see that you can perform well. Are you
a top performer indicated by GPA, which usually at the top firms is somewhere
above a 3.7 and almost all of the firm's a 3.5 is a pretty clear cut off.
There needs to be some pretty strong networking to overcome a low GPA.
In addition you have not only your GPA or your indication of marks, which again in
the U.S., 3.7, internationally, firsts almost across the board. They're also
looking for honors. So were you indicated as a departmental honor? Were you indicated
as somebody who won a scholarship to do a case competition or another
competition where you were winner? They want to see your success again in
competitive environments wherever possible. Then finally, the fourth
aspect of education is leadership. The companies are interested in seeing not
only were you excellent in the classroom, but also, how did you do outside the
classroom? They're not looking for the high school grant of leadership, they're
not looking for activities, you're looking for places where you manage
people, budgets, and processes. So it's important to demonstrate one or two
leadership experiences even more than demonstrating that you are involved in
ten activities across the board. It's really critical that your education
tells a story that says I'm capable of doing this job, I'm able to compete in a
very competitive environment, I'm able to work with people, manage, and lead people,
and also be able to cut it when it comes to quantitative factors.
If for some reason your degree or your education institution doesn't fit into
one of these common parameters there are some things that you can do. First, you
can consider applying to a firm where you are a target and then taking a
parallel path into one of the top firms. Second you can consider focusing on a
graduate program such as an MBA. MBAs are competitive to get into but they're
excellent training grounds and also breeding grounds for pre-consultants.
Finally if you've already done maybe multiple degrees or if you're just not
interested or don't think you're qualified for an MBA, there are excellent
programs like masters and management programs or executive MBAs or similar
even seminar programs at some of the Ivy League schools and top international
schools that can qualify you to become a feeder pool for consulting. So in summary
your education is of critical importance no matter how near or far you are to the
consulting process but there are ways that you can look to portray your
experience in a way that really demonstrates what you're capable of.
You're also able to do some things in terms of long term next steps that can
really affect your chances for consulting. Thanks for joining us. If you
have further questions we have lots of content on this matter on our website at
managementconsulted.com.