Hi I'm Jenny Rae the Managing Director of Management Consulted, and now that we've
covered in our video series a tremendous number of things – ranging from what
consulting is, all the way through how to crack a case interview. We're going to talk
about some of the next steps. What happens when you get the offer, what happens
after that, and then how you begin preparing for success in consulting. It's
really helpful to understand a couple of things. First of all, it's critical that
you start with the end in mind. If you get an offer as an intern your goal is
to get a return offer by the end of the summer. Regardless of whether you decide
over the course of that period of time that you want to go back to the firm,
it's critical that you've got an offer in hand. So that if you do decide to go
re-interview at other firms, or in other spaces, you can let them know that you've
got an offer from a premium firm. As a full time hire it's really important to
make sure that you are preparing the way for your promotion. It's pretty normal
in a consulting firm that you might leave after 2 to 3 years – you might even
have that pre-planned in your mind, but regardless of whether you planning to leave
or not, you want to pave the way for promotion. So that if you do leave you've
got awesome recommendations, and if you don't leave then the promotion is yours.
It's really helpful to understand that the course of a consulting career
basically has six different pieces. The first one is firm selection, after you've
got all of your offers on the table, deciding which firm you're going to work for.
The second one is office selection – inside that firm which office will you choose.
After you selected your firm in your office you'll be invited to a sell weekend.
Even if you've already accepted the offer, you'll still get to go.
But how do you behave? We're going to cover that in really brief detail. In addition,
there are three final pieces – after you've come through the sell weekend and
accepted your offer. Preparing for the job in consulting.
What do you do? How do you spend your time? Then, what's your strategy for
orientation? How do you make a great first impression at the firm? And finally,
what are the commitment cycles inside the firm? How do you move from your first
month on the job to a promotion point? And what happens in those critical
proofing periods? In this video we're going to cover the
first two: the firm selection and the office selection. When you're thinking about
what firm you should go work for, I've got a couple of things that you should
make sure that you're listing out. Don't just make pros and cons, but really
weigh them on these areas. The first thing is the type of work that the firm
does. Are they focused on implementation, are they focused on technology, are they
focused on strategy. Make sure that the type of work is work that you're going
to be interested in doing. Next make sure that the client size and the type of
client is interesting to you. Do they work only for federal clients, do they work
for really small businesses, do they work solely for health care institutions. Make
sure that those clients and the client sizes are the ones that you're
interested in targeting. The next thing that's helpful to understand is the firm brand.
What doors will this firm open for you – both while you're there, to work at
certain clients, and also later in your life, will the firm brand to be something
that you are excited about. And does their culture mash-up with their brand.
The next thing that's really helpful to understand is what training you'll
receive when you're on the job. The training can be really different between
one consulting firm and another. Some is more on-the-job training, others is very
specific, global training. Make sure you understand in advance what training
they're going to offer you. And finally, think ahead, beyond this job to your next
job, to exit opportunities. What are the types of things that you may be
interested in doing after consulting, and think about how this job will position
you for the next one. These are five ways that you can select which firm would be
a good fit for you. Once you selected the firm, it's helpful
to understand that you may have options for which office you go to. If you are a
base level performer, so if you received an offer, but maybe didn't receive a ton
of cross offers, you're not going to have a ton of choice. You'll basically be
pre-selected for a specific office. However, if there is an office that has
either very high demand for people to come work there, for example an
international office that's growing really fast, or an office that has lower
demand, and a maybe less desirable place to live.
Something like Houston, where not as many people are super passionate, versus New
York where tons of people want to live, you might be able to negotiate a
pre-acceptance transfer. But it's really based on the availability inside the firm.
Not necessarily on you, or any negotiating position that you've got.
If however, you're a top performer, let's say you have multiple offers, cross offers
with other comparable firms – so let's give an offer both at BCG and at Bain,
you may be in a position to negotiate a little bit to get the office that you're
particularly interested in. Different offices within different firms might do
different kinds of work. So for example at Bain, we had some offices that were
more focused on private equity or nonprofit work, whereas other offices were
more general. So you might want to understand what some of the differences
are between the offices. You do however not want to go through too much of an
extensive process to play the offices against each other, because at the end of
the day, you're still talking to one firm. So make sure that you show the love, get
your information, but do make a quick and confident decision after you've done that.
Between understanding how select the firm and select the office, you'll be
positioned to make a really well informed decision about which firm and
which office is right for you. But after that there are more things that we'll
cover in future videos. In the meantime if you got questions about this, or
anything else related to preparing for a job in consulting, We've got a great
resource: 3-month mastery, Which is available on Amazon and on our website.
So make sure you check it out. In addition, we have articles on these kinds
of topics all over the place at managementconsulted.com