Your connections can make a huge difference to your career progression. As a consultant you will experience a variety of industries. It will also give you a vast skillset that can be transferred to any job. International expansion has been one of the major growth drivers for consulting firms over the past couple of decades. But matching the number of consultants in an office with the quantity of work the partners in that same office will sell can be tricky. Sometimes a partner will sell a very large project while the rest of the office is already really busy.
Some people love it, others hate it. But working in different countries can be a great opportunity. You will get to experience different cultures and ways of working which will be tough at first but will really help you grow.
This is much more than most jobs in industry. And this difference grows as you start adding pensions and other benefits. We have analysed Glassdoor. If you want to read our analysis in full go here. Of course, other employers such as investment banks and hedge funds pay more than consulting firms.
But this is a lot of money nonetheless in the grand scheme of things. Everyone has got individual circumstances: you might need to pay back your student loans; you might want to buy a car or a house, etc.
But generally speaking you should stay away from this topic in your interviews. There are more interesting aspects of your personal experiences and of consulting you can discuss with your interviewers.
Consulting is a safe way to figure out what career is right for you by trying out different industries, roles and locations. This is a safe option because being a consultant is generally perceived positively by employers and head hunters. You will be able to try out different things while leaving most doors open for the next steps in your career. After two or three years in consulting, you might find an industry or even a client you have really enjoyed working with and decide to join them.
Or you might decide that you actually enjoy the job and want to do it a few more years before moving on. But the important thing is that you will have options. This is a reality your interviewer will be aware of. Leaving consulting is something you will often discuss openly with your teammates once you are a consultant.
But we recommend that you keep that to yourself during your interview process. It is a well-known fact that consultancies recruit a lot of MBA graduates.
But it is less known that they actually also send a lot of their consultants to do MBAs. The details of the programme vary by firm but the principles of the agreement are usually the same. The firm will pay for your tuition fees in exchange for which you agree to work for an extra two or three years for them after graduating.
This is the kind of professional I want to be. Next, you can see that the second part of this framework is about telling your interviewer why you will be an asset to the company. For instance, you can mention your problem-solving or your leadership skills. However, to say that you have these skills without any proof is nothing but bragging.
In addition, I have also demonstrated an ability to convince people to follow my ideas. For instance, when I was a student at INSEAD, I convinced the career department and the student association to change the organization of the annual job fair by showing them the drop in attendance of companies and students for 4 years.
To conclude, before using this framework to craft your own answer, check the full sample answer below to see how a good answer looks like. One last comment before sharing a sample answer: when you develop your answer, I would recommend limiting your answer to 2 minutes max and 1.
I thought a lot about what could be the best career path after my MBA. And today, I am convinced that Consulting is the best career choice for me. First, because I enjoy all aspects of the job. Secondly, because I believe that I have the right skill set to become a successful Consultant. To begin with, let me tell you why I am going to enjoy being a Consultant.
I think that the main reason is the impact I will have. Per my readings on your website, I understand the types of projects you do and how these projects can make a difference for your clients. For instance, I read that you did a project for a leading chemical company and how sales increased after you redefined its pricing strategy. This is exactly the kind of work I want to do. In Consulting, I know that I will have the opportunity to work on the most pressing issues for my clients, this is super exciting.
The second main reason is probably the variety of projects. Not only do I hate routine, but also, I am very curious and love learning new things. Thus, I find working on new projects every three months and understanding how businesses work or can be improved very stimulating.
Lastly, because of the people working in Consulting. Now, let me tell you why I believe that I have the skills to become a successful Consultant. First, as an Engineer by training, problem-solving is part of my DNA. I love moving step-by-step from the problem to an actionable solution. I listed all the potential causes for that decline and gathered the data to determine which cause was actually impacting our productivity.
From there, I worked with the different Engineering teams to build a plan to improve our productivity back to normal. Secondly, I think I can also bring my leadership skills. As a plant Engineer, I managed a team of 2 other Engineers.
As a team, we had to solve many production problems under tight deadlines, sometimes on the same day! I always managed to solve these problems on time by nurturing a result-driven culture among my team members.
Once you finish reading this article, whose personality will you remember among our three hypothetical candidates? You know what matters to her, and it makes sense. You can see she did her work and really thought about it.
Finally, read her answer out loud and count how much time it takes to do so. It takes 3 minutes to say all those words. If you give them the second answer, they will need to ask follow-up questions to find out the real answer.
But first, let me share with you the three reasons why consultants use this question to evaluate candidates. Attrition is high for several reasons: great exit opportunities, a tough lifestyle with long hours and tons of traveling, up-or-out policies.
And while that attrition rate is built-in the business model of consulting firms, the fact is that they DO want you to want to stay. And you will underperform. They also look for clues about how excited and enthusiastic you are as you answer the question. So one thing to show your interviewer is how enthusiastic you are in joining, while still communicating in a professional way. I have a friend whose childhood dream was to become a surgeon. That is, until he watched a real surgery performed in the local hospital.
Consulting firms want candidates who want to be REAL consultants. They want to wine and dine in Michelin-starred restaurants. They want to fly business class and hang out by the pool at the Four Seasons. All while pleasing them with well-crafted words and analyses that are gonna save their businesses. Unstructured in your answer to this question but structured during the case? Alright, now you know exactly why this question is so critical to you and to your interviewer.
Before showing you the anatomy of the perfect answer, I want to go through the 7 principles that make and answer a perfect one. It must also show you can lay out specific, non-overlapping reasons for wanting to work in this field.
Let me explain why each one is important to me. He had a core idea, which is good, but it was hard to follow. After that, he dropped a laundry list of reasons that had no priority and overlapped each other. Being structured and clear in your answer is the most important principle. How to achieve that? Simple, have real examples that you dug up yourself to illustrate each reason.
This will give the interviewer more confidence that you want to go into REAL consulting vs. Instead, she actually talked to someone in detail and even dug up a real consulting project document from the web. Many public sector projects are available online as governments are often required to make them public. Why are we answering this question in the first place? Why are you reading an article on how to answer this question well?
Your interviewers know that, so they also expect your answer to be persuasive. How to be persuasive? Your reasons for wanting to join consulting must not only be true, but also make you look good. Saying that you want to learn a lot from senior partners and clients in high-stakes projects makes you look good. Here are some examples:. Still, if you want to add a depth of realism to your answer, you can add one of these on top of the types of reasons that make you look good.
Your answer should connect to who you are as an individual. So you might say you really want to do this kind of analytical work and crunch numbers and find insights…. Your answer to this question should tell a coherent story about who you are as a person. But it would also violate this principle and get many people into trouble. All it means is that you should actually CARE about joining a consulting firm and be engaged as you deliver the answer.
Is that a little woo-woo? One thing before you get anxious, though: interviewers can interpret context. I do high quality work for senior people in projects that matter.
This works well because consultants always evaluate options when helping clients make decisions. But logic is important too. Again, no NEED to show this in the answer, but will likely resonate. This is another optional principle. And this is the kind of skill that is highly valuable, and very difficult to test and teach.
Okay, so these are the principles behind the perfect answer. This will be your guide to craft an answer that has will make you shine in the interview. Reasons that are real and connect back to who you are. Reasons that tell a story of who you are as a candidate. The role of Delivery is to make the content credible. Interviewers will believe what you show more than what you say.
For each reason, you should have one or more specific, real-life examples as evidence that consulting in fact has that reason. Ideally, each reason also has a connection about why that reason is important to you. Each reason for joining consulting can be thought of as a hypothesis.
0コメント