Case Interview Preparation & Management Consulting | Strategy | Critical Thinking

One oversight we have corrected as we have learned more about our clients, is to understand the role their significant others play in their lives and decisions. We tend to assume that the advice we provide, and actions you take, are largely influenced solely by your wishes. That could not be further from the truth. In some ways, your significant other is a major investor and she/he can cause a lot...

The issue of gender disparities and the increasing African-American ratios in management consulting firms have rightly become important issues. Yet, the latter is a frighteningly narrow interpretation of racial prejudices.

Our client, Sasha recently received an offer from McKinsey Paris for the Operations Practice. This is the third podcast of a series of three interviews with him.

Our client, Sasha recently received an offer from McKinsey Paris for the Operations Practice. This is the second podcast of a series of three interviews with him.

Our client, Sasha recently received an offer from McKinsey Paris for the Operations Practice. This is the first podcast of a series of three interviews with him.

This podcast is based on the Quarterly article about the pros and cons of joining internal consulting units in banks, primarily as a substitute for careers in McKinsey or BCG.

This podcast is linked to the article about recent recruiting problems at BCG. We elevate the problem here and discuss the basic elements which lead to the decline of great firms or why smaller firms never become great.

This podcast accompanies the recent article about a Turkish client who was trying to complete her MBA and move back to Turkey BCG or McKinsey after about 15 years outside the country. The podcast was done 18 months after the article was written so we will discuss her experiences since the time we provided the initial advice in the article. In many ways, what worked to this client's benefit was her...

This podcast is linked to the recent quarterly article about the speech Marvin Bower made way back in 1964. Rather than focusing on the many useful elements of the speech, we will focus on the unifying theme of finding outstanding people, inspiring them and requiring the highest levels of conduct from them.

This is not a complex podcast. It is more a reminder. I talk through the very simple steps I would use when learning from The Consulting Offer: Read all the pages about the show Read all the session descriptions Read them again Develop my study plan Complete quizzes 0 to 9 Stick to my plan Go through sessions 1 to 23 in that order for Felix and some sessions from Sanjeev. You can also do all the c...

This podcast is based on an off-the-record conversation I had with Felix when we were not recording The Consulting Offer. Sometimes after the 90 minute sessions we would engage in small-talk and useful things were discussed but never captured.

This podcast is based on an off-the-record conversation I had with Felix when we were not recording The Consulting Offer. Sometimes after the 90 minute sessions we would engage in small-talk and useful things were discussed but never captured.

Clients using the Consulting Offer Videos fit into a neat bimodal distribution.

The first 3 minutes of a coaching session, practice session and case interview determines everything. First impressions count.

This is an important and wide ranging podcast around the theme of why candidates fail and some key observations from Felix in The Consulting Offer Season 1.

The concept of a Management Consulting Club is great, but the execution leaves little to be desired. Very few clubs are actually run by presidents/executive council members who know anything about consulting, or worse, care about their members.

You have been brainwashed by every single forum and case book to assume that McKinsey wants a framework and set of hypotheses, that you have stopped listening as carefully to the interviewer and simply providing hypotheses even when the interview is not asking for them!

I want to talk about three incidences and what it says about how women think about themselves.

Choosing a boutique firm as one path into management consulting is a popular choice. While boutique consulting firm appear to operate like McKinsey and BCG, and may even be led by ex-partners, there business models typical mean they create overwhelmingly different experiences for their consultants.

Most aspiring management consultants will spend about 95% of their time focusing on the technical issues to fix their case performance. That is, they focus on hypotheses, frameworks, decision trees, structures and calculations. However, what if that is not the areas which will yield the greatest gains?

Entrepreneurs almost always fail to answer the most basic question: If you were so successful, why are you leaving behind all that success to apply for a ~$150K/annum package at McKinsey as an associate?

This podcast draws on the feedback of one of our principals, Michael Boricki who was a Big-3 principal and left the firm on the day after he was appointed director, to discuss the technique he used to not only fix a stuttering problem, but use the pain from fixing the problem to introduce broader, and much needed, flexibility in this communication techniques.

This podcast is built on a discussion we recently had with a Yale PhD. His friend, who made it to the final round of McKinsey, was told that the firm had no specific development areas for her. She just did not make the make cut and she was upset about this lack of feedback, especially having been denied a place at the firm.

It is quite common for Firmsconsulting to receive the following emails, questions or comments from clients and readers. When reading the comments below, try to think about why a reader would have these questions. In other words, what are their underlying assumptions?

Due to our longstanding relationships at Yale and Berkeley, since several Firmsconsulting mentors are Harvard alumni, our Harvard and Yale clients' involvement in the development of The Consulting Offer Season 1 and 2, students of these schools receive complimentary access. This podcast offers some unique suggestions for PhDs and MBAs from these schools to use the material. In particular, 32 Harva...