Case Interview Preparation & Management Consulting | Strategy | Critical Thinking

This detailed podcast, by the engagement partner, discusses a striking reality of most engagements: a problem is never what it appears to be at first. In this Succeeding as a Management Consulting book, the engagement begins as a broad study of the agricultural sector in Canada and the economics of various business models. The study quickly focuses on the physical retail operations as this appears...

This detailed podcast, by the engagement senior-partner, discusses the most challenging assignment Firmsconsulting took on to advise a client in preparing one of the Succeeding as a Management Consultant books. The client was a state-run electricity utility in Latin America which was undergoing a significant build program to add capacity for a burgeoning economy while dealing with an aging asset b...

This detailed podcast, by the engagement partner, discusses the difficulties faced by many European State-Owned-Enterprises during the 2008-2011 recession when many simultaneously saw a drop in revenue and state subsidies. The engagement team in this book led the work to develop a strategy for the courier business of a heavily-indebted European Postal service.

This detailed podcast, by the engagement senior-partner, discusses the challenges and complexities of running an engagement to advise on the economics and strategy of a large micro-finance enterprise.

In this podcast we discuss the detailed effort which goes into preparing the multimedia/premium management consulting books. We discuss the engagements we run and the client issues faced, the development of hypotheses, data collection, analyses, model building, client management and preparation of the final recommendation. We thereafter discuss how all of this, including the extensive video footag...

In this podcast we isolate the 5 most important and counter-intuitive lessons from the popular book.

In this podcast we introduce one of our most popular books, Partnership. This is a memoir written by partner who served in that position at 2 of the big-3 firms.

This detailed podcast introduces Firmsconsulting and our distinctive heritage which is best exemplified by these three quotes: "Business properly conducted could be as high a calling as anything." Marvin Bower "If you are not willing to take pain to live by your principles, there is no point in having principles." Marvin Bower "Management consulting is no individual's right as a career. It is the...

Peter is a PhD candidate from the USA who joined McKinsey Middle East a year ago. The striking thing about Peter is his level of confidence and the fact that he does not sound like a PhD. He is a candidate who initially pursued the USA and thereafter opened interviews at another highly competitive office where he was successful. Peters interview is more for the journey he goes through to build his...

Edward is one of the most effective networking clients in our program. Although a relatively-older candidate from a non-target school, he was able to meticulously follow our advice on networking to eventually build a very effective support network of partners and consultants at his preferred offices. This wide-ranging interview is important because it demonstrates the primacy of our networking app...

Sanda is a brilliant commerce graduate from South-East Asia. She is the first person in her entire family to attend university. She taught herself English at university by watching "Friends" and "The Good Wife" among other shows, especially in-depth business media, and is the very first person from her university to ever join MBB. In this extensive interview, Sanda describes her tough background a...

One of the great myths among aspiring consultants, is that strategy consultants go in and basically take over and run the entire strategy and direction of a company. That does happen at times, but is more the exception than the norm. In fact, there are dangers to this outsourcing of thinking. Yet, the danger is not the outsourcing itself, but rather who is doing the outsourcing: a strong and accou...

At least 90% of aspiring management consultants assume that all McKinsey et al cases MUST be solved with frameworks. That is a dangerous myth. At least 60% of all McKinsey full cases (we are not referring to brainstorming, estimates etc) cannot be solved with structures and you will fail if you used structures to solve them. In this podcast, we use the experiences of a client, Felix, to explain ho...

This podcast describes the journeys of two people and where they ended up in life. The first is one of Harvard's most distinguished MBA graduates ever who was not even invited to a McKinsey internship interview. The second is a McKinsey Principal from humble beginnings who is rejected the partnership, not once, but twice. Who they are and what they eventually achieve professionally is a lesson in...

In early 2013, we were invited by the chairman of a major IT/Outsourcing provider to analyze their business and determine why their significant acquisitions of strategy/operations/general consulting skills had not created a "McKinsey-Killer".

After 11 years of corporate strategy consulting with the firm, 3 of them as principal, I have tended to take for granted that everyone knows the difference between corporate strategy and other types of strategy engagements like developing a market entry strategy or a pricing strategy. Yet, that is not true.

An hour ago I ran a screening call for case coaching with a candidate I will call Hector from Deloitte, let's assume the Santiago office. The student was at a very élite school, I will call Wharton. This tiny Deloitte office had for the first time offered to pay for an employee's MBA studies – a huge investment for them. McKinsey was now aggressively trying to recruit the candidate and he was on t...

Far too many candidates demonstrate poor knowledge of consulting by insisting that they want to work for McKinsey strategy and not operations or BTO. This is a flawed strategy which will only hurt their chances in the short, medium and long-term. This podcast explains why and how to compensate for this misunderstanding.

Many candidates are declined with the suggestion to gain more work experience. Unfortunately, candidates take this feedback at face value. This podcast explains what this feedback means and suggests a vital shortcut to fix this problem. Hint, it does not require work experience at all.

This is an important podcast. Many Indian MBA candidates, those without permits to remain in the US post their studies, follow a dangerous strategy for their internship interviews. This podcast offers a very simple but highly effective strategy to ensure candidates keep themselves in the running for consulting offers. Moreover, keeping residency in the US is a vital prerequisite to maintain a cand...

It is indeed a rare moment when the Worldwide Managing Partner of Bain calls a client to encourage him/her to accept an offer. We have had similar situations happen on a handful of occasions to clients. It is an accomplishment and should be celebrated. That does not mean the offer should be accepted.

Clients we place into McKinsey etc from the so-called tier-2 firms like Booz, Deloitte, KPMG etc always think they will struggle most with the analytic and other technical elements. We see a flurry of activity, and anxiousness to master story boarding model building, brainstorming and hypotheses development. Our advice to these clients is that this should be the least of their worries. The harsh r...

Too often clients ask the wrong questions when it comes to assessing training at consulting firms: do smaller offices have poorer training, should I attend training as soon as I join, does BCG have better training than Bain etc. When considering training you need to both consider formal and informal training. As we show, formal training is very useful, but not at all for the hard/technical skills...

Reading graphs is a perennial problem for many candidates. Yet, the problem is not the interpretation of the graphical data itself. Rather, it is knowing what to do with that data once you have interpreted it. This podcast introduces a simple 4-step process we introduced for a Yale doctoral client, Felix, and a technique called the One-Sentence-Test which we again developed for the same client. Th...

The first podcast discusses a common challenge new consultants face: how to show strong analytic skills on an engagement. Here I discuss one of my earlier engagements as a principal where I managed a very introverted lawyer. Despite her non-quantitative degree, reserved demeanor and being placed on a piece of work which was not, at first, open to much creativity, she developed an eminently analyti...