816: Be a professional, don't be a business person (Case Interview & Management Consulting classics)

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews. Lawyers: ~10% of our client base are associate lawyers or graduates of law programs. This is a successful group yet our focus is heavy on teaching basic business principles and techniques. We use our own strategy libraries and finance courses to prepare law students with the foundation skills to tackle cases.

26 Apr 201410min

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews. Undergraduate clients constitute ~14% of our clients at any one time. Our youngest client in this group was 18 when she joined. A key feature of our training for this client group is helping them understand the real-world implications of consulting cases, by explaining our own engagement experience. Undergraduate students tend to be weaker at brainstorming and hypotheses development which becomes a focus for this group.

20 Apr 20145min

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews. Approximately 15% of our clients at any one time are PhD candidates. The training program is designed to teach PhD's skills for the team-based cases, handling estimation questions, brainstorming and full cases. Networking is another area we spend much time grooming PhD clients to handle.

14 Apr 201410min

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews. Experienced hires will have the longest training program, due to the longer networking cycles. Approximately 15% of our clients are experienced hires and they work with us for between 3 to 8 months. This is a broad group including entrepreneurs, graduates with a few months experience to senior executives in Fortune 500 corporations. Our oldest client is in this group was 45 with 15 years of experience in banking. Cases tend to be heavily focused around office choices and sector specialization like BTO. Though this does not apply to younger experienced hires whom we will position as generalists.

8 Apr 201411min

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews. Female candidates: We admit no less than 50% of female candidates per month's intake. This is a Firmsconsulting decision to improve the placement rate of female candidates. We apply the same screening standards as that applied for all applicants while having a broader screening pool. Our training for female clients is tailored to cater for the obstacles/challenges females consultants will encounter.

2 Apr 201411min

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews. MBA clients are the dominant group we train. We serve clients from over 30 MBA programs worldwide with a wide range of backgrounds. The majority of our teaching techniques are designed with this group in mind and tested with our core clients at the Harvard Business School. "The Consulting Offer" for example, was designed and tested with this group, and modified for all clients.

27 Mar 20147min

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews. How we select candidates: We select candidates from a wide variety of schools: the Ivy League schools to regional schools outside the U.S. and have worked with clients from over 50 different schools. We have a policy of balancing each month's intake with stronger candidates and Firmsconsulting Emerging Fellows. At least half the intake is from the emerging markets and is female. Our most important criteria is whether a candidate could be taught the skills to obtain an offer, maintain our very strong value systems and rise to leadership in consulting or their chosen field.

21 Mar 201413min

This series of detailed podcasts provides prospective applicants to our program all the information they need to put together an application package, do well in the screening interviews, and, should they be the offered a place in the Firmsconsulting program, succeed at their McKinsey, BCG et al interviews. This is a selective program run by former principals/senior partners of McKinsey and BCG who conduct all the training and mentoring. We prize client confidentiality and never disclose client relationships, and clients are expected to reciprocate and never disclose our extensive support of their careers.

15 Mar 201424min