I was fortunate enough to navigate the consulting interview process and get a job at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). I received a lot of help along the way, and want to share with you some of the advice I received or developed.
These posts are listed in reverse chronological order. Since I started roughly with the most important tips first, I recommend starting at the bottom and working you way up.
Have I missed any tips? Let me know in the comments or by emailing me at thedurfblog@gmail.com.
The culture opportunity
I’ve given a variety of case interviews that include evaluating a merger or acquisition. The question usually takes some form of “is this acquisition a good idea or not?” Nearly every candidate includes “culture” as ...
How to make Partner at a consulting firm
I answered a question about what it takes to make partner on quora. I figured I would expound on it a bit here. Take it with a grain of salt – I’m not a partner ...
Social impact in consulting
Consulting attracts a dynamic and interesting group of people. Many of us want meaningful work, but want to contribute to society as well. As a result, consulting firms often participate in social impact in a ...
You didn’t get the job! Now what?
You put in the hours, gained the experience, practiced the cases, and still didn’t get the offer. Maybe you tripped-up on your final round (been there); maybe you didn’t even get invited to interview (been ...
You got the job! Now what?
The recruiting process for consulting jobs takes so much effort that receiving an offer feels like a finish line. You no longer need to practice cases. You can slow down on the networking. Heck, you ...
Specializiation in consulting
Consulting hopefuls often ask me about specialization. Some ask in hopes of locking themselves to a topic they feel passionate about. Others want to make sure they won’t get stuck in something they don’t like. ...
My recruiting experience (abridged)
I wrote this piece for a short blog on BYU’s internal site for business school students. I thought I would post it here as well for anyone interested in some of my tips at getting ...
Five tips to beat an Econ Consulting interview
Last time I talked about why Economic Consulting (Econ Consulting) can be a great job out of undergrad. Posting about how good it is without giving you advice on how to actually get the job would ...
Five reasons to do Econ consulting
My posts related to consulting typically focus on management consulting, but having done an internship at Cornerstone Research I wanted to talk about why economic consulting can be great. Here are 5 reasons why I would recommend ...
How to choose an office preference
Management consulting firms typically require their applicants to express a preference for the office in which they would want to work if they get hired. Some applicants have a tough time choosing their office preference, ...
Resume checklist
I’ve reviewed a bunch of resumes by now, and many of them suffer from the same problems. I’ve consolidated many of the things that people can improve on to this checklist. I recommend going through it ...
Tips for reaching out to consultants
I’ve written on networking before, but after connecting with a lot more applicants, I have a few more tips to provide. Specifically I want to talk about the components of reaching out to consultants. I’ll also ...
Tips for networking with consulting firms
Networking is an essential part of nearly every hiring process, and in consulting, it’s more than just being friends with people. A good contact will be able to help refine your resume, get your resume looked ...
Tips for the “fit” interview
The “Fit” portion of an interview for a management consulting portion is just as important as the case portion. It’s easy to get caught up in the case practice, but spend time to make sure ...
Tips for a phone interview
Most of the interviews that I do with people are over the phone. Most practice interviews with consultants will happen by phone. McKinsey’s first round interviews are typically by phone. If you want to get ...
Three tips to handle scary interviewers
Primarily as a way of testing your professionalism (see my post on the essence of the case interview), interviewers will sometimes do or say things that cause inexperienced candidates to sweat. Here are 3 tips to deal with ...
How to be a better case interviewer
It’s easy to overlook the importance of being a good case interviewer when preparing for management consulting interviews. Since you’ll need to give almost as many cases as you take, you and your fellow applicants ...
Show confidence in case interviews (even if you don’t feel ...
Take a look at the exhibit above. After taking a moment to digest it, can you state the key take-away? Good. We can talk more about interpreting exhibits in a case interview another time, but I wanted ...
The essence of the case interview
As the concept of the case interview has matured, increasing legions of case gurus have swarmed the internet with tips, tricks, and tactics. The dizzying array of advice can be hard to sift through and understand. ...
Case interview controversies
When practicing case interviews with different people, I would occasionally receive mutually exclusive feedback from two different interviewers. Whenever there was a conflict between what a consultant said and a fellow student said I always ...
How to question a case interview prompt
After an interviewer gives you the initial spiel on the company and problem that you need to solve, you will have a moment to ask some clarifying questions. Here are some tips to use this time ...
Hypothesis based testing in case interviews
You can’t learn about case interviews without hearing about hypothesis based testing. Few people do a good job of this, so I thought I would give some guidance on what hypothesis based testing means and how ...
Five brainstorming tips for case interview candidates
Many case interviews include a section requiring the candidate to brainstorm a variety of ideas. These could include identifying new product ideas, ways to improve profitability, risks to consider, causes of cost increases, etc. When asked to ...
Five framework tips for case interview candidates
Here are 5 tips specifically about frameworks for case interview candidates. Take Your Time As a rule of thumb, you should take 90-120 seconds on your initial framework. In a real case, that amount of ...
Paper presentation in case interviews
Since I have to give most practice interviews over the phone, I rarely get the opportunity to see the candidate’s paper. As such, I figured I would just give some general tips that helped me ...
Five more quick tips for case interview candidates
I’ve been giving more practice cases and a few more things popped up that most people can do to improve their performance in case interviews. Here are 5 more quick tips for case interviews (see ...
Five quick tips for case interview candidates
The case interview format required to get a management consulting job at a major firm can be daunting and brutal. I was lucky enough to successfully navigate Boston Consulting Group’s interview process after a fair amount of ...
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