The client organizations are typically businesses, but management consultants also advise governmental agencies and nonprofit organizations. A basic understanding of the commonalities and different types of management consulting firms will help job seekers navigate through the milieu of management consulting career options.

Management consulting firms – also called "management consultancies" – have a few similarities that unite them. Generally, most reputable firms hire bright people who can think well on their feet, solve problems, communicate in teams, and exhibit professionalism with clients. The workaday experience of the consultant is all about gathering information, synthesizing insights, and communicating solutions.

These consultants tend to spend much of their days in team meetings, client meetings, data analysis, and slide creation. Sometimes management consultants are criticized for "stealing your watch to tell you what time it is," but consulting engagements often provide practical insights and solutions that lead to substantial improvements for client organizations.

Though the categorizations of the management consulting universe are imprecise, nearly everyone practicing management consulting could be classified into one of them. The categories are:

1. Strategy consulting
2. Accounting firms
3. IT specialists
4. Boutique consulting
5. Internal consultants
6. Independent consultants

1) Strategy consulting

Strategy management consulting firms receive the majority of this website's attention. These firms advise senior management across all industries on broad questions related to major strategic questions. The major management consulting firms focused on strategy consulting include McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company, the Boston Consulting Group, Booz & Co, and Monitor Group.

These firms tend to recruit at elite undergraduate universities and business schools, so they rank highest in the prestige pecking order. Strategy consulting firms must tackle high-dollar questions at a CEO- or senior executive-level in order to make the hefty strategy consulting price tag (often over $500,000 a month for a team of five) a reasonable investment. Questions a strategy consulting firm might tackle include:

• How do we respond to a new competitive threat?
• Which manufacturing plants should we shut down?
• How can we increase our profit margin?
• How can we increase our market share?
• How do we go about launching this new product?

If you were to read a typical consulting resume at a strategy consulting firm, it might say "Facilitated redesign of a Fortune 100 retailer's merchandising and planning functions by collaborating with client VPs, estimating savings under differing scenarios, and crafting new job descriptions. Client has since realized over $50 Million in annual savings."

New recruits into strategy consulting firms tend to enjoy the wide variety of business questions and industries, as this array of experiences can provide a nice survey of the business world. From there, most candidates leave consulting with 2-5 years to start or advance their chosen career path. The consulting interview for strategy consulting firms usually contains a case interview question, whereupon a candidate has a conversation working through a business problem that may resemble an interviewer's previous engagements. A consulting interview question might sound like, "Our client is a $2 Billion manufacturer of household appliances. Recently sales have been flat, but margin has declined. They need you to identify how to increase the margin."

2) Accounting firms

The major audit firms also often provide consulting work to their clients. These major players include PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), KPMG, Ernst & Young, and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. These firms tend to recruit sharp accounting and business talent from a wider pool of universities than the elite strategy management consulting firms.

The similarities between accounting and consulting can be significant (e.g. both advise senior management, both require a familiarity with business mathematics), and the potential for conflicts of interest is sizable. In the aftermath of the Enron / Arthur Andersen scandal, new legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley provides clear rules on how the audit and consulting functions need to have clear separations. Questions consultants within accounting firms might address include:

• What financial tracking and reporting processes are inefficient?
• How can we improve our compliance rates?
• How might we improve cash flow by optimizing our billing or payment processes and policies?

While the questions above seem close to accounting-related queries, these firms can also have deep expertise in other segments. For example, Deloitte's Human Capital Advisory practice deals primarily with questions of human resources and change management. A consultant resume within an accounting firm might say, "Conducted thorough review of the invoice-to-cash cycle to identify bottlenecks slowing payments. Client has since improved their days receivable metrics by over 20%." A consulting interview within an accounting firm will likely ask a suite of behavioral questions and may quiz you on points of accounting knowledge.

3) IT specialists

The complexity of IT consulting, combined with the sheer market size of the key players, warrants giving the IT specialists their own category. Key players in this category include Accenture, IBM, Hitachi Consulting, Computer Sciences Corp, CGI Group, and iGATE Patni. (Note again, however, that these categorizations are not too rigid. Accenture also has a smaller strategy consulting arm. Meanwhile, though IBM has an estimated 100,000 IT consultants, they also make much of their money on products.)

IT firms recruit even more broadly than accounting firms, often valuing particular coding knowledge above GPA or class rank. These firms often serve the CTO of a corporation or his direct reports. IT specialists would tackle questions such as:

• How can we automate this antiquated paper system?
• How should we go about fine-tuning and articulating our specific requirements to receive bids from different IT vendors?
• How should we go about implementing a company-wide ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software system or CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system? (Examples of such platforms include SAP, Oracle, or Salesforce.)
• What new system should we update our old "green screens" to?
• How can we ensure our important data is encrypted, backed up, accessible, and secure?

A typical consultant resume from someone working in the IT space might read: "Expedited online sales process via selecting, adapting, and testing a CRM solution which streamlined most manual processes, improving shipping times by 20%." A consulting interview for an IT specialist might ask a candidate to walk them through the process he'd use for implementing a given IT upgrade.

4) Boutique consulting firms

The Boutique consulting firm category is a bit of a catch-all. Generally, these firms tend to have a clear specialization on a given industry or practice area — or both. There are hundreds of different ways boutique firms can specialize. For example, the bread-and-butter of ZS Associates is sales and marketing consulting to pharmaceutical companies. Hewitt, Mercer, Towers Watson, and the Hay Group all focus on human resources issues. Sometimes boutique firms might specialize even further from human resources to compensations benefits alone.

IDEO and Kuczmarksi & Associates are two boutique firms that operate in the creative niche of "innovation consulting." The list could go on and on. But don't let the "boutique" name fool you. Many of these firms have thousands of employees and operate worldwide. The questions they tackle and their recruiting processes vary widely. The prestige, selectivity, and name recognition of boutique firms also varies quite a bit.

5) Internal consultants

Many management consultants have one client and one client alone: their employers. It's quite common for many corporations to have an internal group that operates as a consulting team, tackling valuable potential improvement opportunities within the corporation. Often a company's "strategy group" could also be called an internal consulting team. Corporations enjoy several benefits in having an internal consulting team present. Internal consultants are already familiar with the business, cost less than external consultants, and can often advance into other key leadership roles in the company.

Many corporations recruit the very best undergraduate talent they can get into these internal consulting or rotational roles — but stars often choose strategy management consulting firms over industry picks. Questions internal consultants might tackle include:

• Why do we have such variation in cost in different parts of our business? What opportunities exist for us to identify best practices and disseminate them worldwide?
• What businesses would make appealing acquisition targets for us?
• What's the competition doing with regard to this particular issue?
• How would we continue our business if the union organized a strike at a key plant?

The variety of questions they tackle may be very diverse like the list above, or more specialized into a particular area such as purchasing. Employees who operate in internal consulting teams are often hired from traditional consulting firms. Indeed, management consultants at strategy consulting firms frequently receive headhunter phone calls telling them about opportunities for strategy departments in different corporations. An internal consultant resume would highlight numerous projects that saved or generated large sums of money for their employer.

6) Independent consultants

Even more scattered than the boutique consulting firms and the internal consultants are the independent consultants. These consultants don't even operate under the banner of a major company. These entrepreneurial souls often work by themselves or in a very small team of 2-6 people total. Frequently independent consultants have gained a deep expertise from having spent years tackling a particular type of business challenge (e.g. waste reduction in manufacturing plants).

These people may be semi-retired veterans who keep getting pulled back into new projects, new parents who want a reduced total weekly workload, or young people who desire more freedom and flexibility in their lifestyle. Independent consultants often augment their incomes with executive coaching, speaking engagements, or other one-off projects.

These broad categorizations can provide a useful starting point in exploring management consulting career options. Which one is best? That completely depends on your background and goals.

If you're a hard-charger with stellar academic credentials and want to become a Fortune 500 CEO one day, shoot for a strategy management consulting firm. If you're working toward a CPA, the accounting firms will value it the most. If you have a fascination with computers, coding, and process improvement — IT consulting may be the most stimulating environment. If you have a specific area of knowledge that you'd like to develop day after day, choose a boutique firm focused on that area. If you want the long-term stability of an established corporation, look to internal management consulting roles.

Cosentino's book has a brief but thoughtful section on international students which centers around communication skills. I'm an American citizen but grew up in a South American country. I immigrated to the U.S. when I was 17 and still have an accent, though mild, after 10 years. My English grammar and vocab is well above average otherwise (by average, I mean most people who grew up speaking English).

Consentino's advice is to try to get the same job with the same firms but in your native country since you'll have a competitive advantage (an American college degree has prestige abroad, etc). This advice makes more sense for international students than for me (this is my country, after all). However, I see his point and would consider working in the Latin American office of a Top 5 firm for, say, two years and then transfer to the U.S. or simply leave it at that and then move onto something else. From your experience interviewing candidates and working as a consultant in the U.S., would you echo Consentino's advice? More precisely, would you put in front of a client a perfectly competent consultant who has a mild accent?

By the way, the first thing I did after becoming a citizen recently wasn't getting a passport or registering to vote. I instead got enrolled in a one-on-one intensive accent training program with a speech therapist (work in progress). I guess I take this accent issue very seriously! (My next investment is in the LOMS!)

I thank you profusely in advance for your thoughts and guidance on this. Feel free to share this question via your daily emails since, I think, I'm not the only one troubled by this concern.

My Reply:

The main value of applying in one's native country is that the resume reader is more familiar with the local education system, grading systems and other forms of academic recognition. I don't know what your native country is, but let's say for argument's sake, it is Argentina.

Let's say you went to the #1 most prestigious high school in Argentina and won an award for being the top 10 graduates in the entire country… an award everyone in Argentina is familiar with… and you sent your resume to me, an American, I would most likely reject it because I don't have the background to consider it.

Now if you were the child of a McKinsey client, then I might take the enormous effort to send your resume to a colleague in Argentina to ask them to evaluate your resume for me, but it's an incredible hassle to do so.

Now if your academic and career accomplishments in the United States are strong enough to stand on their own, then it's irrelevant what you did before you were 17. So for argument's sake, it you have a Harvard degree and interned for say Coca-Cola as a summer financial analyst, by all means, work in the U.S.

Consulting firms in the U.S. are very multinational.  I have no problems putting a consultant with an accent in front of a client. The only concern I have is would a client ever have to ask the consultant to repeat what he or she was saying. So is the accent mild, as in someone would ask, "Oh, where are you from?"… or is the accent so strong that someone says, "I'm sorry, I didn't understand what you said, could you repeat that?"

The former is acceptable, the latter forces the interviewer to think twice — and often lean towards rejecting someone.

Also in general, I tend to think one should live your life the way you want to and not overly complicate things. If you want to move back to your native country, that's one thing. But if your only reason for possibly going back to your native country is to work the system, so to speak, I'd be slightly inclined to spend that same energy in just making things work the best you can in the country you prefer to call home.

It applies not only to how you serve clients as a consultant, but also how you manage your own career.

My thoughts on this topic are widely applicable to CIBs (Case Interview Beginners), FFYs (Future first years), and CIFMs (Consulting Isn't for Me).

The concept of competitive advantage is quite simple. It is something you, your company, or your client possess that provides you with some kind of edge over your competition. Sometimes the advantage is a physical asset (we have factories in 30 countries), other times it is a skill (Apple), or a culture.

As it applies to you and your career, it is a particular skill that you possess that is unusually strong (relative to others) and uncommon.

Now this common sense definition seems pretty straightforward and even obvious. Yet, the vast majority of working professionals ignore their own personal competitive advantage…. and many CEOs ignore their company's competitive advantages in making strategic decisions.

A strategic decision is a decision of what to focus on…. which game to play.

A tactical decision is a decision on how to win the game.

For example, growing up as a kid, I watched Michael Jordan play basketball. He was by far the best in the world, and by an extremely wide margin.

But I'm willing to bet you that I could beat Michael Jordan in a one-on-one match up.

It's true.

Even in his prime, I'm sure I could beat him in one-on-one competition.

TIME OUT….

Now be honest, in reading those last few sentences, did you assume that I meant I'd beat him in playing basketball?

If you read carefully, nowhere did I say I could beat him in a one-on-one match of basketball. You may have assumed that (because that's the natural inclination of most people), but I never said that.

No, I'm pretty sure I could beat him in a case interview competition!

Strategy is about harnessing your competitive advantage to exploit a competitor's weakness. It would be very foolish of me to try to beat Michael Jordan in a one-on-one game of basketball. By attempting to do so, I would provide him the opportunity to use his advantage to exploit my weakness (5'8" – or 174 cm – height and I can't jump, shoot or run!)

But, I'm half decent at this case interview thing… and in playing that "game," I have the advantage.

So how does this apply to your clients and your career?

There is enormous temptation to take the path that is most popular, most visible, and often most prestigious.  (It is far more prestigious to be a NBA Basketball champion than say a case interview champion.)

You see, CEOs do this all the time. They favor the seemingly "safe" choice (safe defined as the choice that everyone else is pursuing). It takes a very strategic CEO to take the path that competitors won't take — but quite often, that is the better choice in the long run.

Amongst aspiring management consultants, I see many, many people who attempt to pursue this career path that really shouldn't.

If math is difficult for you, if you don't naturally "see" the insights that factually exist but aren't obvious, if you're a creative lateral thinker (but not a step-by-step linear thinker), these are competitive disadvantages in consulting. (But one industry's disadvantage is another's advantage).

Now it is hard to know which category you fall into early in the process, but at some point in the process, you need to take a hard, critical, unemotional, unbiased, objective assessment of yourself to see how you stack up.

Your career will be much more productive and successful if you can find a "game" (a profession) that plays to your strengths and competitive advantages, instead of one that constantly exposes your weaknesses.

A big part of being strategic about your career is to know yourself.  This is a hard thing to do, and it has taken me well over a decade to understand myself.  It didn't even occur to me to try to do this early in my career, but it would have been much more efficient if I had been more thoughtful about this.

Let me explain why being strategic is useful.

Life is easier.

Promotions come easier when you're able to harness your competitive advantage. Income growth is easier too (both for your clients and for yourself). Stress levels go down when your daily work requires you to do things that are nearly effortless.

I recognize that I've become a role model of sorts to many readers of my blog and emails. To the extent this is true, it is my hope that people emulate the guiding principles behind the decisions I've made in my career and not copy thedecisions I made in my career, given my specific talents, strengths and competitive advantages.

As I approach 40 years of age (geez… that is such a scary number for me), I have seen the difference between people who focused on what they were exceptionally good at doing, versus those who followed what conventional wisdom suggested was the more prestigious choice (even if they had no competitive advantage in that profession).

For example, I have two acquaintances who in high school both had an eye for fashion and design. One attended a Top 200 U.S. university and studied accounting — corporate audit in particular. The rationale was that being a CPA was the safer choice — never mind this person had no real interest, passion, or competitive advantage in the field.

The other (who was not nearly as academically talented) decided to pursue a career in fashion. She attended a community college (a Top 20,000 U.S. education institution).

Ten years later, the second person has a thriving career. She works for one of the major fashion labels. She earns more than most engagement managers at McKinsey… because she is just that good at fashion. Her income is in the top 1.5% of all Americans.

Meanwhile, the first person dropped out of the accounting profession (she wasn't good at it, she hated it, she didn't put in the effort to excel) and today earns an income that is probably only 20% of what the fashion expert earns today.

When both of these individuals were in high school, their raw talents in creativity and fashion were identical. The difference many years later is as a direct result of the strategic choices they made early in their careers.

Making wise (but not always obvious and not always popular) strategic choices early in one's career has enormous implications many years later.

When you pick a profession where your strengths give you a competitive edge, it has a cumulative effect over the years.

You tend to do well in your early years, get more opportunities for more challenging work, which further enhances your skills, which further improves your competitive advantage (differentiating you from your competition by an even wider margin)… the whole process is a self-reinforcing upward spiral.

If you choose poorly, the cumulative effect can also work against you just as easily.

If you pick a profession that continually exposes your weaknesses, you tend to stumble and fail at a much higher rate early in your career. You get more discouraged, more stressed out… you tend to avoid putting in extra time and effort into a work experience that is unpleasant. You don't get the opportunities for more challenging work, and the shortfall gap between your skills and your strategically-focused competitors gets wider and wider… and you get left further and further behind.

Perhaps even more than this negative spiral on one's career is the toll it can take on one's self esteem. You can erroneously come to the conclusion that you just aren't that good at your career (not realizing you might have been exceptional at a different one).

When I compare notes with my friends and colleagues similar in age to me, the one conclusion all of have reached independently is that it takes about 7-10 years to become exceptionally good at a profession. (If you're interested in this topic, see the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, which is excellent.)

The problem with picking a profession that isn't a good fit for you is one of opportunity cost. If you spend 10 years in the wrong profession, many people are unwilling to start all over in a new career — which involves resetting the experience clock and starting the 7 – 10 year countdown all over again.

If you add in having children, greater financial responsibility, you end up seeing many people "trapped" in a career where their skill level, performance, and income is merely "adequate." You see a lot of people in this world who fit this description.

If you back trace the root cause of this unsatisfying outcome, quite often it goes back to choices made early in one's career. Picking a profession you are not exceptional at, one that is not interesting to you, and one where you have no competitive advantage.

Often these decisions are made due to parental expectations, peer group expectations, or spousal expectations.

CEOs make analagous decisions based on Wall Street expectations, CEO peers' expectations, etc… The structure of why poor strategic decisions are made is the same, even if the context is different.

My advice is to choose wisely and strategically as early as possible in your career.

If you find yourself in a profession with a poor fit, I can tell you this: If you do decide to make a shift, it is much easier to make a switch early in your career. The "switching costs" only go up with each passing year.

The key to make such a transition, even if it is not conventional, prestigious, accepted, or popular, is to have a very clear understanding of yourself and your strengths.  If you are very early in your career and don't know your own strengths yet, I suggest building a high self awareness of this, and pay attention to what is easy/hard for you in the first few years of your career.

Once you have some sense of your competitive advantage, you want to take a fresh look at your opportunities and determine which opportunities harness your competitive advantage, as opposed to continually exposing your weaknesses.

Choose strategically and at some point, your career becomes as easy as riding a bicycle downhill. If you choose without this strategic consideration in mind, don't be surprised if you spend your entire career riding a bicycle uphill — an extraordinary amount of work without much progress.

Your website is truly fantastic and helpful for anyone wishing to join the Top 3 management consultancies.

I just received my candidature rejected for an interview with Bain because according to them, I don't have the right degrees.

I have a Master's in Public Administration degree from [major U.S. State University] and a Bachelor's degree in business administration (from a university in my home country). I am currently a strategy consultant with [technology and consulting corporation] in [European country] and have 6+ years of experience in the consulting field in Europe.

In academic fields – I've always been the top of my class – both in undergrad and graduate school. I have done a ton of extracurricular activities throughout my studies and demonstrated leadership skills in anything I do. I thought I was the perfect "type" of profile for MBB.

Now, you are the guru in this field, so I would really appreciate you telling me (and many of those in similar situations) – do you really need to have an MBA from the top schools to get an interview with MBB?

Many thanks for your reply and for keeping your wonderful website running!

P.S. Maybe this detail is important in my case – I did not apply directly with Bain but went via a headhunter who is currently screening potential profiles for Bain. The interview with the headhunter went fantastic and I was very optimistic about finally meeting Bain for interviews.

My Reply:

Your background doesn't disqualify you from consulting, but it is a less common background. You have two weak spots in your background, first is the [major U.S. State University] – not a target school, not an Ivy League school. In addition, you have a non-traditional degree.

Again these factors alone don't disqualify you, but they don't make you an obvious "safe" choice for a headhunter to present to Bain. Headhunters do not want to look bad in front of their clients. They are biased towards presenting "safe" choices to their clients.

You are not a "safe" / obvious choice. My guess is the headhunter did not want to risk being criticized for "wasting their time" with a non-obvious choice. I have my doubts as to whether or not any Bain employee even saw your application. You might have been kicked out in the prescreen.

So given these downsides, what you need to offset them is to apply to Bain directly and via networking. Online applications are heavily favored towards traditional candidates with easily recognizeable keywords on their resume (Ivy League schools, GMAT/GRE scores above a certain number, specific business degrees).

Since your background doesn't fit the standard mold, you need someone who already works within Bain (typically not in the recruiting department) to get to know you, realize you have the skills needed, and to endorse your candidacy with Bain's recruiting team.

You can read more about this in another article I wrote regarding applying to the top firms from a non-target school.

http://www.caseinterview.com/mckinsey-offer-top-200

Firstly, I would like to sincerely thank you for the all the great material you've published to help with case study interviews.

I have recently purchased the LOMS programme and I would personally recommend it to people who are serious about entering consulting. However I just have a few questions.

I understand that the interviewee should approach the case trying to form a hypothesis and go about capturing data which will help either prove (dig deeper) or disprove (move logically onto another branch) the hypothesis. But I'm currently struggling with forming hypotheses and figuring out what data I need to determine whether the hypothesis is true. Do you have any advice on methods to sharpen this skill?

I have memorised your case frameworks, but when I enter a framework, I continually ask myself, "What's my hypothesis?" I obtain a hypothesis but nowhere near as crisply and quickly as the candidates featured on the LOMS programme, I'm much slower.

But I find it more difficult once forming that hypothesis; what data do I need to prove or disprove it? Are there any ways you can help this thought process?

I completed my PhD a few years ago and have some industrial experience in Operational Improvement. I currently have an Interview with the [specialized division] team in Mckinsey [European city]. I'm spending as much time as I can polishing my maths and case interview practice (your maths drills are great!!!!!!!).

Do all Mckinsey offices give cases (strategy case interviews that I'm currently preparing for) or do the cases for specialist hires tend to be more specific for specialist offices and for experienced hires?

I'm nearly through this audio programme once already. Only 10 more times to run through this programme.

Really admire your commitment to helping potential consultants and if there's anyway I could help please don't hesitate to ask! Thanks again, Victor.

My Reply:

At this stage, I think you need to practice the process of setting a hypothesis and devising an issue tree that would test it.  It is okay that you're slow at the process now… as long as you understand the process. For better proficiency and speed, you just need to practice.

You can force yourself to use the process every day for everyday decisions. Should I eat in tonight or go out to dinner? What's your hypothesis and how would you test it?

You don't actually need to go through the data gathering steps, but instead just practice structuring the problem or "setting up" the structure.

Try to do it three or four times a day.

Should you take the highway or the local roads to your destination?

Should you eat vanilla ice cream or chocolate?

Should you bring an umbrella or leave it at home?

Have your friends or family ask you these kinds of questions and force you to set it up. Do it until you're completely sick of it, and if you were woken up in your sleep at 3am, you could form a hypothesis, structure it, and go back to sleep without even fully waking up to do it (not literally… but you get the idea).

As for the specialist cases, I'm less familiar with them. My best guess is they will be on a wider range of topics — not necessarily strategy. So the most common strategy frameworks of mine that you're most familiar with are less likely to apply. More likely would be the underlying ability to create a hypothesis and custom issue tree needed to test that specific hypothesis.

Practicing your problem structuring for everyday life decisions will help you immensely in this regard… as obviously there is no standard framework for whether or not you should choose vanilla ice cream versus chocolate.

First of all, thank you so much for your amazing material.  It's clearer and certainly more concise than Case in Point, and the fact that I can hear you explain it out loud like a professor is really crucial.

Anyway, I recently won a "case competition" for [MBB firm], in which teams developed growth strategy presentations and defended them in front of consultants.  Well, now I'm apparently invited to a "High Potential Dinner" prior to info sessions for summer associate positions.  I've been told by insiders that this is equivalent to a "pre-rush" event like a fraternity, at which I'll be expected to "perform" to a certain extent.  If they like me, I'll have a leg up for an easier path to the final round.  Obviously, I'm going to ratchet up my case prep even further, because I want to wow them as much as possible.

My primary question is: do you have any experience with or at least secondhand knowledge of these kinds of "High Potential" invite-only dinners/events at MBB?  What should I expect?  How much of an edge does this give me?

And secondarily: how can I best leverage my success with [this MBB firm] into internship offers at [the other two MBB firms], as well? My networks aren't as strong with the other two, but I figured there must be some way for them to identify and take into account that I'm already being heavily pursued by [this MBB firm].
Thanks in advance, and keep up the good work!

P.S If possible, I'd prefer if you didn't send out my question to your email listserv to answer publicly.  Am I too paranoid for thinking that I might come off as unprofessional in some way if a guy [from the MBB firm] happens to read it?  If you think it's no big deal, I don't mind you posting it, haha.

My Reply:

These high potential dinners definitely provide you an edge because they provide you an opportunity to make an impression that other candidates do not.

It will be a social occasion — so it will be highly unlikely that you'd do a case or estimation question during the dinner.

The people attending the dinner from [MBB firm] will be consultants and some of them will also be interviewers.

The dinner is a chance for the firm to jump start building a relationship with the people they see as high potential candidates. It is also an opportunity for them to informally evaluate your interpersonal skills.

For this latter part, they will informally be wondering if you are "client safe". You can refer to my Case Interview Secrets video tutorials that explain this topic in more detail.

In addition, they are looking to see if you are actually interested in the firm, or are just there for the free food.

At the end of the evening, the recruiting coordinator at [this MBB firm] will ask all the people from the firm for any feedback on any specific individuals.

Sometimes all of the invitees already have invitations to first round. Other times that hasn't yet been decided. In either case, the value of the dinner to you (the candidate) is to establish a positive "reputation" that will help give you the benefit of the doubt in any borderline decision later in the interview process.

So if you and another candidate perform equally well (say a B+ level) on a round 1… and they only want to pass on one person, if you have this early "halo effect" reputation, you're more likely to move on to the next round than the other person.

In terms of leveraging this early edge with this MBB firm with the other firms, you want to do so very, very delicately. If you rub it in the other two firms' faces, it will totally backfire.

The way to do it appropriately is during a networking event, information session, or early round interview at one of these firms, when it's time for casual conversation, you should strategically "mention" or let it be known that you attended the [other firm's] "high potential dinner."

You say something like, "Oh that's good point. That thought crossed my mind at a [other MBB firm] dinner I attended the other night." (Okay, so that's a little obvious.. but something along those lines.)

The key is to avoid making [other MBB firm] the object of the conversation, and more as an "adjective" used to elaborate on a different point. I call this "strategic hinting."

Now they will definitely notice. And they will also suspect you did it on purpose. (Because guess what? They strategically hint to their clients too!) But if you did it smoothly, they will give you points for making a point very diplomatically — a useful skill in consulting.

PS. As to your other concern, you're not the first person to ask me this question, and I wouldn't worry about the firm figuring out your identity. With that in mind, I hope you won't mind if I post my reply on my blog with a more anonymized version of your question.  I keep getting asked about this, and I realize I don't have anything on my blog that addresses this frequently asked question.

I will end up posting my response in my blog.

Thank you for your emails and all the wonderful tips you have archived on your website. It has been a tremendous help. I recently was invited to interview at McKinsey and [sub-company of Bain] in the [Mediterranean city] offices. Unfortunately, I did not make it past either PST. The recruiter at McKinsey said I was close/borderline, but not close enough to meet their bar. I do feel comfortable that once I get past the PSTs, I will perform better in case situations and a personal interview, but unfortunately that is not the reality of the situation. I did see on your archives various tips concerning the PSTs, I practiced multiple tests and GRE-type questions, but when it came to the actual test, my performance was not as good.

Do you know why they place such an importance on the PSTs and not give a candidate the chance to prove himself in actual interviews ? Also, I do have another interview in a boutique management consulting firm, do you know how the interview process may differ from the bigger companies? How else can I improve my chance in future PSTs? Since I have another interview lined up, I want to be the best prepared.

Thank you again for all your guidance.

My Reply:

The Top 3 firms are pickier around PST scores. If you are borderline, if you end up recruiting at the Top 4 – 10 firms, it probably will not be an issue.

In terms of PST scores, the scores (or standardized math scores in general) are highly correlated to how first year consultants are perceived internally analytically.

Stated differently, my guess is at some point they looked at the annual review of all first year consultants, found all the ones they rated "exceptional" in terms of analytical skills, and discovered they all had very high PST-type scores.

Keep in mind, all the people who were not rated exceptional in on-the-job problem-solving skills had all passed all of the cases.

In terms of improving your PST score, it depends on why the score was low / lower than you were expecting. In general, there are only two ways to improve one's PST score — work faster, work more accurately.

In terms of preparing, you have to do a self assessment regarding why you think your score was low. Do you think you got any wrong answers? Did you not finish the test?

One of the skills implicitly tested in the PST is "processing speed" — how fast you can do the math and solve the problems. For the computation-oriented problems, you can use my www.caseinterviewmath.com practice tool to work on computational speed and accuracy.

For data interpretation, get a lot more practice tests for the GRE, and focus specifically on the subset of GRE math problems that are similar to the PST — generally the problems involving "word problems" and "data interpretation" and "reading graphs/charts."

Good luck with the rest of your recruiting.

Thank you so much for all the help that you gave us. I am going to sign up with a boutique consulting firm, and wondering can you add me into the loop of FFY?

I also would love to hear your thoughts on my McKinsey final round feedback. I got the feedback that I was over-structuring, and it was the first time I ever heard of that term.  Do you mind share your opinion with me on:

1. What approach will look like over-structuring to you?

2. Will over-structuring kill the creativity?

3. What I can do to avoid that?

Again, really appreciate your time and effort.

My Reply:

For over-structured, it's a little hard for me to tell without hearing what you specifically said. In general, over-structured means structured, but in the wrong way.

The structure can be wrong in any number of ways, all of which would be described as over-structured.

A few ways include:

1) Using a framework that really doesn't fit the case very well (a.k.a. forcing the wrong structure)

2) Not recognizing that the specific case requires modifying a framework to accomodate the unusual aspects of that particular case

3) Having structure, but no hypothesis. All structure should extend from a hypothesis. When structure exists without a hypothesis, it can sometimes be perceived as over-structured… because it is structure without a point of focus. The focus of the structure should be to prove/disprove the hypothesis.

For the FFY newsletter (my email newsletter on how to succeed as a New Consultant), you can sign up here:

http://www.caseinterview.com/new-consultant

It's nice to hear from you.

I stumbled upon your site via a local headhunter's interview brief – fascinating trove of information in a world that I've touched but not lived in – a.k.a. management consulting.  On the other hand, I've been a general manager/head of operations for some highly specialized technology companies.   So this smallish consulting firm is interested in talking to me regarding their automotive practice; this has been my domain for all these years.

Should I anticipate they will run me through the typical format you allude to, i.e., estimation math, riddles and management/fiscal case-studies?  Do you have some suggestions regarding how to prepare for this?  I have an advanced degree in engineering, and have hired/fired MBAs, but have no formal academia in this field. Would appreciate hearing your suggestions.

All the best, and keep up the great work!

My Reply:

With the boutique firms, it is much harder to predict what they will ask, as there is greater variance amongst the more specialized firms.

It will depend on two factors — the background of the firm's founding partners, and how they organize their roles internally.

If the partners are all ex-Top 3 consulting firms, then 90% of the time they stick to what they know and use a similar interview process as is described on my website.

In addition, at the Top 10 firms, it is expected that all partners and senior consultants are strong problem solvers and salespeople.  As you move into the Top 100 firms, sometimes they will split the roles differently — where the partners are really only salespeople, and the junior people are the problem solvers.

In these firms, it is possible to move into a senior consultant / near partner level role if you can bring in clients, generate revenue and manage a team — and the strong problem-solving skills aren't as important.  In these situations, they're less likely to ask case interview type questions, and more likely to assess the breadth of your network in the industry, team management skills, sales experience, etc.

I wanted to take this time to express my appreciation and gratitude to you and the rest of the CaseInterview.com community.

I'm grateful for… (wait for it…) THREE reasons…

1) An Audience

In the U.S., there's an idiomatic expression that says, "If a tree falls in the forest, but nobody hears it, does it make a sound?"

Similarly, if a teacher teaches but no "students" notice, is the teacher really a teacher? This was the question I asked myself when I first started CaseInterview.com a few years ago.

It all began with my website getting perhaps one or two visitors per month (thanks, Mom!).  I chalked it up to an interesting side experiment, but promptly forgot about those initial efforts.

About a year and half ago, something odd happened. My webserver kept crashing for some odd reason. It turns out my side project, caseinterview.com, was getting quite a few visitors and causing it to crash.

Suddenly, I had an audience who was paying attention — which is a wonderful thing. Suddenly, I was a teacher, not just some guy talking to himself online.

For someone who loves to teach, there are few things more gratifying than having "students" voluntarily show up to learn more. For this, I am very grateful.

2) Self-Identity

Once CaseInterview.com started to get noticed and word-of-mouth spread, I made one seemingly small decision, which has been so rewarding. I encouraged people to email me about their successful job offers — and hundreds of people did.

What this did was provide me with the factual data (you know me and data!) that perhaps not only was a teacher, but just maybe I was actually an effective teacher.

This may come as a surprise to you, but I've never really thought of myself as a teacher. I've always thought of a teacher as an "official" profession of some sort.

But between the thousands of "thank you for being a great teacher" emails, and the hundreds of "I got an offer!" emails I've received, my self perception has changed quite a bit.

It is one thing to have a self-limiting belief about yourself (which I definitely do have… and which is also a topic for another day).

It is another to have thousands of very talented people think better of you than you think of yourself.  In the face of the factual data, I've finally been able to let go of some of those self-limiting beliefs.

So today, I see myself as a teacher and dare I say maybe even a good teacher.

In part due to this shift in self-identity, my wife and I recently pulled our oldest (8-year-old) daughter out of school to home-school her.

Since my wife and come from Asian families where "school" is highly valued (which I differentiate from education), it was not an easy decision for us to make.  In fact, up until a few hours ago, I didn't even tell my mother. (Yes, I too still have parental expectation "issues".)

However, my daughter is very happy these days, as she gets to spend more time with Mom and Dad, while learning more about topics (science) that interest her in a way that suits her learning style.

(On a side note, she came up with her very first "hypothesis" a week ago. We debated which family members were closest in height to each other. She set a hypothesis. I helped her design an experiment to get factual data to test her hypothesis. She collected the data, and it turns out both her hypothesis and mine were wrong, but now we know the answer.

In case this sounds familiar — and it really should sound familiar to you by now — it's because the scientific method and the case interview "scientific" method is fundamentally one and the same!)

In addition, now that I see myself as a good teacher, I have decided to devote more time to doing it. I get many requests for advice and tips related to case interviews, consulting, and business careers in general. The first two topics do not surprise me, but the last one does.

I can now say that there will be more of all three areas coming soon.

I have two case interview related projects I'm working on that will be made public by end of year. In addition, I have nearly a dozen projects in mind for "business careers in general" planned for the next three years.

I'm extremely excited about all of these projects… and I haven't been this excited in a very long time.

For this change in self-identity and all that is has enabled, I am very grateful.

3) There is no item #3!  (Oh, the horror….!)

Okay, so I tried really, really, really hard to have three key points, but I can only come up with two.

But in my defense, if I were to re-label my first two points as "How Others See Me," and "How I See Myself," it's MECE right?

Whew…

In all seriousness, I have a lot to be grateful for these past 12 months, and am grateful for what I see ahead of me in the next 12 months and beyond.

I want to thank you for that, and to wish you and your family a happy Thanksgiving and holiday season.

Warmest Wishes,

-Victor Cheng