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One of the most used phrases in a B-School set-up that has everyone’s attention and eyes rolling is Consulting. Every second person entering into a B-School, if asked which their preferred domain is, the answer without a doubt would be that they want to get into Consulting irrespective of having knowledge about the same. Well, in this article we give you this knowledge by talking about what Consulting is, how to prepare for a consulting profile in b-school, and what are the type of jobs that come under consulting.
1. Management Consulting, which is a front end role where you get to work with clients
2. Backend Consulting, which is a research-based role aiding the Consultants
Now one would ask, what should I prepare for If I want to get into Consulting? One prerequisite which you cannot change to be suited for Consulting is your profile. Consulting Firms prefer consistent profiles, who have done well both academically and in the extracurricular domain with some relevant work experience along with brands.
Something that is in your control is the preparation that can be done to perform well if you get a Consulting shortlist and an offer at a later stage.
This is the most important part to prepare for a consulting shortlist in b-school. Ideally one should go with the flow given below to master this.
1. Start by understanding what Case Prep is by watching Victor Cheng’s case interview series.
2. Follow this up with mock interview videos offered by several B-Schools and IITs. You can find mock interviews on youtube like the Case Interview Cracked Series, or IIM Lucknow Case interview Series.
3. One can also follow organizations like ShARE and 180 Degree Consulting on YouTube for insights into this.
4. Once you are comfortable with the case pedagogy, you ideally should start practicing cases(advisable to be done in groups of 2 or more). I would suggest starting with IIM A casebook, which is perfect for beginners, and then follow it up with ISB casebook, IIM B casebook, Case in Point, and other relevant casebooks.
5. While practicing cases, one should also practice guesstimates at the same time which might be helpful in interviews.
6. One should also try reading a few cases from HBR and case studies from the website of Bain, BCG, McKinsey, Accenture Strategy, and the likes.
1. There are several courses available for free on YouTube and Udemy in particular that candidates can look at for practice.
2. A very strong tool for PowerPoint that users should know about is Efficient Elements which they can make use of
3. For MS Excel, I would suggest Tutorials Point video series which you can look at for learning:
4. Another important criteria is that candidates should keep themselves updated with the daily news which will not just be beneficial for the interviews but also for the internship period as well.
Ideally, the most common type of job one might get is that of Consulting which we already discussed – firms generally hiring for this are your MBBs, Accenture, Big 4s, Kearney, and the likes. But people don’t know that there are other flavours to the conventionalism that is existing – Social Sector Consulting is an emerging that one can get into through this at organizations like Gates Foundation, Clinton Foundation, Dalberg, LEK Consulting, and EYP. Growth and Product Strategy based roles can also be achieved through this domain.
I hope this article gives you an insight into the world of Consulting.