3 Month Mastery
Keys to Becoming a Top-Rated Management Consultant
First edition
By Jenny Rae Le Roux
Copyright 2013 Jungle Guides, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Notice of Rights
No part of this book or its contents may be reproduced, modified, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of
the publisher (“Jungle Guides, Inc.”).
Preface
For years, we’ve offered aspiring consultants world-class resume/cover letter editing and
interview prep services—plus comprehensive products such as our Consulting Interview Bible, Case
Bank, Networking Toolkit, and Consulting Resume and Cover Letter Bible.
We solved a problem (lack of good resources and assistance), but created another one—we
have now built an unprecedented community of future consultants, completely unarmed for the task
before them.
You’ve been through the interview process and you got the offer. Now what? The work starts
here. Now, for the first time, we offer action steps and insider secrets on mastering your new role as
a consultant—with a key focus on the first 3 months, the critical proving period that will dictate the
likely path for the rest of your career as a consultant.
Table of contents
Story from the frontlines
Who is this book for?
Interns
Full-time hire pre-MBA
Full-time hire post-MBA
Experienced hire transitioning to a new firm
Course of a consulting career
Firm selection
Office selection
Sell weekend
Preparation
Orientation
Commitment cycles
The waiting period: from signed offer to start date
8 keys to setting the standard in orientation
Maximize face-time
Dress nicely
Come prepared
Be rested
Be alert
Listen and smile
Stand out
Don’t overdo it
Day-before-orientation checklist
6 Prep Steps you can take to master the early days
Prep Step 1: Microsoft Excel
Key functionality
Versioning
Key skills
Online tutorials
Prep Step 2: Microsoft Access
Online tutorials
Prep Step 3: Microsoft PowerPoint
8 examples of firm presentations
Style
Headers
Flow
Structure
Footnotes
Graph styles
Key skills
What you will NOT have to know in PowerPoint
Online tutorials
Prep Step 4: Customer information
Surveys
Focus groups
Online resources
Prep Step 5: Accounting
Docs to be familiar with and where to find them
Online resources
Quizzes and terms
Books on Amazon
Prep Step 6: Market research
Key skills
Core client types
6 Prep Steps wrap up & action items
Excel - Action items
Access - Action item
PowerPoint - Action items
Customer information - Action items
Accounting - Action items
Market research - Action items
8 traits of every top consultant
No regrets: 11 mistakes you don’t want to make as a new consultant
Not taking yourself, and the job, seriously enough
5 tips for “being serious”
Asking too many questions
Being silent
Assuming you’ve already proven yourself
Working with staff that are too senior
Not introducing yourself to support staff
Missing face-time opportunities
Working from remote locations
Not being a pro-active communicator
Not pre-planning for meetings
Not clarifying expectations
Recommended reading
Firm-specific books
McKinsey
Bain
BCG
Best-selling authors
Michael Porter
Jim Collins
More strategy books
Subscriptions
Company propaganda
Company blogs
Credit cards
Loyalty programs
Airlines
Hotels
Rental cars
Bank accounts
Health insurance
Plan for retirement
The move! Getting set and getting settled
Housing
Utilities
Car
Public transportation and parking
Dry run
Change of address
Last Will and Testament
Checklist for your new life
Attire
When are suits required?
Training and travel
What about casual Fridays?
Your first day
Men
Women
Body art
A top performer’s wardrobe
4 traits of the best consulting attire
Thinking ahead to your next resume
Professional networks
What you can and can’t say
Final thoughts/what ifs
Networking with more senior members of staff
Transfers and grad school sponsorship
Conclusion
Your future with MC
Resume/Cover Letter Editing
Coaching/Interview Prep
Packages
Job Hub
Keep in touch
About Management Consulted
Story from the frontlines
This is the most practical book you can read on getting ready for your career as a management
consultant. Why? Because it’s based on real MBB experience. It will make the difference between
your ability to guide your career where you want it to go, or your decision to go along with the rest of
the herd.
When I started at Bain, I was an experienced hire—I’d been out of school for about two and a
half years, but to say that I was truly an experienced professional in Bain terms would be a stretch of
the imagination because for a year of that I had been backpacking and volunteering around the world.
After a brief stint in a PR firm, where I worked on campaigns for US Airways and the US
Olympic Committee, I had set out to travel the world for a year with my best friend. I shaved my
head and lived off of cucumbers and peanut butter (super tasty, by the way, especially in the
Nicaraguan jungle or on a Thai beach). It was a tremendous adventure, and in retrospect, I did some
short projects that taught me about business—while in school, my major in Economics had been
ethereal, but around the world I was seeing business practices in implemented form—not as beautiful
or theoretical, but full of innovation and relationship and power.
After my year of travel, I moved to South Africa (one of my favorite destinations up to that point)
on a one-way ticket and set up my own consulting practice. I worked to connect entrepreneurs living
in the shack villages with social entrepreneurship programs. I was finding business projects that were
happening in the impoverished areas in South Africa and connecting major corporations to them. It
was really dynamic and more exciting than anything I had ever done. Looking back now, I cannot
believe the confidence I had to take on what I did! I mean, I led a couple of major country-wide
projects connecting entrepreneurs to a joint mentoring program funded by the Swiss and South
African governments and ran national conventions – I was completely fearless!
So when I decided to pursue consulting and accepted an offer from Bain, my friends and family
were hardly surprised. Bain wasn’t my only choice—I had also applied to McKinsey and BCG as
well as other major companies like US Airways—but Bain was where I felt the strongest fit. Looking
back now, I think I did what was an on-par job of setting myself up for success. Think about my
qualifications—I had learned a lot of interpersonal skills as a volunteer overseas, and had fostered an
entrepreneurial passion and a love for risk in South Africa, but most of the work I did was structured
by me and for me in a very footloose and fancy-free time. For example, I had never worn anything
business formal to work. And now, Bain was on my horizon—and I needed more than just a new
wardrobe. I needed a new mindset.
There were some key things that I did really well early on that were natural for me, and there
were some major opportunities that I missed to set myself up for success on the job.
My first indication that I wasn’t entirely prepared for life as a consultant was the sell weekend.
After Bain had extended all of their offers for that recruiting cycle—to a lot of people with
competing offers from banking and other consulting firms—the firm invited all prospective candidates
to a sell weekend at the office in Atlanta, with a weekend stay at the Ritz-Carlton. While everyone
else was rolling into the finest hotel in Atlanta with their grown-up roller board luggage, I wandered
in with the only luggage I owned (my around-the-world backpack), refusing to let the porters take my
bag because I didn’t know how much to tip them. I passed by the stuffy cigar lounge, the glitzy bar,
and the patrons enjoying high tea in jeans and wearing a gritty backpack—can you imagine! Of
course, everyone at the Ritz was super polite with their ceremonious smiles and courteous, “how
can we help you’s.” But that was a classic picture of how clueless I was when I first got started.
A lot of my excitement about starting at Bain had to do with some of the elements of the culture.
For example, if you weren’t staffed on a project, you didn’t have to be in the office. How great was
that? I could “work” from home if I wanted to! If you were “on the beach,” you had no assignments
and were basically on vacation. Awesome, right? I took advantage of some of these things, which are
truly a part of the culture, but did so early in my career without understanding what perceptions I was
establishing.
Another huge learning came later when I realized only after the fact that the first review at the
firm means everything—it determines the entire rest of your trajectory at the firm. I was rated in the
second bucket to the top – the second of five, and that was really good. But I could have done better,
and I had missed out without knowing it.
It’s not so much that you’ll be fired if you aren’t performing—in fact, it’s really, really hard to
blow it, and it’s pretty unlikely that you can. I wasn’t even anywhere close to ruining my chances to
get promoted. Instead, it’s a lost opportunity. The messaging at Bain, even though the culture is very
“up and out,” is that a return offer or promotion, on cycle on least, is yours to lose, while an early
promotion or extra bonus is yours to gain. And forget not getting promoted—honestly, you had to do
something really, really drastic for the firm to want to fire you or to phase you out. By the time you’ve
been there for a year-and-a-half or two years, you’re an incredibly valuable, well-trained resource
for them—they’re not going to throw that away lightly.
The business model for MBB firms works like this—they pay you to learn for six months to a
year, and then you work like a dog for the rest of the time that you’re there. They make all that money
back, and then some. In fact, I remember a lunch meeting in my second year when the office manager,
the director of the office, was giving a presentation about costs and revenues for our local office. He
was talking about how revenue growth was outpacing costs.
As I looked at the chart he had on the screen, I was thinking—I know the way that we bill out,
and I know that sometimes we even bill our overheads to our clients. When he’s talking about costs,
he’s literally talking about my salary. He was making a general comment, and I was sitting there
wondering whether anyone else had realized that we were the only real costs he was talking about.
From that experience, I also realized that we were the primary assets the firm had, and the amount
they invested in us—in training, in fun social activities to promote retention, in annual dinners and
getaways—was intensely strategic. I should have started my career being as strategic about my
growth as they were about how they would utilize me.
My time at Bain was an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything. It gave me the tools and
confidence to run the businesses I own today, and connected me with some of the smartest people I’ve
ever encountered. But if I could do it over again, I would do a few things differently.
There are things I wish I would have known that would have set me up to be a top performer at
the company from the start, primed for early promotion and coveted as a team member. Instead of
having to work my butt off to get a top performance rating, I could have started out that way. That’s
why I’m sharing this book with you—and now we’re going to dive into how you can build a strategy
for your consulting career, starting today.
Who is this book for?
The concept for 3 Month Mastery was born when I realized in retrospect how unprepared I
was—and how many opportunities I missed—when I started out as a consultant. I’m not saying I
wasn’t a great employee—I always had excellent performance reports, got an offer to return when I
left, etc.—but some of the things that made me successful came naturally, while in other areas I
totally missed the boat or walked a path that was much harder in retrospect than it needed to be.
In many ways, my life as an early consultant—and tales from the front-lines of other newbies, my
peers and MC’s network—was like heading off to college as an only child. I was a path-forger, and
now you (my lucky reader) get to glean the benefits.
You’ve got an offer letter in hand, but likely have 3+ months before you report to the office—use
this book to get started now setting yourself up for success!
When you’re launching your career as a consultant, you have 2 choices. You can either feel your
way blindly through your first year and cross your fingers that you’re doing things to set yourself up as
a top performer, or you can avoid the sometimes painful discovery process and apply the lessons
you’ll learn here to make the best possible impression you can from day one. If you’re reading this
book, you’ve chosen the wiser path.
We’ve targeted this toolkit at 4 specific audiences—you’ll note that parts of the book will be
more or less relevant based on your background and new position at the firm, so we’re addressing all
of our audiences and your associated aspirations here.
Interns
Your primary goal as an intern, whether you’re pre- or post-MBA, is to get a return offer.
Your “first 3 months” may be your only 3 months at the firm unless you do, so you have no time to
waste. It’s do or fail—and getting that return offer starts even before Day One of your internship.
3 Month Mastery covers everything you need to know to start off strong— from how to present
yourself at orientation to rules of engagement with your supervisor.
Full-time hire pre-MBA
You’ve completed your undergrad and you’re looking for some real world work experience
before obtaining your MBA. Why might you be concerned about making yourself invaluable at the
firm, apart from moving up the ladder and making great money with the related maximum bonus as a
“top-bucket” consultant? You’re Type A, sure—but in this new world, what are all of the non-genetic
reasons you should stop at nothing to be a top performer?
Well, let’s take the MBA first. An MBA requires 2 years of your life on top of a large tuition.
Wouldn’t it be great if the firm gave you 2 years off to obtain your degree AND paid for your
education and living expenses, giving you a bonus to return to the firm you already work for and
including some fun money for mandatory trips to Cabo? And even better, what if the brand name firm
opened doors to such highly competitive schools you wouldn’t stand the chance of getting admitted to
on your own? Sounds great, right?
If getting an MBA (or with McKinsey, perhaps a JD/MBA or MBA/MPH or other academic
track) is important to you, your goal in your first 2-3 years as a consultant is to secure an offer from
the firm to sponsor your MBA education. The best way to do this is to outperform your peers – or
at least, to place yourself in a pool of consultants that are so desirable that you prove that you’re
worth an investment of $200K+ on top of the huge salary bump you’ll receive when you return to pay
back your years at school.
If you’re not going for an MBA, then you’re competing with other new hires in your class for a
select few spots for direct promotion to Associate/Consultant (or related firm-specific titles for the
post-MBA position) openings once you’ve hit ~36 months of service. You’ll need to work extra hard
to become enough of an asset to the firm that you’ll be secure they will definitely promote you without
demanding that you get your MBA; otherwise, you’ll risk banishment associated with unsuccessfully
navigating the “up or out” culture.
Full-time hire post-MBA
As a new hire fresh out of your MBA, you’ll experience 2 major “up or out” transitions in your
career as a consultant. First, when you move from a post-MBA position to a Project Manager (an
Engagement Manager at McKinsey, a Team Leader at Bain, or a Project Leader at BCG), and second,
when you move from that role to Principal/Partner. Literally, from day one you’re building the case
that you should be a candidate for senior positions.
At each of these 2 turning points in your career, you’re voted into an ownership stake in the
company—at Manager, your ownership becomes a part of your compensation, and at Partner you are
(by definition) an owner. Your ownership percentage isn’t something you negotiate—it’s
predetermined by the position you’re being considered for to start and is based on tenure and
production thereafter; it will also vary based on how many people are in the firm’s ownership pool
and sometimes can even vary by office or region. Generally, if 2 people are voted in at the same time
to the same position, they will start in the same percentage, but rarely will 2 partners ever have the
same overall comp in a given year.
As the firm invests more in you, they hedge their risk by tying a larger and larger percentage of
your compensation to your individual performance and the performance of the firm and the office
overall. Even at entry levels you get a performance bonus, but at most it comes to 20% of your total
compensation. At the Manager and Partner levels, your pay can be affected by firm and individual
performance at upwards of 80%. If the firm performs poorly, you could literally not get a paycheck.
As you climb the ladder at the firm, it becomes “feast or famine” – and in most of the recent 20 years,
even when the rest of the world has been shaking, it’s unequivocally been “feast.”
These ownership hurdles are big and they require a lot of voting support, which is why your first
3 months sets you on a trajectory toward Manager and later Partner – and every minute counts. Why?
MBB managers pull in serious 6-figure salaries. As a Partner and full owner, your salary can jump
into the millions for total compensation. And whether or not you get voted in is subjected to a team
of your peers that you’ve worked with throughout your entire career—starting with those first few
crucial months.
If you’re not on track for Manager/Partner or just plain aren’t sure, your key strategic network
gets established, or sabotaged, from Day One on the job. If you do plan to leave the firm 2-5 or even
8 years down the road, ace your first few months on the job to enjoy the benefits of the snowball
aura that comes from rave reviews, officially and around the water cooler.
Experienced hire transitioning to a new firm
If you’re an experienced hire, your goals will be largely based on whether you are pre- or postMBA. With a background outside of management consulting, however, you have even more to
prove. You must demonstrate without a doubt that you haven’t been irreparably branded by the
culture in previous work environments and that you’re a strong candidate to excel in your new role.
Your base compensation, bonus, promotion trajectory and overall reputation are at stake.
Therefore, your prep plan has to be specifically strategic.
To recap, you are in 1 of the above 4 segments and you’ve got anywhere from 2 weeks to 6
months before you start your job as a management consultant. A lot of people go into consulting
without a plan, leaving their career path up to the firm.
It’s great to leave your options open, but it’s better to have a plan to work toward than just
hoping to adjust as opportunities present themselves.
Before your first day on the job, spend some time determining your goals going into your
consulting career.
Next we take a look at the overall course of a consulting career.
Course of a consulting career
We’re not going to spend a lot of time on how you arrived at this point—you discovered at some
point in your life that consulting was right for you, you networked your way into an interview, and you
got an offer (or maybe even multiple offers) and accepted a position. Now, we know it wasn’t as easy
as that—you dedicated years to your education, devoted weekends and evenings to networking events
and informational meetings, and spent hours preparing for case interviews. But now that’s behind you,
and you’re ready to focus on your career as a consultant.
In order to set your long-term career goals, you need to understand the course of a consulting
career. Without knowing where you’re going, it’s difficult to get there, right? In this section, we
outline how the career of a consultant develops and key defining decision points along the way.
Having a grasp on your path is key to setting your own clear goals, and in turn applying those goals as
drivers in your success on the job.
Here’s a bird’s eye view of the 10 phases in the course of a consulting career, including key MC
resources to help you along the way.
10 phases of a consulting career
Phase 1: Discover
Phase 2: Networking
The Networking Bible; Power Half Hour
Phase 3: Application
The Consulting Resume and Cover Letter Bible; premium editing services
Phase 4: Fit and Case Interviews
The Consulting Interview Bible; premium coaching courses
Phase 5: Sell Weekend/Firm Selection and Office Selection
Phase 6: Preparation
Phase 7: Orientation
Phase 8: 0-3 months
Phase 9: 3-16 months
Phase 9: 16-24 months
Phase 10: 24+ months (Promotion point or Exit)
MC Job Hub
In this book, I cover the second half of the course of a consulting career, phases 5-10. I’ll briefly
cover firm and office selection before diving into the sell weekend, and then will talk about prep,
orientation, and commitment cycles.
Firm selection
If you were an exceptionally strong candidate, you probably had several offers in front of you
and the ability to choose the firm you went with. Our interview prep clients who get interview invites
at Bain often also procure slots with BCG, or McKinsey (rarely all 3 at once) as well as other top
firms—and if you’re lucky, you’re a cross-offer candidate with choices across the top 3. This a great
position to be in—and when it comes down to choosing, you weigh your options based on firm
culture, compensation, location preference, and other things that are important to you.
We’ve worked with consulting candidates for over 8 years. We know that new hires obtain
offers by way of astute networking, clever research, and unparalleled preparation. When we guide
candidates through the application stage, we advise them to target firms that are right for them—
their background, their interests, and their preferences in work culture. Why? When you’re able to
demonstrate that your career goals align with the firm, you strengthen your position in the interview
process.
Once you’ve completed the interview process and you’ve received multiple job offers, you are
faced with a decision. Do you accept the offer with BCG or McKinsey? Do you go with Deloitte or
Towers Perrin? Deciding which firm to join is a huge decision—and one that can significantly
impact your career trajectory down the road. Things like the type of work you’ll do, the client size
(and seniority) you’ll focus on, your options for professional development, and your exit
opportunities are all influenced by the firm you build your base with.
What should you be thinking about when you’re weighing your options? Find out what others
have factored in when they’ve made their decisions between offers at these firms:
BCG and McKinsey
Bain and BCG
Deloitte and PwC
Office selection
Office selection, while often determined before you receive your offer letter, can also play a
huge role in your career course—and if you were a very strong candidate, especially one with a
cross-offer at a competing firm, you may still have some sway over where you can go.
Office selection is not only important in the application process—we do advise candidates to
choose offices based on a combination of preference and where they’re most likely to get hired—it
also determines exposure to senior consultants, case variety, and the breadth of your peer network.
A BCG associate in the Boston office, for instance, is going to have much less interaction with
senior consultants than someone in the same position in the smaller Atlanta office. On the other hand,
the Boston office may offer variety of projects and exposure to more prestigious clients that Atlanta
would not.
While firm selection is fairly straightforward—determined by personal connection and style
—office selection can be a bit more complex. Usually during your interviews a conversation takes
place about your office preferences. Those preferences will have been considered and will be
reflected in your offer letter—the firms are constantly trying to allocate just the right number of staff
to each office.
You face one of two tracks. If you were a base level performer (but still a rock-star—you got
that coveted offer, after all), you were given an offer from one specific location and were expected to
take it or leave it. Your offer letter sounded something like this: “We would like to welcome you to
the Toronto office…”
If you performed incredibly well in your interviews and received competing offers, you’re on
the second track. Your letter still came from a particular office, but you were given options on
location. We work with several clients each year who, because they excelled in their interviews,
received offers for their choice between 2 locations, e.g. Boston or San Francisco. “Just come to our
firm,” the partners beg.
If you’re on the first track—namely, you weren’t given a choice in office location—there are
ways you can negotiate for your office preference. “I really like the weather in L.A., so can I go
there?” won’t cut it, but a competing offer makes the conversation a lot more fruitful. For example,
“You gave me an offer in Seattle, but I’d really like to be in San Francisco, so I’m seriously
considering A.T. Kearney’s offer for S.F. Honestly, I’d rather work for you. Is there any way you can
work with me on this?” They’ll listen to that.
In addition, if you have a significant other with an offer in another city, you can open the
conversation about a “pre-acceptance transfer.” Maybe you got an offer with Deloitte in Chicago but
your fiancé already accepted a job with Booz Allen in D.C., and D.C. is where you’ve decided you
both want to be. If you’re married or engaged, the firm will take the request more seriously. I
wouldn’t recommend trying this as an undergrad (standard protocol is to travel for a year and ask to
transfer at that point), but as an MBA you have some wiggle room.
If you are in a position to choose your office, it’s very important to make the decision
analytically and clearly, and not to drag it out for too long or involve too many of the staff. Your
commitment to the firm and your maturity will be reflected in how you handle that decision. If you
shared an initial preference but suddenly are unsure, or you change your mind, your fickleness can
leave a bad impression.
Why am I sharing this? While not a total deal-breaker in my career, I did not handle this process
well, and I want you to learn from my mistakes. As many of you know from reading The Consulting
Interview Bible, I got an offer in my final round with Bain—and the partner in the interview verbally
gave me the choice between Bain’s Atlanta, New York and Boston offices. Because I didn’t know a
lot about each office—I was going through the process as an experienced hire, so didn’t have an oncampus network to tap into—I went and met with staff at all 3 locations, and even went to sell
weekends in both Boston and Atlanta.
While the staff in Atlanta were really welcoming to me, I had initially interviewed with a very
senior partner from Boston who personally gave me his cell and home numbers and told me to call
any time if I was having doubts about joining Bain—he said that he would do anything he could to
get me to come on board. Well, when I did put in an ask, he called the Atlanta office and made a way
for me to visit and meet with the team there, but I didn’t pick up on his frustration with me. Without
realizing it, my analytical process gave the impression that I was playing the offices off each other,
trying to find the best option without being able to explain what I really wanted.
Then, to top it all off, finally deciding to go to Atlanta, I discovered my start date at Bain was 1
week prior to the final major event for my firm in South Africa. To make sure I didn’t miss it, I
postponed my on-boarding date by 6 months to a February start—a move that didn’t go unnoticed by
the folks that had vouched for and recruited me. In fact, one called me out on it, letting me know that
Bain was doubting my interest in coming on board. The following year at on-campus recruiting at
UVA, the senior partner from Boston even said, “So, you did end up joining Bain after all…”
Thankfully, I was a top performer at the firm and was able to earn back the glowing perception
I had started with, but I had to start my career at Bain with something to prove—not a good position
to be in. Thankfully, I was thrilled to work in Atlanta—it was a wonderful experience, and I
ultimately chose it for all the right reasons—but this is an important lesson for all potential newhires. To keep from making the same mistake I did, deliberate as much as you can on your own, pick
a preference, consult at most 1-2 trusted friends or advisors (outside the firm if possible), and go with
one office choice—before you dance through multiple sell weekends.
Sell weekend
Speaking of sell weekends, the oft overlooked but important and usually fun part of the hiring
equation is the sell weekend—when a firm who has extended an offer invites you to a beautiful beach
resort to “meet the firm.” Okay, it’s not always a beach resort, but it’s usually first-class, like the
Ritz-Carlton, if it’s an MBB. You’ll be treated to fancy receptions, gourmet meals, and exquisite
views, all to impress upon you the prestige you can attain by joining the firm.
When you arrive at the sell weekend, you haven’t started working for the firm yet, and you
haven’t even accepted their offer—but you’re making your first professional impression outside of
the interview process. Introductions to future colleagues and future bosses will be made—and their
entire initial perception of you will be founded on this one weekend.
All indications may point otherwise—especially if you’re coming from life as a student on a
tight budget—but this is not a vacation. Booze is free and the hotel is paid for, but don’t think you’re
not being observed. Don’t be an idiot! Enjoy getting to know other recruits and potential colleagues,
but keep it professional and remember why you’re there.
So, you’re probably thinking…
What can you expect during the sell weekend?
Who will you interact with?
And what should you pack?
These are all great questions, and hopefully they’ll all be answered once you’ve finished this
book. Let’s start with a simple mock itinerary:
Sell weekend mock itinerary
Thursday night
Fly in, check in at the Ritz Carlton. Have dinner with a few pre-selected consultants at
your level.
Friday 9am-Noon
Breakfast at the office, and in-office presentations/tour.
Friday lunch
Small group lunches with senior staff.
Friday 2pm – 5pm
1:1s with peers and mentors and a full-group closing presentation.
Friday 6-8pm
Cocktails at apartments/homes of consultants and a limo ride.
Friday 8pm - ?
Dinner out at the hottest restaurants and clubbing until the wee hours of the morning.
Saturday 9am-3pm
Do something fun, e.g., go to the zoo, hit a theme park.
Saturday 3pm-6pm
Downtime to explore the city on your own.
Saturday 6pm-?
Low-key prospects-only dinner to encourage in-class bonding.
Sunday morning
Say goodbye (or see you later) and fly out.
During the day, it’ll be a combination of group meetings and 1:1 meetings at the office. In the
large group setting, you’ll listen to presentations on topics ranging from firm culture and history to
client work and case studies. You may also hear people’s personal stories on why they chose the
firm, and you’ll probably listen to presentations from various representatives of the firm’s diversity
groups, e.g. women, LBGT, etc. to let you know what kind of support and community the firm
cultivates.
For the 1:1 meetings, you’ll be paired up with a mentor or someone with similar interests. The
conversation should sound something like an informational interview—you can ask them whatever
you want about their experience at the firm. Be relational and engaged, not antagonistic—and, like
with your informational interviews, stay away from the pushy or downer questions. You’re attitude
should be more “What do you like most about working for X firm?” and less “What project did you
like the least?” or “Why should I work for you?”
The firm will host one or two fun business lunches and a cocktail party in the evenings. For
Bain’s sell weekend in Atlanta, we went in small group of 5-6 people to a consultant’s apartment on
the Friday evening. We saw where and how they lived and at the same time got a more intimate
experience before going out to dinner. Don’t worry—drinking and driving wasn’t an issue. They
hired a “car”—read, limo—to cart us around for the evening.
Dinner will be followed by a night out on the town at a hoppin’ local club in New York, or
perhaps a boot-scootin’ bar in Dallas. After all, your hosts are not just showing off the firm, but also
the office and the location. They’re trying to get you to connect with everyone—staff as well as the
other potential hires. The firm’s goal is to convince you that they’re your first pick.
Your motive is to show your versatility and likeability as a professional—you’re establishing
what they can expect from you on day one. If you can hold a fantastic conversation with a senior
manager, he’s more likely to pull you onto his project when he’s looking for staff in your second
week on the job. If you focus just on being likeable but think that you can start being professional
later, that senior manager may want to have drinks with you on Friday, but he won’t pick you for his
team.
Should you drink? Sure, but keep it to a 3-drink maximum per night. You might feel like you’re
meeting your new best friends and rocking out with true financial and career freedom for the first
time, but you DO NOT want to lose control. Getting wasted? Not cool. Random hookups? Also not
cool. Keep your head, and don’t give yourself anything to regret—you build your reputation
starting with the first day in the office and the first night on the town.
You won’t be pressured to give the firm an answer on the sell weekend—well, not directly,
anyhow. The firm will let you know who has accepted and who is on the fence—and you can expect
the lion’s share of attention to be on you if you’re still undecided. Again, I can’t stress it enough—be
honest and fair in the process. If you’re really not sure, have a few reasons why, but don’t go to a
sell weekend—for an office or a firm—that you really don’t think you’ll join. It will be
uncomfortable for everyone involved.
That being said—enjoy your sell weekend! It’s your first taste of living it up on the company
dime, and a tremendous promise of great things yet to come—both with the firm, and in life in
general.
Have you attended a sell weekend recently, maybe one in London, Sydney, or Singpore? We’d
love to hear about it! Email us at team@managementconsulted.com.
Preparation
Once you’ve signed on to a firm and an office, you know where you’ll call home (or at least
home base if you’re traveling frequently) for the next couple of years—be it New York, London, San
Francisco, Singapore, Boston, or Paris. There’s a lot that has to be done between now and your
first day at the office. You’ll be moving if you don’t already live in the area (this applies to 80%+ of
new hires), which means finding a place to live, registering your car, setting up your Internet…we’ll
get into the details later.
The prep phase is where you begin to utilize the secrets to mastering your first 3 months—it’s
when you start laying the foundation for your practical future as a day-to-day consultant. Instead of
relying on happenstance or assuming that things will take care of themselves—your data points
indicate that you are a fast learner, after all, and you can do a 30-minute case pretty well—it’s
critical to be proactive. Address as much as you can before your first day.
If you prepare effectively, educating yourself on both the big things—like knowing how to act in
your first meeting with your supervisor—and the smallest details—like wardrobe and shoe selection
—you’ll free yourself up to focus entirely on your job from day one. Preparation covers everything
you do from the time you accept the offer to your first day on the job—that can range anywhere from 2
weeks to 9 months, depending on your current status (student or experienced hire). From doing some
recommended reading before you start the job to familiarizing yourself with the firm’s presentation
templates, we’ll lay out everything you need to take care of during the waiting period.
Orientation
As a new consultant, you’ll be trained constantly—professional development is one of the
main perks of the job and a must for firms in which intellectual capital is the primary asset. In fact, at
a corporate dinner in my first 6 months on the job at Bain, a CEO asked the Partner how they were
able to find such impeccable staff at such a young age. Without missing a beat, the Partner said, “We
look for raw talent, and we train them rigorously and identically.”
Because the top firms are billing $500K/month for a 6-member team, every day you are unutilized (on the beach) is lost revenue for them. To maximize utilization, each staff member needs to
be as flexible as possible—especially at the junior levels. As such, you’ll start training in the office
from the first day, but will also be sent to a larger group orientation and/or a global training at some
point within the first 6 months of your start date.
In that initial 2-week period (1 week if you’re an intern), you will receive at minimum a basic
orientation to the office, the company, and your role. You’ll get set up with your computer and get a
list of passwords and access to specific systems and facilities. Then there’s the paperwork side (oh,
joy!)—confidentiality agreements, non-disclosure agreements, health benefits packages, retirement
plans, etc.—that will take you half a day or so to cover. Some of them are standard, and others might
require some pre-planning so you start off ahead. Don’t worry—we’ll walk you through how to be
prepared.
For the longer 2-week orientation, usually off-site, most firms take you through an intense multiday set of training modules, giving you basic overviews of everything from firm culture and
organization to strategic accounting principles, and requiring group projects every evening until 10 or
11pm. Whatever form your orientation takes, there are some key takeaways we’ll cover to help you
build a name for yourself, as well as some huge no-nos that many new grads too often make.
At Bain, new hires spend their first two weeks in the office going through a ton of modules on
everything from basic accounting and market research to financial modeling and valuation, conflict
resolution, and firm etiquette. We even did a whole module on how to write the perfect update email
to a senior staff member. The schedule is completely packed and information is administered
through a fire hose! The newbies are given lists of what they’ll have access to, who to call for what,
and how to track their projects. Working through lunch is required—a nice way to introduce you to
life at the firm. (Don’t worry, lunch is brought in!)
During the offsite, we spent 2 weeks at a retreat center that the firm fully booked out. We were
assigned to groups of 4-5 consultants with a single engagement manager as a mentor, and it was
INTENSE. Group sessions, small group break-outs, competitions, projects, and parties—plus the
client work we had to keep up with when we were there. The training is tremendous—better than any
business school class—but it was overwhelming, so going in with preparation and a plan is key to
maximizing how much you can receive.
Believe it or not, there are things you can do in orientation that will set the tone of your
relationships with your peers—we’ll show you how to do it well. For example, many new
consultants make the mistake of trying to be the hardest partier, the guy who cracks the funniest jokes,
or the girl who made the most friends during orientation. Friends are great, and having fun is
important to a point—you don’t want to be singled out as a social recluse—but taking it too far can
risk your future at the firm in surprising ways. In this book we’ll show you how to strike the balance
appropriately.
Commitment cycles
Most people—in the range of 80%—give a good 2-3 years to consulting before exiting. The rest
stay with the firm and move up to Manager positions and eventually Partner status. Are there key
turning points in those first 2-3 years? You bet. What will be the key decision points for you? For the
firm? We lay them out here.
0-3 months
3-16 months
16-24 months
24+ months
0-3 months—Hot or not?
From 0 to 3 months, you’re in training mode. The firm is pouring resources into you and you’re
learning the ropes on systems, processes, and firm culture. Attitude trumps performance at this point.
At 3-4 months, you’ll meet with your supervisor for your first project-based review. You’ll be
assessed on how quickly you’ve been learning, how engaged you are in the work, and how well
you’ve melded with your team.
This beginning period is the most important phase of your career because of the opportunities
you can create for yourself. You won’t be making huge impact on the bottom line or roping in new
clients or even significantly contributing to projects. This isn’t when you’re most valuable to the
company—quite the opposite, actually. It is, however, the period when you have the most impact on
your own career.
3-16 months—Bird on a wire
The major milestone during this period is your first formal trajectory review, which will happen
anywhere from 12 to 15 months after your start date. Your first review is the most important review
in your career. It will happen around year-end or at your 1-year mark, depending on the firm’s
calendar for evaluations.
From the time of your 3-month review leading up to your annual review, you need to be working
your butt off. You’re out of learning mode and in performance mode now. You’re going to be
evaluated as a professional, and compared with all of the other consultants around you. The firm is
looking at you with a critical eye. Have you met your performance goals? What results have you
produced? Did you demonstrate the ability to generate creative ideas of your own that contributed to
client outcomes? Are you a strong communicator? The focus of your evaluation shifts from attitude to
performance.
At your first review, go in ready for a lot of constructive criticism. You’ll be reviewed not only
by your supervisors but also by your peers, so you’ll be getting feedback from all sides. The best way
to prepare for your review is to think ahead to what the discussion will cover. If you know you have
an area for growth, for instance, think about it ahead of time and develop an action plan to address it.
When your supervisor brings it up, you can respond with your action plan—that way you’re showing
that you’re aware of it and you’re demonstrating your ability to self-manage. Additionally, you’re
demonstrating that you’re not overly sensitive to the opinions of others.
16-24 months—In the groove
This is the sweet spot of your life as a consultant—spending time on the road, in the air, or at the
office, you’re dedicating your life to your job and your clients. You’re contributing to the firm’s
bottom line and getting a foothold in your areas of strength—you might actually do something for the
second time.
You may apply for an office transfer, experience “the beach” a few times, or even undergo a
major transition (like when Booz & Co. broke off from Booz Allen Hamilton or when Deloitte
acquired Monitor). You’ll work for tough bosses, sweet-talk difficult client contacts, and get really,
really good at mental math. You’ll learn every Excel shortcut possible, code Macros like a beast, and
begin to choose your own projects. You’ll be made fun of by your non-consulting friends for your
willingness to break down even the simplest of problems just for fun, but they’ll actually be jealous
of how brilliant you are.
24+ months—Walk the plank
At 2 years, you’re considered a veteran. You’ve arrived at the first crossroads in every
consultant’s career: when you decide either to continue with consulting or to jump ship. While it’s
difficult to find exact figures on retention rates across firms and markets at top consulting firms, it’s a
well-known fact that the consulting business model in general rests on energetic, hard-working grads
putting in long hours and burning out after a couple of years. I estimate that roughly 40-50% of new
hires exit consulting after their first 2 years—I’ve even seen some go MIA as early as the first week!
(Okay, I only saw this once, but still—the pressure is real.)
There’s a great in-detail report for retention and trends in the London consulting market here.
We won’t go into detail on exit opportunities in this book—that would be skipping way too far
ahead. If you’re curious about your exit options—transitioning into finance, getting your MBA,
funding a start-up—we have a couple of great articles on our website here and here and you should
register now for our MC Job Hub.
If you decide to stay after 24 months—a decision that actually happens around the 21-month
mark—the firm will begin to evaluate you for your capability to expand to the next level—for MBA
sponsorship if you’re pre-MBA and for Manager if you’re post-MBA. In your 3rd year, you’ll be
given staff to manage (interns or new-hires as a pre-MBA and analysts as a post-MBA), and you’ll be
expected to come up with creative proposals for solving client problems. Instead of solely doing
analytical work, you’ll begin to manage people and clients. It’s predictable—the expectations get
more rigorous as the stakes increase.
You’ll be transitioning from managing projects to managing people, from interfacing with clients
to defining client relationships, and from taking orders to giving them. This increase in pressure
makes the 24-36 month phase a major burn-out period when the firm intentionally turns up the heat
to see who has the goods. As a result, the 36-month mark is when firms see an additional 40% of the
incoming class leave—20% to business school, and the other 20% to other opportunities.
To sum it all up, at the 2-year mark you’re incredibly valuable to the firm, so they don’t want to
see you go. However, many people do choose to leave at that point. At 3 years (again, the decision
point is at 2.5-2.75 years), the firm begins evaluating your potential—what material you’re made of
and whether you’ll be excellent at the next level of the job, or whether you’re worth investing in for
an advanced degree.
The course of your consulting career will be unique—you may switch firms for a better
opportunity, change locations to be closer to family, or exit consulting after 2 years to start your own
business. Whatever your intended trajectory, your best chance of arriving is to prove yourself as a
top performer from the get-go. You make the first (and lasting) impression in the first 3 months.
Most new consultants go into the job planning to kick it into gear after their initial 12 weeks of
training and onboarding. They don’t realize that it’s possible to start laying the groundwork for the
rest of your career pre-arrival.
I want you to be in gear from day 1. It’s like the first 5 minutes of your consulting interview—
you can recover from a mistake, like a bad joke or a sloppy answer, but you’re never going to be their
#1 pick. Getting every answer right every time will put you at the top, and the first 5 minutes set the
tone. It’s the same on the job—the first 3 months will make or break your future, so let’s get
started right now!
To recap, you’ve been invited to join a firm in a particular office location, which will
determine who you’ll work with, what type of projects you’ll work on, and possibly where you’ll
have to move in a few weeks/months! By now you understand what the course of a consulting career
offers, and you also recognize why it’s so important to think about your own career course early
on.
The waiting period: from signed offer to start date
If you’re joining a consulting firm as a recent grad or MBA, you may have as long as 9 months
between signing your offer letter and starting the job. Here are some questions you might be asking:
What type of interaction can you expect in the interim period?
What contact will you have with the firm, if any?
Will you have any conversations with your boss?
Is there anything you can do to prepare for orientation, the job, or your client?
One of our interview prep clients who accepted an offer with Booz Allen Hamilton in February
had a start date in August. In March he called his eventual boss to make sure it was okay he used his
boss’s name on the forms he was asked to fill out by HR. While he had him on the phone, he asked his
boss if there was anything in particular he could do now to get ready, or if there was any way for
him to prepare for his first project. The boss said that they wouldn’t know which project he’d be
assigned to until about two weeks before his start date or later, so there really wasn’t much he could
do besides study up on process management and other general consulting knowledge.
This is par for the course. Information about your project—your supervisor, the client, the
location—will be provided to you upon assignment, which is based on the real-time needs of the
firm. Most of the time, they can’t plan as far ahead as you’d like. You’re likely to be staffed right
when you get there or immediately after you’ve gone through some type of in-office training—but it
may even be later than that.
Most of the time, you’re not going to have any detail on what you’ll be doing exactly, or who
you’ll be doing it for before you start at the firm. Why? They’re going to expect you to show up on the
first day completely green—but should you meet these expectations? In this section we’ll talk about
what you can expect from the firm before your start date, and in the next section we’ll take a
deep dive into what you should do on your own to prepare.
So what can you expect from the firm?
Welcome information? Absolutely.
Anywhere from a week after accepting the offer to a month before you start, you will receive an
email with welcome information from a recruiter at the firm. The packet will contain information
about your office, your official start date, specifics on relocation or how the firm handles a fullyfunded housing search trip (if it applies), and a copy of your offer letter with details on your
compensation package.
Pre-reading? Maybe.
If they do give you material to read prior to your start date, it will be firm-specific—like firm
articles or general information about the company. It will not be comprehensive enough to prepare
you for the job, so don’t get too excited—their reading list is just a baseline. I’m not saying you
shouldn’t read it, or that it’s not important. You won’t be tested on it—but it’s definitely worth
reading for a sense of firm culture, projects, client profiles, and other relevant background
information. Just don’t think you’re done yet.
Orientation schedule? Probably not.
Orientation never occurs before your start date—at the earliest it will start on your first day and
specifically after you sign the all-powerful non-disclosure agreement. For that reason, don’t expect to
get anything ahead of time. If full-fledged orientation doesn’t start on your first day—for example, if
you’re an off-cycle start like I was—at a minimum you’ll receive some basic on-the-job orientation
where you go over paperwork, get settled at your desk, and meet your supervisor. Don’t fret if you
don’t even hear mention of orientation—you’ll be informed when the time is right.
The message here is this—don’t expect to receive any information about your assignment, your
team, etc. prior to your first day. Henceforth, don’t bother your future supervisor with questions
pertaining to the aforementioned topics. You’re asking them to give you information they don’t have—
ticking them off before you even start working for them. Not the best way to start off your consulting
career!
Instead, take whatever the firm offers you but don’t try to over-impress before day one. Don’t
worry—we’ll still give you plenty of private homework, and you won’t be underprepared.
8 keys to setting the standard in orientation
Because it’s “off the books,” it’s easy to take orientation for granted. You’re not reporting to
anyone and you don’t have to turn anything in—it seems like a great time to sit back, listen, and
absorb. Most new hires will take this approach, but not you—you’re out to become an early top
performer.
Orientation will be extremely fast-paced. There are gong to be hundreds of different things
you’re focusing on learning and you’ll have to figure out a way to grasp them all. There are 8 keys
to setting the standard in orientation:
1. Maximize face-time
2. Dress nicely
3. Come prepared
4. Be rested
5. Be alert
6. Listen and smile
7. Stand out
8. Don’t overdo it
Okay, let’s take them one by one.
1. Maximize face-time
Show up early and stay later than everyone else. Enough said.
2. Dress nicely
I’ll get into the nitty gritty details on attire in a later section. For now, I’ll stress that you need to
look good—just as you would for a working day in the office. You’re not sitting in your favorite Econ
class in college. You’ve made it—you’re a management consultant. Show that you’re professional,
and leave no doubt.
3. Come prepared
Come prepared with questions from the previous day, so anything that was covered off on the
day before that didn’t make sense after you did more research on it or discussed it with your peers
can be clarified. This is another key part of beginning to set yourself up in the key consulting question
series: “What happened?” “What needs to happen now?” and “What questions do I have that are
outstanding?”
4. Be rested
You’re in for early mornings and late nights—and there will be opportunities to go out after
work for some fun. Play in moderation. You need to establish that you’re there to work and ready
to learn from every presentation. If you spend the evening having drinks with all of your new friends
and show up the next morning hung over, late, and starving, you’re going to miss out on some huge
learning opportunities, not to mention giving your orientation leaders a strong “I’m still in college”
vibe.
5. Be alert
If you need super strong coffee in the mornings, bring a thermos with you. If you need snacks
every 2 hours, make sure you’ve got a few protein bars in your bag. Get the rest you need and have
tools at your side to manage long days of presentations without nodding off.
Your presenters will go over material very quickly. Don’t assume that it’s going to come back
around later—once through is all you’ll get. Take it upon yourself to spend some extra time in those
first couple of days to understand and ask recap questions on the following day if you really didn’t
digest something that they said.
Recognize that staff members might portray apathy or even sarcasm about orientation. They
might even insinuate that it’s a waste of time—that you’re learning things you’ll grasp over time in
any case. Sure, you can grasp many things over time, but maybe your 3-month window of proving
yourself is over at that point.
The faster you’re aware of the firm’s best practices for research and thought leadership, the
better off you’ll be overall. They might do an hour-long module on accounting. Fire hose. Then an
hour on market research resources—here are the six modules that are available to you, and here’s
who you can call for more details. You’ve got to be on your toes the whole time.
6. Listen and smile
In orientation you’ll be meeting with staff who are specifically focused on training for the firm,
as well as other consultants more senior than you. Think you don’t have to impress them?
Think again. You want to establish yourself as a top performer in your peer group, and you
want to have answers when other new-hires begin to have questions. How do you do this? Speak up
early on and exude measured confidence.
7. Stand out
Focus on differentiating yourself from your peer group. Become a resource, come prepared, and
ask good questions. Be the one that’s the most ready, the most into the orientation, and the most
proactive.
8. Don’t overdo it
If you take it too far, you’ll be annoying. For example—if you find yourself asking the first
question in each module, settle down! If you want to ask a question for each presenter—don’t. You’re
not overtly out to win or to show off. You don’t want to be annoying, yet you don’t want to be silent.
You want to be right in the middle. Your goal isn’t to be antagonistic toward ANY of your peers or
supervisors, so make sure everything you say has your relationship with your peers and supervisors in
mind.
Day-before-orientation checklist
Here’s a quick checklist you can use to make sure you’re uber-prepared for orientation.
___ Appropriate attire.
___ Hair cut/styled.
___ Viable transportation and plan to show up 30 minutes early.
___ Snack food (BYO, even though they will probably provide more than enough food—just in
case you’re starving in the middle of a presentation).
Now that you know what you can expect from the firm and how to behave in orientation, what
can you do on your own to prepare? We dive into that next.
6 Prep Steps you can take to master the early days
You’re coming in with a particular background—one that’s different from everyone else in your
recruiting class. Some questions you might be asking:
What will you be expected to know?
Are there any practical holes you need to address?
Do you have weak areas that need attention?
Which tools will you be expected to use?
Up to this point we’ve established how to make a great first impression when it comes to
character—behaviors you can practice and attitudes you can instill to lay the groundwork for your top
performer status. This next section focuses on how you actually do your job.
You can ask a lot of great questions, but if you’re still a complete newbie at Microsoft Excel,
there will be things that you’re not going to be able to do. If you can’t create a PowerPoint
presentation in the firm’s tone and style, you’re going to get funny looks in meetings. Sure, you can
learn all of this on the job—it will just take a lot of time. The 6 Prep Steps are ninja abilities you’ll
add to your tool kit—skills that will make you look like a genius when you’re on the job.
There are 6 areas that are essential to your success as a consultant in every industry. I’m
going to tell you what you need to know and how you’ll use each.
I’ll also give you a list of free online resources where you can go to learn the basics if you’re
behind the curve, or brush up on your skills if you already have some working knowledge.
Here are the 6 Prep Steps you can take to master your first 3 months as a consultant:
1. Microsoft Excel
2. Microsoft Access
3. Microsoft PowerPoint
4. Customer Information (Surveys, Focus Groups)
5. Accounting
6. Market Research
This section is really the main meat of the book, and it’s time for you to get your hands dirty, so
I’ll go into a lot of detail on each of the 6 Prep Steps in the following pages. Let’s get started.
Prep Step 1: Microsoft Excel
You must know your way around Excel—it’s a tool you’ll use on a daily basis throughout your
consulting career. Generally, you’ll be using it for financial modeling, where you’re inputting a
number of assumptions and determining the size or growth projection of a market, profitability of a
new product, or key cost drivers. Even when you pass the management of the spreadsheets on to
a junior analyst, you’ll still be dealing with datasheets, reports, and models on a regular basis—
knowing your way around is a MUST.
You may already be familiar with Excel from business classes or internships—but more than
likely your model, even if you worked with large data sets, was focused on running individual pieces
of analysis. In consulting, you’ll build more complex models that run multiple pieces of analysis all at
the same time.
There are a number of factors that make a great model—we’ll cover some of the key ones here.
The 5 factors that make a great model in Excel:
1. Formatting and layout
2. Flexibility
3. Formulas
4. Linking and hyperlinking
5. Pivot tables
First, formatting and layout are fundamental—and there is a group of unspoken consulting best
practices that sets the bar. Every firm has slight differences in the styles they use, but there are some
general guidelines you can expect to see.
Assumptions are usually identified by a single color, like blue; your hard coded entries will be
coded with a particular color, like green; your final answer will be bold, etc. Pay attention to the
firm’s code to differentiate between a calculated, a hard coded, and a hard coded but referenced item
inside the document. It’s crucial that you pick up on these in early training and adopt them promptly.
Why care about the way the spreadsheet looks? A beautiful spreadsheet that has slight errors is
so much more graciously accepted than an ugly spreadsheet that is partially wrong. A spreadsheet that
is right is always better, but a beautiful one that is right is 10 times better than an ugly spreadsheet
that’s right.
Second, flexibility is key. Success in Excel involves managing your data very cleanly and
clearly. You’ll need to work with the expectation that someone is going to go back and repurpose
your data. They’ll want to look at the scenario through a different lens—e.g., what happens if we
run it for six years instead of five? What happens if we increase the cost by 10% after the first
season? Your ability to respond to that on the spot will be a huge differentiator in distinctive
performance, and you need to know how to integrate your assumptions flexibly—you want to hardcode as little as possible.
Third, a key thing that differentiates consultants who are okay at Excel, good at Excel, and great
at Excel is knowledge of formulas. Excel has hundreds of formulas imbedded in the system. You
want to have an understanding of what’s available and how they work.
VLookups, HLookups, concatenation, goalseek, and the basic financial formulas—SUM,
AVERAGE, SUMPRODUCT (for weighted average), etc.—will save you time and, again, help define
you as a valuable contributor. Knowing which formula to use at the right time is a really key asset.
If you do nothing else, spend 2 hours going the function lists in Excel and review what each is for —
then plot out a scenario where you could apply each one.
By the time you start your first project, your goal is to get Excel to work for you instead of you
being a slave to Excel.
A tragic note to all you Mac users out there—consulting firms are PC houses. If you’re going to
become an Excel wizard, you need to be able to do it on a PC platform. Do yourself a favor—
buy yourself a cheap secondhand PC to practice on, and get familiar with shortcuts ASAP.
You’ll have to get acquainted at some point, so go ahead and start as early as possible.
Fourth, you need to understand the appropriate use of linking and hyperlinking within your
documents. Never link a source inside the site to something out of your control—like a link to an
Internet site. What if it’s moved or gone tomorrow? Rather, save copies on your computer. In
addition, be prepared to set up a table of contents that links to each part of a client-ready model—
having these links working will help you navigate throughout your model and save you time on cleanup early on.
Finally, pivot tables are critical. Understanding everything you can do with pivot tables is
essential—and will make you look like a genius (or a moron if you don’t know how to use them). A
lot of people have never used a pivot table before—I hadn’t before I started consulting—so having
this skill is a huge boost.
Key functionality
One of the earliest things you’ll use Excel for is market sizing—it’s an easy work stream to
assign to the newbie—but there are 3 other types of models you should be aware of as well. Most of
the spreadsheets you build in consulting will be based on 1 of 4 models.
4 consulting models:
1. Market sizing
2. Profitability
3. Market study
4. M&A
Next I’ll say a few things about each model and how you’ll build them using Excel.
Model 1: Market sizing
Market sizing is one of the simpler versions of the type of models you will build. You’ll use
Excel to look at where the market—a demand for services or delivery of a product—is heading. One
of the key pieces you’ll build into your model is the ability to input assumptions that will impact the
sensitivity of the final solution.
Market sizing questions are fairly straightforward. You’re measuring the existing market of an
item in total units or total sales ($). You’re trying to answer questions like:
How many of X exist in a market?
How fast is the market for X growing?
What is the $$ opportunity if the client introduces X into the market?
Your Excel spreadsheet will be structured to calculate these numbers based on a set of
assumptions.
The keys to market sizing models? Flexibility and data tracking. Someone will undoubtedly
question every single number you propose for your first few months on the job, so in the spreadsheet,
keep your assumptions clearly linked throughout the document, and track your sources and link to
them.
Model 2: Profitability
With profitability, you will move beyond what you practiced in cases. On the job, profitability
is more complicated than just standard revenue and cost. Maybe you’ll need to do a deep dive on
product level profitability or total allocated cost profitability, profitability by product line or
profitability by month, operating profitability or net profitability. You could be looking at
profitability eight different ways, all within the same project. To do so effectively, you will require a
well-developed and highly accurate spreadsheet in Excel.
In a profitability model, you’re trying to find ways to optimize profit for the client. You will
build different scenarios in Excel to test solutions in order to identify the source (or sources) of
declining profitability, or find areas of potential growth. Questions you’ll be answering include:
How can our client increase profitability?
Why is profit declining?
What should the client do about it?
Some of the things you could be testing are:
1. Pricing and elasticity
2. Sales commission/channel analysis
3. Product mix analysis
4. Customer segment profitability (by demographic, needs, etc.)
5. Fully loaded cost
This is where some of your core accounting terms are going to come in (we’ll talk more about
accounting in Prep Step 5).
What if you’re working on government projects or for a not-for-profit organization? Will you
still be expected to know and apply the profitability model? Yes! Even if it’s not financial
profitability—it could be people served or donations received—all organizations have metrics by
which they measure their performance. You’ll tweak the profitability model to the client’s particular
problem, but the concepts are the same.
Model 3: Market study
This is where it gets fun! You’re looking at real problems and real questions that your clients are
dealing with, like:
Should we enter the market or not?
What’s our approach?
How can we increase our revenues?
Why is our market share declining and what can we do about it?
With killer Excel skills, you can actually come up with solutions. There are 3 primary
questions you’re looking at to tackle market study problems in Excel.
3 primary questions for market study problems:
1. How much money (profit) could we make if we enter this market?
2. Can we increase our revenues by either increasing prices (or spend/customer) or volumes?
3. Can we increase our revenues by either increasing prices (or spend/customer) or volumes?
Let’s look at each question in a little more detail.
Market study question 1: Market entry
How much money (profit) could we make if we enter this market?
Here you’re doing an investment analysis to understand the break even point—based on
total cost, projected revenue, and how long it will take you to pay back the original cost.
Market study question 2: Market share
Can we increase our revenues by either increasing prices (or spend/customer) or volumes?
Once you’ve sized the market, you create a model to define who has what share of the
market, who’s stealing it from you, and where you can gain new share. A key factor in market
share will be the elasticity of the customer—usually an assumption you’ll have to make, or
different scenarios you’ll need to run to evaluate the solution that optimizes outcomes and
minimizes risks.
Market study question 3: Market growth
In light of what our competitors are doing or have already done, how much can we increase
revenues?
Here you look at different growth strategy scenarios and weigh them against each other
to determine the most profitable option. You’ll identify all of the ways you can grow your top
line (if you’re going to grow by acquisition, how much will that move the needle?) and how
fragmented the market is.
For this task, you’re doing competitive analysis, using Excel to identify actions that your
client’s competitors are taking and what can be done about them. You may be looking at
competitor growth rates, which inform the market share expectations of your competitors going
forward. You could be calculating sales plans and projections or the relative cost position of
your competitors. Sometimes you’ll look at a total market, and sometimes you’re just going to
look at a small number of key competitors.
At the end of the day, you’ll have a lot of data with a lot of moving parts, and your job is
to lay everything out in a clear structure, investigate each area to find the key issues, and develop
practical recommendations to solve the issues.
Excel will be your best friend.
Model 4: Mergers & Acquisitions/Discounted Cash Flow
An M&A model—the most complex that you’ll face in consulting—involves a DCF analysis,
used to determine the present value of a company, and knowledge of how to use NPV. It also often
includes market sizing/growth projections and profitability, so you’re covering every single type of
model here. The good news? You rarely will be staffed on a Private Equity or M&A case as your
first assignment—so you have a little time to ease into this one.
How much the client is willing to pay for a company is a combination of how much the target is
worth now, how much the client can make on them based on changes they make after the purchase, and
potential exit options. With Excel, you’ll develop a structure to identify the issues that you want to
evaluate, such as:
How much should the client purchase the company for? (What is current profitability, how
attractive is the market, and what are comparable multiples?)
What is the potential of that company? (What is the financial value of opportunities synergies,
growth strategies, and cost reduction?)
What exit strategy, if any, makes sense? (What are target sales and profitability going forward?
What are common multiples? Who are possible acquirers? What is the exit timeline?)
As much as you can, follow the overall guiding principles for Excel. Make your spreadsheet
beautiful and easy to read. Learn the firm’s code for formatting and stick with it wherever you can.
Make sure you’re incredibly organized so that you can always refer to where something in the data
occurred. And finally, build your spreadsheets in a way that minimizes manual operations.
Versioning
Regularly save versions of your Excel documents. Get up to version 27 if you need to. Every
time you make a change, or at least every day, version it, note it, and make sure you sourced
everything that’s inside the document. Why? Because you will be probed, and your ability to follow
your trail all the way back to the beginning, even if you’re working on something for multiple weeks
at a time, is critical, both to the project and to your reputation. Avoid learning the hard way—it’ll be
embarrassing and you’ll kick yourself because “we told you so.”
If you’ve never worked with Excel for 10 hours a day, it can be daunting. Our best advice is to
just dive in, but get started now. There will be times when you will need to recreate the framework
you’re using for your model because it’s not quite right, but that’s part of the process. The earlier you
start, the earlier you’ll identify areas you need to adjust. You want to catch mistakes or misdirection
as early as possible, so take a critical eye to your model early in the process.
It will take time, and that’s okay. It’s worth it. As you begin to work more with Excel, it will
become apparent that taking the time to refine your model in the early stages actually creates short
cuts later on. If you can hone this skill, you’ll become known as the ultimate modeler—you will
always be in demand and you will always be a top performer. The ability to create accurate and
usable models in Excel is a core analytical skill that is highly sought after in firms. No matter how
well (or how poorly) you do at everything else, if you are known for building great models, you’ll
create a name for yourself.
Key skills
Here’s a summary of the key Excel skills you’ll want to, at the very least, be familiar with (if not
master) before Day One.
Formulas (average, sum, subtotal, concatenate, weighted average, CAGR)
Pivot tables
Data analysis (vlookup, goalseek, scenarios)
Sensitivity analysis
Data cleaning (e.g., remove duplicates)
“Dummy-proofing” (password protection, locking cells, conditional formatting, conditions on
data, default drop down lists, etc.)
Shortcut keys
Macros
Graphs (mostly bar and line graphs)
Linking and link tracking
Formatting (print layout, header/footer, repeat rows at top, etc.)
Online tutorials
If you’re looking for a great course to take you beyond self-study, we recommend the one
available at Mergers and Inquisitions. It’s expensive, but it’s also a very good course. It’s geared
toward tooling up investment bankers who are known for being killer modelers—and if banking or
PE is in your target future, you should get going with this standard now. If you have time now and you
want some additional resources, theirs is the most relevant, comprehensive modeling course
available.
Otherwise, below is a great list of free online resources that will get you jumpstarted in Excel.
They range from how to open a new spreadsheet to more advanced tutorials on how to use macros,
how to activate the developer tab, and how to use check boxes in order to code data lists.
Whichever skill level you’re starting from—little to no knowledge of Excel or a solid working
knowledge—take some time to brush up.
The firm will give you a computer with Excel installed, but for practice purposes, if you don’t
have the software on your personal computer, you can download the free trial from Microsoft. It’s
good for 60 days. Finally, don’t forget—even if you’re a diehard Apple fanatic, practice on a PC—
you’re 90% more likely to use a PC than a Mac and shortcuts are very different.
1. LearnMicrosoftExcel.com
The site covers basic and advanced skills, and includes a whole section on pivot tables. It’s a
video course that’s easy to follow. Sections are outlined clearly, so you can watch the whole
thing or pick and choose. You can also download sample files to follow along and practice. The
instructor is British—so he’s even pleasant to listen to.
2. Excel 2010 Skills Builder
This is Microsoft’s free video training series consisting of 4 lessons. They don’t get into too
much depth, but there’s a nifty tracking feature that allows you to track your progress so you can
stop and start as you need to.
3. LearnFree.org
This is a great resource with free video tutorials organized by topic, “interactives” where you
click on what you want to learn, and even a mini quiz. The Excel lessons include a 2-part video
course on pivot tables. They offer a variety of media, so they cater to different learning styles.
They even have a tutorial app for Android and iPhones.
4. Make the switch to Excel 2013
This gives you a preview of Microsoft’s newest version of Excel through a 20-minute video
course.
5. Mergers and Inquisitions
We recommend the whole package, but they also offer 2 free 3-part video tutorials on financial
modeling that will be sent to your email address when you subscribe.
Prep Step 2: Microsoft Access
You may or may not use Access in your job, but you won’t know that until you get there. Some
analysts or associates will use it every day because they’re dealing with huge data sets that have
outgrown Excel. I only used Access at Bain a few times, and only when there were more lines of data
than Excel can handle.
One project I worked on was for a national funeral home operator. We used Access as a holding
place for data on purchases and costs for all of the company’s funeral homes and cemeteries over a 5year period (morbid, I know). For another project, I compiled customer research data for a major
theme park. You can imagine how many records we had to keep track of—every ticket sold for
millions of customers a year over multiple years. Their individual line item data quickly surpassed
Excel’s limitations.
Since it’s largely unknown to most new professionals, you will be well-served if you understand
the basics of Access—like data input, creating fields and indexes, and using forms—before reporting
for duty. I personally loathed it until I got familiar with it—it’s not as “grandma-friendly” as Excel
is, and I’m not an engineer by training.
Microsoft Access allows you to create databases with thousands, even millions, of records, and
gives you tools for creating relationships within the data. It helps you store information for reference,
reporting, and analysis. As a consultant, you’ll use Access to enter, store, and pull data to support
your market research and analysis. Sometimes, you’ll pull data from Access, move it to Excel, and do
your analysis there as well, so understanding how the 2 work together is as important as
understanding each one on its own.
The firm will give you a computer with Access installed if it’s something you’re going to use,
but for practice purposes, if you don’t have the software on your personal computer, you can
download the free trial from Microsoft. It’s good for 60 days. Again, practice on a PC—you’re more
likely to get that over a Mac.
Online tutorials
Here are a few free online resources for Microsoft Access.
1. LearnFree.org
As with Excel, you can get free video tutorials organized by topic, “interactive” choose-yourown adventures, a sample database and test-yourself quizzes. Again, the site caters to diverse
learning types, with regular video tutorials and even a tutorial app for Android and iPhones.
2. Lynda.com
This site offers what they call free Access 2010 Essential Training. It’s taught by Microsoft
Certified Trainers, and has a very professional feel. It’s a great resource if you want the A-to-Z.
You can get a 7-day free trial, but you have to register with the site (and give your payment info).
3. MS Office
This is Microsoft’s free training for Access 2010. The training consists of PowerPoint slides
that you download to your computer. The presentations are categorized by topic, so you can
target the skills you want to learn about, but they’re static and completely reliant on your desire
to read and understand them. There’s a test question at the end of presentation, but you’ll find the
answer on the same slide—so it’s not that effective.
4. Make the switch to Access 2013
This gives you a preview of Microsoft’s newest version of Access—again, it’s a PowerPoint
presentation you have to download.
5. Allen Brown’s Tips
Built as a huge FAQ, this site has tons of tips—categorized by “casual user,” “serious user,” and
“programmers.” This is less training-focused and more a place to go for real answers on
specific questions. You can use it as a resource when you get stuck.
Prep Step 3: Microsoft PowerPoint
The third Prep Step is, yep, another Microsoft product: PowerPoint. It might have been possible
to get through college without ever touching PowerPoint, although I’m sure many of your professors
used it for lectures. Some of you experienced professionals who had administrative support staff in
another job may even have been able to slide through without ever having to create your own
presentation. Now that you’re in consulting, however, you’re going to have to face the music.
If possible, you want to make sure that the first presentation you see from your firm isn’t
during orientation. There are many ways to find presentations published by your firm—we suggest
starting with SlideShare first, then browsing the firm website, then doing a web search.
In under 10 minutes I found 8 examples of firm presentations on SlideShare.
8 examples of firm presentations
McKinsey:
The Social Enterprise: How your customers produce and consume in the social world
Faster than Real Time: Understanding shifts in digital consumer behavior
Booz & Company:
Campaigns to Capabilities: Social Media & Marketing 2011
The Power of Online Deals: A Perspective on Group deals
Accenture:
Accenture Technology Vision 2012
Taking a B2B brand into the social space
PriceWaterhouseCoopers:
IT consolidation in an M&A deal
Emerging from the storm: The day after tomorrow for insurance
Style
As you review online presentations from your firm, you’re going to want to keep your eyes
peeled for specific things that characterize the firm’s presentation style—how they use headers, what
kind of graphs they prefer, whether they use footnotes, etc. You’re going to be expected to create and
add to presentations that will be used internally and with clients, and there’s a style that you’re going
to need to use. The more familiar you are from an analytical outside perspective—the more that you
have seen presentations and actually noticed what’s happening in them—the quicker and more
efficient you’ll be at creating your own.
The stylistic factors will also give you a handle on the direction of your presentation, like
what you’ll need to be thinking about when you’re creating calculations, what type of answers they’re
looking for, and how you’re going to emphasize what those answers are. Let’s dive into a little more
detail on the things you need to notice in your firm’s presentations.
Headers
How are they worded—as statements or as questions? Do they take up two lines or one line?
Are they sentences or key words?
If you click on one of the PowerPoint presentations from Booz and Co. above, for example,
you’ll see they have one to two line explanations of what the slide is about to tell you. As you read
through more Booz presentations, you begin to get a sense of this stylistic factor and see that the firm
has a voice they’re going to expect you to use every time you create a slide.
Flow
Do they use a table of contents or interim table of contents pages? Do they use some kind of flow
bar that shows where you are inside the presentation? Do they break up the presentation into different
sections or subsections (e.g., Objectives)? When and where do they use charts and graphs? What do
they use for closing?
Flow is especially important when you’re adding your slides to a larger presentation. When
you’re thinking about creating a story, or how your piece of the story is going to fit in, you have to
make sure that your pieces fit together seamlessly with the rest of the presentation.
Structure
How did they lay out the story overall? Some firms present “answer first”—this is what you
should do/this is my recommendation—then support it with detail. Others do it the other way around
—called “answer last”. You’ll see these firms build a general case—here’s the market, here are a
couple of your related companies, this is what you did last year, this is your projection—then hit
the client with a gloomy outlook if they don’t take a certain course of action, followed by the
salvation answer at the end of it.
Firms have different styles. How a story is laid out in presentations will tell you some of what
they’re going to expect your process to be like as an analyst. Are you going to need to start with the
answer in mind? Are you going to be working on one key piece of the case that supports the overall
answer the team is working to prove? The more that you review, the more you’ll begin to see trends
in the types of modules that the firm uses to support its solutions.
Footnotes
Notice the footnotes on every page. You need to know what things you’re going to need to
keep track of in your research, and what key resources the firm uses to conduct their research. Make
a list of those resources and search them out online to familiarize yourself with them.
By paying attention to footnotes now, you’ll avoid a common mistake made by new hires—
namely, creating a great slide, then totally forgetting to reference the info and embarrassing yourself
when you’re later asked for the source of the information. Just like in Excel—always create a trail
you can retrace later.
Graph styles
How do they call out information in the graphs? Are they in side bars? Do they using coloring or
different kinds of data techniques? Are the graphs simply labeled bar charts or complex and wordy
scattergrams?
At Bain we had a Microsoft graphing wizard (fondly know as The Wizard) that was
programmed specifically for the firm. Everything Bain-style was a part of it and all of our presets
were hardcoded in. Your firm might do something similar, or they may just use template options
inside Excel.
Key skills
There are some key formatting tools you should know that will significantly simplify your life,
such as:
Alignment
Rulers
Snapping to a grid
Master slides
Page numbers
When you’re making your 700th change on a slide, you’re going to want to know an easy way to
use alignment. You’ll want to know how to turn grids on and off, how to use rulers, and how to make
sure every slide conforms. When you have 18 people working on a 72-slide presentation, and you’re
responsible for slides 4, 9, and 47, you must have a way to make sure your slides match the others.
Microsoft PowerPoint will be installed on your PC at work, but for practice purposes, if you
don’t already have the software, you can download the free trial from Microsoft. It’s good for 60
days.
Want to do a quick exercise? Take one of the above presentations and try to recreate it starting
from scratch. Match font, heading, graph style – everything – on multiple slides. Get as close as
you can, and don’t be lazy.
What you will NOT have to know in PowerPoint
Before we move on, I want to say a few things about what you will not do in PowerPoint. You
will almost never use animation in consulting presentations—there will be no fade outs, no bells
chiming when you open up a certain part of the page, no bullet points sliding in from the left on a 30
second timer. It’s also unlikely that you’ll ever present something with clip art to a client.
Some people think this stuff is fun and entertaining. You should know, however, that almost no
consulting firm uses gimmicky transitions or animation—they’re considered distractions from the
professionalism of the key message and should be avoided entirely. (Yippee—that’s the first thing we
said that you don’t have to know!)
Online tutorials
1. LearnFree.org
Once again, you can use this helpful site to master the basics of PowerPoint. The site is
colorful, well organized, and easy to read. Video is interspersed into the instructional slides and
site text. This is a great place to start to learn everything from the basics to common tasks and
more advanced operations, like tables and charts. Again, they cater to diverse learning types—
offering regular video tutorials and even a tutorial app for Android, iPhone, and iPad.
2. MS Office
This is Microsoft’s free training for PowerPoint 2010. It’s a little clunky—you’ve got to
download PowerPoint presentations with embedded video and graphics. You can select the
topic you’re interested in, however, to target your training. The test questions at the end of the
training are informative, but the answers are right there so you shouldn’t find them too tricky.
3. Make the switch to 2013
This gives you a preview of Microsoft’s newest version of PowerPoint—again, it’s a
PowerPoint presentation you have to download.
4. TeacherTrainingVideos.com
This site gives you a good, simple intro. What I like most about the site is that there’s no
registration and no sign in—the link takes you straight to the video and it starts automatically.
You listen to the presenter explain each new functionality as you watch what he’s doing on your
screen. Part 1 of the video has topics 1-15 and part 2 has topics 16-30. The training is geared
towards teachers, but it gives a great basic overview. And again, he’s British—gotta love that
accent!
5. Lynda.com
As with Excel, this site offers what they call free Free PowerPoint 2010 Essential Training. It’s
taught by Microsoft Certified Trainers and it feels very professional. If you want the A-to-Z,
sign up for the 7-day free trial.
Prep Step 4: Customer information
You’ll use two methods for collecting and measuring customer information—surveys and focus
groups. Here I’ll discuss both.
Surveys
One of your jobs may be to create or to conduct surveys. Sometimes those surveys are something
that you create and conduct, and other times you’re just going to get data batches from surveys. My
key recommendation for surveys is to pay attention to the type of information presented in the firm’s
presentations. When you’re looking for it, you’ll start to see survey questions used in all sorts of
ways. You’re going to see how the question was asked, and what data was analyzed for it.
If you’ve never actually created a survey, read through your firm’s presentations looking for
clues of survey questions. You should start to see recommended questions that are written without
bias—so you can begin to see what a non-biased question looks like. You’ll start to understand how
data analysis happens, and in some cases you’ll even be able to download the data for a more
detailed look.
If you aren’t required to understand the system used to collect data—maybe someone else on
your team takes the lead on that—it’s still extremely beneficial to do so. Why? First, understanding
the data will accelerate your understanding. Second, it’s going to help you ask good questions if
somebody down the road says, “Hey, can you go create a survey for blah, blah, blah?”
Surveys are usually done by phone, Internet, or in-person. Have you ever been a candidate for a
survey? Think about a time when you were approached by a surveyor—as you were walking out of
the grocery store, when you accidentally answered that blocked number, or when you received that
customer satisfaction email from Management Consulted after you purchased one of our products and
services (thanks, by the way).
If you answered multiple questions over the phone or online, you may have been operating with
a technology called Skip Logic. It’s a framework used in surveys, a form of conditional branching
that directs respondents through a path based on their initial responses. For instance, if you’re asked
whether you speak Spanish and your answer is “no,” you’ll be directed to a set of questions that differ
from others who answered “yes.”
There are 3 things you want to pay particular attention to when it comes to surveys.
1. Question and answer types
2. How to present questions without bias
3. Data interpretation and analysis
Let’s take a look at each of these in more detail.
1. Question and answer types
There are many ways to structure your questions and answers—open-ended, one-answer,
matrix, rating style, etc. The way you write your question and the way you structure your answer
possibilities is going to have a huge impact on the legitimacy of your answers, any bias in your
questions, and how easy it is to collect and analyze your data.
For example, if you ask a question and structure the answer as an open-ended text box, you’re
going to spend hours reading through the answers individually. If you ask a question and offer a
multiple-choice answer, you can quickly tally up the responses, but you have to make sure the
choices are MECE (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive) or you will have inevitable bias
in the question.
Let’s say, for instance, that you took a survey of your Econ class to determine which type of ice
cream was the class favorite—but you only listed chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. You wouldn’t
get an authentic answer to the question you asked, “Which type of ice cream is the class favorite?” but
rather an answer to the question, “Of the following options, which is most popular?”
Different question/answer types have specific purposes. If you’re designing surveys, you’ll
need to have a deep understanding of how each question type is applied. If you’re using survey data in
your projects, you’ll want to have a solid understanding of the goal behind each question type.
2. How to present questions without bias
Presenting questions without bias is critical to collecting authentic data. You need to be aware
of bias factors in questions that are asked and know what leading questions sound like in order to
avoid them.
You won’t be on your own with this—there’s often a person or team internally who is
responsible for the final review. At Bain, we had a professional support staffer with a Ph.D. in
Statistics who reviewed our major surveys before we sent them out.
3. Data interpretation and analysis
You’ve collected all of your data—so now what? To make it actionable, you need to understand
the processes that you go through in order to interpret and analyze it. Much of the time that means
you’ll be focusing on segmentation.
The information you’ve collected from surveys, databases, and market research can be mapped
into groups or segments, e.g. age groups, ethnicity, breakfast eaters vs. non-breakfast eaters, etc. By
breaking your data down into smaller sections, you can begin to identify trends, problem areas, and
insights—then from there you can offer recommendations and solutions.
For instance, let’s say you’ve been assigned to investigate why the revenue for your client, a
manufacturer of cosmetics, is decreasing. Your focus is on customer information, and after
collecting your data, you break it down by gender and age group. You find that women ages 25-34 are
unhappy with the client’s stodgy image and are the primary driver behind the fall in revenue. You just
did 2 things: you expressed the problem clearly and you provided an effective starting point for the
development of a solution.
Many of you have touched on these concepts in your case interviews. You probably practiced a
zillion market sizing questions that required you to become quite familiar with segmentation. But case
prep and real world are two different things—here’s where it becomes practical.
Focus groups
Focus groups are where individuals in a group setting are asked about their perceptions,
opinions, and preferences regarding something specific—like a brand, product, advertisement, or
packaging concept. As a consultant, you will usually hire a focus group company to facilitate the
research, but it’s on you to determine the overall goal, the questions, the sample size, etc.
When would you use a focus group as opposed to a survey? Surveys are great for quick, toplevel questions that you want data on from a large sector of your target population. Focus groups,
however, are designed to extract in-depth insight about a topic from a small group of 8-12
individuals.
Online resources
SurveyMonkey
To become familiar with surveys, register with SurveyMonkey (the basic service is free) and do
the following exercise:
Create a mock survey with 8-10 questions—use different question types to familiarize yourself
with the different structures, etc.—then send it to 10 people and review your results.
Pick a fun topic—something that solicits information on their favorite points-bearing credit
cards, or their preferred airline loyalty programs. It doesn’t have to be serious. The point is to get
you thinking about how you’d build a survey if you were responsible for collecting the data.
SurveyMonkey offers other tools you can practice with as well—like importing emails and
generating a weblink to your survey. Play around with the different functionality to get familiar with
the system.
The site also gives a good definition of Skip Logic here.
Wufoo
Wufoo is owned by SurveyMonkey. The system helps you build quick and easy forms for
collecting data—including attachments, which SurveyMonkey does not support. Again, register for
the free version and try out this exercise:
Create a simple form using the different options they have available, then send it to 10 friends
and review your results. For bonus points, download your results into Excel and practice
making a mini-model, complete with gorgeous formatting.
Tip sheet on focus groups
This quick read gives a nice overview on focus groups—how they work, what makes them
different from surveys, and what you can expect in terms of cost.
McKinsey consultants on market research
This is an insightful article on market research—including a blurb on focus groups—written by a
few McKinsey consultants.
You won’t be able to do much to practice for focus groups, so spend most of your time on this
topic reading through your firm’s presentations. Look for data, survey questions, focus group findings,
and anything else that may relate to customer information.
Prep Step 5: Accounting
If you’re like everyone I’ve ever talked to about this, your response will be, “But I’m not
going into a function with any accounting capacity, so I don’t need to know accounting.” Avoid the
misconception here! I’m not saying you need to know audit accounting—because you’re right, you’re
not working in accounts receivable or accounts payable, and you’re not qualified to keep the books
for your client. They have a different team of people to do that. What you do need, however, is to
have a high-level understanding of accounting principles, or strategic accounting, in order to
support your research and make good recommendations.
So what is this type of accounting I’m talking about?
Strategic accounting requires an understanding of the terms that are on core financial statements
from a strategic perspective. It’s the ability to understand the difference between a balance sheet, an
income statement, and cash flow, as well as how they all relate to one another. You must be able to
identify entries and know how to interpret and break each one down.
What if there are multiple divisions? How do you compare divisions to competitors that do not
break out revenue in the same way? A great example of analysis you might do as a consultant would
involve looking at the financial statements of 5 competitors, or 5 benchmark companies, and
comparing them to the statements of your client. In fact, you might need to do this research to
determine how market share of competitors has changed over the past 5 years.
Like you, I had exactly the same perception of accounting before I started. Bain gave us a
stack of accounting books to study, and I thought, “Come on! Seriously? I didn’t sign up to do
accounting!” As much as I wanted to resist, I did the reading and realized after my first year that it
was probably the most valuable preparation I had done for life on the job. Knowing how to read and
interpret financial and accounting information was one of the most important ways I avoided
looking like a total idiot. Particularly for those of you with no on-the-job financial training, it will be
priceless.
Your fifth Prep Step is to read up on the basic principles of accounting. Don’t just do it
halfway, like I did. There are multiple indicators that you’re ready—and none of these were true of
me when I started at Bain.
You will know when you are ready if you can teach a “Financial Statements for Dummies” class
to your best friend—if you can’t, keep going. Most importantly, understand the P&L statement—
you’ll be working with that 80% of the time. Second, get a handle on the statement of cash flows, and
third, learn the ins and outs of the balance sheet. Like I said before, you’re going to want to stay pretty
high level. Your goal is to understand the key principles of what it means to read financial
statements and what they’re telling you about a company. You’re not looking to learn how to create
the documents, but how to read one that already exists so you can turn around and use the data in the
financial models you’re building.
Docs to be familiar with and where to find them
The most useful documents you’ll track down are the 10-K and the annual report. There are
several places to find a company’s financial statements—the best sources are the SEC’s EDGAR site
and the company’s own website.
10-K
The 10-K is an annual report summarizing a public company’s performance required by the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission. (If you’re outside the U.S., look for filings governed by public
stock listings). It contains more detail than the annual report, which can be on the fluffy side, and is
due within 60 days of the company’s fiscal year.
The 10-K becomes one of your best research tools when you’re conducting research on a
market, on a competitor, or even on your client. Every time you start with a new client, if they are
publicly traded, the first thing you should do is read their latest 10-K, their most recent annual report,
and probably the 10-Qs from the recent year as well especially if the 10-K is over 6 months old.
As you digest the information, you need to understand what extenuating circumstances they’ve
listed, how they’re reporting their results, and how their company is structured (e.g., divisions). You
also need to understand growth trajectories. From each of those pieces of information, you will pull
together the bigger picture. The test for your understanding of accounting is how well you extract a
very clear interpretation of what’s happening with a company by reading its 10-K.
I’ve pulled a few 10-Ks from Edgar spanning various industries below.
Oil and gas: Exxon-Mobil and Chevron Corporation
Pharma: Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb
Auto: Ford and GM
Air: Delta and United
When you’re doing research on the players in a market or your client’s competitors, you’ll need
to make apple-to-apple comparisons across multiple organizations. You’ll have to take different
cuts or perspectives on the data—by product, by region, by customer segment, by business unit—to
find insights, diagnose issues, and offer solutions. The 10-K is your tool to do this.
Annual report
The annual report is designed for the company’s shareholders, so it tends to be more qualitative
and less quantitative than the 10-K. These reports do sometimes provide great market context, and are
another excellent source of information. However, beware; annual reports will usually be rosy in
nature so as not to scare off investors, so pay attention to inferences and don’t believe everything you
read. To find the annual report on a company’s website, look under “Investor Relations,” “Investor
Info” or the “About us” page. You can find quarterly reports in the same location.
Here are a few examples of annual reports from name brand websites:
Amazon annual reports and quarterly results
Weyerhaeuser annual reports and quarterly earnings
Disney financial information
Abercrombie & Fitch annual reports and quarterly financial statements
Molson Coors annual reports and quarterly earnings reports
10-Q
The 10-Q is another document you may use. Similar to the 10-K, it’s an excellent resource for
financial data. However, it’s filed quarterly and it’s not quite as extensive. Here are 3 examples to
peruse:
Bank of America 10-Q
Office Depot 10-Q
Sempra Energy 10-Q
Here’s an exercise I often suggest for my Black Belt Interview clients after they get offers. As
a hint: pick companies that you enjoy reading about. I recommend picking businesses you’re
interested in for 2 reasons. One, so you have some familiarity with them. Two, so you’re not bored to
death—this is some dry reading!
1. Pick two of your favorite companies, preferably in the same industry.
2. Read through their 10-Ks, annual reports and 10-Qs (if applicable), noting the similarities
and differences between each and pulling out the key performance metrics. Create a 10slide minimum PowerPoint presentation detailing the operations of each company and any
notable relative strengths and weaknesses.
3. At the end, make a list of 3 things you’d recommend investigating about each company
that you think could enhance its performance.
Online resources
We’ve compiled a 101 refresher on accounting terms and financial documents. Your goal is to
get familiar with them to get a head start, not to become an expert overnight—you’ll have plenty of
chances to hone your skills on the job.
Investopedia’s “Read the Balance Sheet” gives an overview of the balance sheet and includes a
60-second video on the parts of the balance sheet--assets, liabilities, and equity.
Another short and helpful read is “How to read a company’s balance sheet”.
eHow money has several good articles:
“What are the basics of a balance sheet?”
“Comparative balance sheet analysis”
“How to do a balance sheet analysis”
“How to analyze a balance sheet”
They also have a balance sheet tutorial.
Finally, AccountingCoach is another good resource for accounting basics.
Quizzes and terms
Take a quiz on how to analyze a balance sheet, or check out a variety of crosswords and Q&A
exercises.
Test yourself on terminology. Study these 11 top accounting terms until you can define them in
1 sentence on your own.
Income Statement
Balance Sheet
Statement of Cash Flows
Gross income
Net income
Operating income
Gross profit
Asset
Liability
Equity
Cash flow
Or use Financial Modeling Guide’s longer list of fundamental accounting and financial terms.
As you learn and test yourself on accounting terms and definitions, it’s important to keep in
mind how similar terms compare and differ, and how each is derived. For example, what is gross
income versus gross profit? How do you look for operating income versus net income versus gross
income?
Books on Amazon
If you want something more substantial, I recommend these books.
Understanding Financial Statements (Fraser and Ormiston)
Principles of Accounting (Needles, Powers, Crosson)
Note, many of these resources are geared towards accounting professionals. They’ll get into
fine-tuned detail, like how to determine whether an entry is a debit or a credit, or how to handle
accrued taxes at the end of the year. You need to read from the perspective of a consultant. That
means, keep yourself from getting wrapped up in the details of doing accounting, and focus on
understanding the underlying principles.
That’s why taking an accounting class isn’t helpful, in case you were considering it. The class
will teach you to create accounting documents, but what you need is to be able to read, interpret, and
assess the docs for strategic insights.
Prep Step 6: Market research
Finally, we reach the sixth Prep Step: market research. You will do some market research on
your own, but the bulk of your research will come from support staff or, more often, companies
who specialize in market research. The reports you get from these companies will be purchased by
your firm, for anywhere from $100 to $5,000, and billed back to the client.
Let’s say you’re working on a business case for a hedge fund client. They’re looking to buy a 5%
share in a top trucking company. Your job would be to:
1. Research the players in the trucking market
2. Research the market growth and fundamental demand of core customer segments (produce, fuel,
auto, lumber).
You’re not going to do all that investigation by yourself—it would take years, and you’d
probably end up with inaccurate data after all that work. In fact, because of the nature of the client’s
goals, you have 2-4 weeks. What do you do? You leverage the databases you have access to and get
what you need.
These are 5 databases that will be most commonly available to you.
1. Factiva
2. Thomson Reuters
3. Euromonitor International
4. Bloomberg
5. Dunn & Bradstreet
All of these databases are going to be relevant in your research process, so all five are worth
investigating before your first day. Because they do play such a major role in your job, the firm will
probably walk you through them in orientation. They’ll give you your password and quickly cover
how to use the database, which is likely to go over your head if you haven’t done at least a little bit of
reading on them beforehand. Here are some facts and figures on each database.
Factiva
You can use Factiva to search for articles from national and international newspapers, industry
and trade publications, and top business sources. They house U.S. and international company
overviews and offer a source for current news. Their archival collection spans 50 years and includes
more than 31,000 sources. Check out their “Inside Out Guide” for detail on what they provide.
Unless you have access to a paid subscription, you won’t be able to see how the database
works. What you can do is scan YouTube for tutorials and how tos on using the system. Here’s one on
searching basics and another on how to find news.
I also like this “Top Ten Reasons to Love Factiva” page that the EMU library posted.
Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters is a giant international multimedia news agency, providing information for
businesses and professionals in the financial, legal, tax and accounting, healthcare, science, and
media markets worldwide. They have more than 60,000 staff in over 100 countries. For an in-depth
manual on using their system, access “How to find data on Thomson Reuters quickly and easily”.
To get an idea for some of the information they provide, browse the white papers and case
studies sections on their site.
Euromonitor International
This independent company based in London specializes in strategy research for consumer
markets. They provide market analysis and custom business intelligence solutions, as well as custom
research services from their offices spanning 80 countries.
The Rollins Library published a quick and dirty guide to using Euromonitor, including how to
get a profile of a nation’s consumers and how to generate a list of comparative data for a specific
research question.
For examples of research, you can request a free download of their full market research report
on Global Travel Trends or a free download of their whitepaper on The Internationalisation of
Retailing.
Bloomberg
Bloomberg is an online database that provides current and historical financial quotes, business
news, and statistical information and research on 52,000+ companies. The firm boasts over 15,000
employees in almost 200 locations worldwide.
Stanford’s Graduate School of Business created a good quick guide to using the database.
YouTube also has a few tutorial videos on the system—like the Introduction to Bloomberg Video,
which shows you the user screen interface and walks you through a typical search.
You typically won’t have access to the Bloomberg database on your computer. Instead, there
will be a terminal set up in the office that’s used only for accessing the Bloomberg database.
Dunn & Bradstreet
D&B is a source of commercial information and insight on businesses—specifically, credit
reports on companies. Their database contains more than 205 million business records on over 220
million companies. This site gives a summary of the various types of reports available from D&B.
Again, you typically won’t have access to D&B on your computer, but will instead use a
terminal set up somewhere in the office.
Key skills
When you’re building a presentation or doing market research, get familiar with the resources
you have available to you, then spend some time thinking through your plan of action. If your client is
Samsung and you’re looking to find data on competitors for their cell phones, you’re not going to be
able to search “Samsung smartphone competitors” in Bloomberg and find anything coherent. You’ll
have to develop a process for obtaining the information you’re looking for, and it may take several
steps.
In this example—finding Samsung’s competitors for smartphones—your first step could be as
simple as visiting Amazon.com and searching for smartphones. What are your options? Which brands
come up? For each smartphone provider, go to Edgar and find the company’s 10-K. Print out a copy
and do a line-by-line review. To determine market share, identify how much each business sold in
smartphones compared to the total smartphones sold.
Exercise
Here’s an exercise you can do to try a market research problem while getting practice on
interpreting the 10-K.
1. Look up the following on Apple’s 10-K for 2012:
Total assets:
Total liabilities:
Total equity:
How cash at beginning of the year changed in the last 3 reporting years:
Net income:
2. Google is your client and they’re looking to get into the TV set top box business. You know
that Apple is a current leading player in the market. Now that you’ve familiarized yourself
with Apple’s financial reports, create a 10-slide presentation in PowerPoint that defines
Apple’s place in the market (e.g., market share). In summary, list 3 advantages that Google
has vs. Apple in this product segment. Similarly, list 3 weaknesses that they will have to
work on.
Core client types
At the top consulting firms, you’ll be doing market research for 4 core client types:
1. Private corporations
2. Federal agencies
3. Private equity companies
4. Hedge fund
Let’s take a look at each one individually.
Core client type #1: Private corporations
Private corporations are usually looking for 1 of 4 things —
1. Entering a new business—they’ll want to understand the demand for the product/service and
related potential of that business
2. Competitor analysis—what are their competitors doing, how much of the market do they own,
and how is the market segmented?
3. Cost analysis—who are their suppliers? Do they have alternatives? What’s happening in the
supply/demand for key suppliers, and how much power do they have over our client?
4. Customer analysis—what customer segments are growing? Which ones aren’t?
Core client type #2: Federal agencies
In contrast, federal agencies are more often than not looking for best practice research—who
has already done what we want to do and how did they do it? They’re much less innovative than
private clients so they’re looking for the safest, most effective ways of doing things. Their proposals
will go through committees, votes and referenda on public ballots, so they are covering their bases
during the research process. As a consultant, your work will revolve around compiling case studies
and examples with specific suggestions for a program or solution they’re considering implementing.
Core client type #3: Private equity companies
These clients usually buy an entire company or a whole section of a company, operate it, turn it
around, and resell it. They’ll raise a huge source of funds, say $1B, and then use it to buy out
struggling companies—similar to flipping a house. Private equity clients want to know where the
market is headed—they don’t want to buy a company on the brink of tanking, or enter a market
where growth is slowing. They also want to know about competitors to ensure there are no unseen
threats.
Core client type #4: Hedge fund
These clients buy and sell public stocks, usually representing ownership of a small percentage of
the company, in order to influence the market. After riding a curve upwards, they sell the stock,
looking to make a handsome profit. They are interested in similar research to private equity
companies—if they understand fundamental demand that could affect company performance, their
hedges (often in the $B) are more likely to pan out with tremendous upside.
6 Prep Steps wrap up & action items
To recap this lengthy section, there are 6 Prep Steps that are absolutely essential to starting
off as a top performer—Excel, Access, PowerPoint, customer information, accounting, and market
research.
Excel - Action items
As a new analyst, you’ll be spending a lot of time creating models in Excel. It’s absolutely
crucial that you’re competent on the 5 factors that make a great model—formatting and layout,
flexibility to respond to changes in inputs, knowledge of formulas, linking within documents, and
pivot tables. You’ll also need to have a handle on key functionality such as creating formulas,
performing data analysis, cleaning data, etc.
Here are 3 Excel Prep action items to get you started on your way to mastering Excel:
1. Go through all of the free Excel tutorials we gave you above (6+ hours).
2. Build your first financial model (3+ hours).
3. Sign up for Mergers & Inquisitions' financial modeling course (10+ hours).
Access - Action item
Access, on the other hand, is not as widely used as Excel—but it’s still a great idea to
familiarize yourself with the tool. You’ll use it to enter, store, and pull data when you’re dealing with
huge data sets that have outgrown Excel. So how can you get to know Access if you don’t already use
it?
I recommend that you start with 1 Access Prep action item:
1. Go through all the free online tutorials we gave you above (4+ hours).
PowerPoint - Action items
Without a doubt you’ll be using PowerPoint on a regular basis in your new role. Cut down
your on-the-job learning time by getting familiar now with your firm’s PowerPoint presentation style,
including their preferences for headers, flow, format, footnotes, and graph styles. You’ll also need to
have working knowledge of specific formatting tools, like alignment, rulers, snapping to a grid,
master slides, and page numbers. Not only will these skills make you look smart; they’ll also help you
avoid major PowerPoint-inducing headaches.
My list of 4 PowerPoint Prep action items is:
1. Go through all of the free PowerPoint tutorials we gave you above (4+ hours).
2. Create a 10-page minimum PowerPoint presentation that uses the key formatting tools—
alignment, rulers, snapping to a grid, master slides, and page numbers (2+ hours).
3. Re-create 1-2 presentations from your firm, matching font, header style, graph style, and coloring
(to name a few) (2+ hours).
4. Find 5-10 examples of your firm’s presentations and read through them. You can find examples
on SlideShare or the firm’s website (3+ hours). Note your observations for each of the items
below:
Style
Headers
Flow
Format
Footnotes
Graph styles
Customer information - Action items
When it comes to collecting and measuring customer information, you’ll use two methods—
surveys and focus groups. Even though most of the time you won’t be the one who actually creates or
conducts the survey, or facilitates the focus group, it’s extremely beneficial to understand the system
used to collect data, if you want to be a top performer.
There are 5 Customer Information Prep action steps you can take to get ready for your role as
a top newbie consultant:
1. Read through all of the free online resources we gave you above (3+ hours).
2. Create a mock survey in SurveyMonkey, send it to 10 friends, and then analyze your results (2+
hours). Focus on building unbiased questions.
3. Create a mock form in Wufoo, send it to 10 friends, and then use Excel to analyze your results
(2+ hours).
4. Make sure you can give a brief definition of survey, focus group, SkipLogic, and 6 key question
types without looking at your notes (2+ hours).
5. Scan through the firm’s PowerPoint presentations again. This time look for customer information
obtained through surveys and/or focus groups. List as many as you can, then take notes on how
the question was asked and what data was analyzed for it (2+ hours).
Accounting - Action items
When I stipulated accounting as a Prep Step for becoming a top consultant, I knew I’d scare
many of you! But I’m not talking about the accounting you learned in your Accounting class here. I’m
talking about strategic accounting—understanding the terms that are on core financial statements,
like the P&L statement, the 10K, and the annual report. Without a high-level understanding of
accounting principles to support your research and help you make good recommendations, you’ll
never be a good consultant, let alone a great one.
It’s not impossible to brush up on accounting, even if you come from non-business or nonconsulting backgrounds. Here are 5 Accounting Prep action steps you can take to get started:
1. Go through all of the free online tutorials and articles we gave you above (4+ hours). As you go
through them, remember to read them from the perspective of a consultant. Don’t get lost in the
fine-tuned detail.
2. Take the online accounting quiz we gave you above (<1 hour).
3. Complete the terminology test on the top 11 accounting terms we listed above (<1 hour).
4. Read through the books Understanding Financial Statements (Fraser and Ormiston) and
Principles of Accounting (Needles, Powers, Crosson) (6+ hours).
5. Complete the research and presentation exercise we gave you above (2+ hours).
Market research - Action items
Market research is our last of the 6 Prep Steps. You will do some market research on your own,
but the bulk of your research will come from your support staff or will be purchased from
companies who specialize in market research. You will have access to a set of databases when you
have to do your own research. The most common are: Factiva, Thomson Reuters, Euromonitor
International, Bloomberg, and Dunn & Bradstreet.
There are 2 Market Research Prep action steps you can take here:
1. Orient yourself to each of the databases by visiting the company’s website (2+ hours).
2. Do the market research exercise we gave you above (2+ hours).
After you’ve completed your 6 Prep Steps (hint—get started right away!), you should allow 2-4
weeks to complete the remainder of the tasks we suggest below. And congrats—the big Day One is
fast approaching.
Next we’ll share with you a snapshot of the 8 traits of every top consultant. Do these sound like
you? If so, you’re one step ahead already.
8 traits of every top consultant
Top consultants glide through the halls, make their work look effortless, and get along with
everyone. They just seem to have the “it” factor. But what is “it”? Can “it” be defined? Can you learn
“it”? Are you programmed for top consultant status?
I thought about that for a long time, and then I set out to define exactly what the “it-factor” is.
I came up with a set of 8 traits that all top consultants have. Some of these are definitely learnable.
Others, if you don’t have them naturally, will take some focused training to master.
Here are the 8 traits of every top consultant:
1. Insane work ethic
2. Results-oriented
3. Analytical
4. Business acumen
5. Team focused
6. Big picture-oriented
7. Resourceful
8. Strong communicator
So what does each of these look like in a consulting context? I’ll give you an idea.
1. Insane work ethic
You’re not a 9-5er. Instead, you’ll put in what it takes—3 all-nighters in a row, weekends, etc.
—to get the job done.
2. Results-oriented
You are driving the momentum of your project or workstream, not relying on others to drive you.
You’re managing yourself as well as encouraging others. When you send email updates, you always
include next steps.
3. Analytical
You’re an incredible modeler with an eye that self-corrects imperfections, and when you finish a
presentation, you’re able to summarize in a quick 3-4 bullet recap. You’re also scarily detail-oriented
and obsessed about being zero-defect without losing sight of the big picture.
4. Business acumen
You’re savvy about business and current events. You love reading The Economist and the WSJ
and you’re always hungry for business news. You can draw easy-to-understand insights from business
culture and news.
5. Team focused
You are both a team player and a team facilitator. You’re not a diva who’s trying to get herself
recognized by management or stand out obnoxiously among his peers. You do your own work, and
then offer to lend a hand to other people.
6. Big picture-oriented
You understand what drives people at every level of the firm, and you do what you can in light
of the big picture. You understand your role, but you also understand everyone else’s. You always
make other people look good because you understand what they need.
7. Resourceful
You answer your own questions whenever possible before asking someone else. You do your
homework before getting help. You don’t stop at obstacles.
8. Strong communicator
Your communication style is clear and consistent—whether it’s verbal or written, in a one-onone setting or within groups. You possess strong interpersonal skills—the ability to initiate tough
conversations and propose compromises to diffuse stress and tension.
How do you measure up?
So how do you measure up? Find out. Score yourself from 1-5 on each of the 8 traits of every
top consultant. 1 is poor and 5 is great. Then have a co-worker, professor, friend, or supervisor score
you. This will give you some perspective on your admitted and perceived weak areas.
Once you’ve identified your weak areas, come up with 3 things you can start doing now to
strengthen them before you start on the job. If you’re weak in business acumen, for example, 1 of your
3 action items could be to sign up for the WSJ RSS feed and read it every morning. Be serious about
improving on your weak areas, but also have some fun with this!
Here’s an example:
Weak area: Business acumen
1. Sign up for Wall Street Journal RSS feed.
2. Review and summarize P&L statements for 10 companies.
3. Review annual reports for 3 companies, and then make a list of 3 things you’d recommend
investigating that you think could enhance the performance of each company.
Weak area: Strong communicator
1. Sign up for Toastmasters
2. Write your elevator pitch and start using it
Weak area: Results-oriented
1. Summarize accomplishments at the end of each day
No regrets: 11 mistakes you don’t want to make as a new consultant
Like most new hires, I was eager to please and excited to get to work at Bain. However, unlike
you (you’re reading this book, after all), I was absolutely clueless as I ventured into my first true
corporate environment. As you read my story, you’ll understand the context for the insider tips and
tricks that I share—and will be able to benefit from insights I wish I’d had from day one!
I started with my tiny off-cycle class of 3, but after 2 weeks of training, none of us were
immediately staffed. To my surprise, I found myself “on the beach” on what I thought would be my
first day of real work. So, I did what most logical people would do—I took the firm at their word,
and didn’t come into the office because “no face-time was required.” Who knew when I would get
another chance to take a vacation, right? So, I spent my third week on the payroll at Bain taking a trip
to visit my family, 12 hours away.
My decision didn’t seem to produce any backlash—no one gave me a hard time or even
mentioned that I wasn’t at the office. My career wasn’t at risk. There were repercussions, however
—I just didn’t feel them immediately. They were realizations I had later when I began to understand
what opportunities I had missed during my absence.
In college I had heard of this thing called “work/life balance,” and I was bound and determined
not to be taken advantage of by corporate slave drivers—so I set really clear boundaries between my
work and my personal life, getting to work and leaving the office on time. Had I sold out for the first
year and earned the “work/life” balance, instead of forcing it through inflexibility at the beginning, I
could have defined myself as an unparalleled top performer early on. Instead, after coming from a
storybook interview process where I was the top recruit on the east coast, I was just above average
after my first few months on the job.
Like I said, I wasn’t even close to being a poor performer. I’m not going to talk about ways to
keep from failing miserably on the job. You’ve made it into this prestigious industry, so that’s not a
core concern. Instead, I am going to show you how to stand out among your peers so that, as your
career unfolds, you have every possible door open to you—both at the firm, and after as well.
So what were my learnings? I filtered them down into these 11 key mistakes you don’t want to
make as a new consultant.
1. Not taking yourself, and the job, seriously enough.
2. Asking too many questions.
3. Being silent.
4. Assuming you’ve already proven yourself.
5. Working with staff that are too senior.
6. Not introducing yourself to support staff.
7. Missing face-time opportunities.
8. Working from remote locations.
9. Not being a pro-active communicator.
10. Not pre-planning for meetings.
11. Not clarifying expectations.
Let’s take a deep dive into each of these 11 key mistakes you want to avoid.
Mistake #1:
Not taking yourself, and the job, seriously enough
One of the main issues that a lot of new consultants, especially recent grads and MBAs, have is
transitioning successfully from the college environment to the professional world. In college
you’re having fun, dress is casual (pajamas, anyone?), and there’s a lot of banter and debate. There
are a lot of things going on and you want to be a part of all of them. You’re appreciated and guided,
and as a senior you’re at the top of your class.
Then you join your new firm, and you’re accompanied by a whole lot of other new hires in your
same shoes. You’re no longer on top—you’re at the bottom of the totem pole. You’re also surrounded
by people that have all sorts of different personalities, and you will have to successfully collaborate
with everyone—no picking and choosing, whether you like it or not. Many recent college grads
struggle with this transition, failing to make the jump from college life to life as a consultant quickly
—and utterly failing to take the job and themselves seriously enough. Don’t be one of them.
So what does it mean to “be serious”? Are we telling you to be stodgy and boring? Well, yeah, a
little bit. You can always lighten up later on. Better to err on the side of being too serious at the
beginning than to curse yourself as the guy or girl whose head is still in party-mode.
Here are a few tips to guide you.
5 tips for “being serious”
Tip #1: Leave your evening activities at home.
Don’t recount your encounter with the hottie at the bar last weekend, or the latest episode of
New Girl while you’re at the office. Save your raunchiest stories for friends outside of work for the
first 3 months on the job. Safe stories—ones you would tell your mom, like what restaurant you tried
or the new running route you found—are fair game.
Tip #2: Demonstrate responsibility.
You’re working with professional adults—show them you know how to do your research,
identify problems, and offer solutions without being guided every step of the way.
Tip #3: Be aware of unspoken etiquette requirements.
We’re talking about all sorts of etiquette here—phone, text, and social networking. For the first
3 months, have your personal cell phone OFF while you’re at work, and don’t dare to check your
Facebook and Twitter accounts. These are entirely off limits except for lunch breaks. Remember,
senior partners are a full generation older than you, and texting during a meeting is a sign you aren’t
ready for the responsibility you’ve been given.
Tip #4: Dress for the office.
Yes, wearing a seersucker outfit at any point in your first couple of months on the job is barred.
Dressing in anything that suggests you’re here for a frat party instead of a serious job that other
people, i.e., clients, are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for is a huge no-no. Sorry guys, no
bow ties.
Tip #5: Be reserved.
If you try to be a friend, or act relaxed and casual with your colleagues or clients at the
beginning, you will never regain their respect. Instead, start out crisp, reserved, and very put-together
to communicate professionalism. Yes, we are again saying you should be a little boring in your first
few months. But that’s okay. You’re not there to make friends in those first few months—that will
come naturally over time—your job is to prove yourself worthy and become a go-to guy or gal.
The key here is to have an awareness of yourself and your behaviors, and apply the “serious”
factor to everything at the office—from the way you greet the receptionist to the way you manage your
desk and your workspace; from the way that you dress to the way you verbally present yourself. Even
something as seemingly small as slouching in your chair because it’s the end of the day and you’re
tired can be interpreted as apathy.
If you’ve had a legitimate internship experience, you’ve had some exposure to working in an
office and the expectations you can expect in a professional setting. It doesn’t guarantee you know
everything, though—follow the tips above to avoid mistakes.
What about after hours?
There are going to be a lot of opportunities to hang out at a bar after work, especially in the first
few weeks. The firm is going to host mixers, socials, and other fun stuff following your rigorous
training. New hires are always tempted to take advantage of the face-time and the free food and
booze. As you attend these functions, undergrads should keep this in mind—in every early interaction,
your goal is to act like you are 6 years older than you are.
What does that mean, exactly? That means you should act like you’re more mature than you
probably are, and you should keep your personal life, and even a lot of your personal experiences,
close to the vest. Give the impression that you’re there for the job, and you’re focused on doing well.
Like I said, everybody will appreciate it when you are able to relax a little bit later, but you’re laying
the groundwork for your perceived value in the first 3 months.
For MBAs and experienced hires transitioning into consulting, this should be less of a concern
for you. Yours is a different reality—from day one you’re being evaluated on the Partner track.
Thinking big picture is your goal—how is my small contribution going to affect the
performance/sales of the firm? And yes—you might have to be creative. Actions that show you’re
thinking from a position of ownership are going to reflect really well on you, but don’t be a lame kiss
up or try to play equal to your supervisors.
As with your pre-consulting days, keep the drinks to a 3-drink maximum at any one social
engagement—even when the new recruits come to town soon after you’ve started.
Mistake #2:
Asking too many questions
One of the hardest things to do when you’re first joining a firm, and you have no idea what
you’re doing, is to refrain from asking too many questions. Again, most of you are coming from an
academic culture where it was appropriate and even encouraged to ask questions—you may have
even heard that there are no stupid questions. You’re supposed to be an activist, criticize the status
quo, question everything, right?
It may even seem like asking lots of questions is one of the core messages during your training
process—that your goal is to go through the process of asking clarifying questions until you fully
understand. Inside the consulting firm, however, things don’t really operate that way.
There is a difference between asking questions and asking smart questions, and almost no one
knows how to walk that line in the early days of the job. Contrary to what you’re used to in school or
other work environments, there are stupid questions in consulting! And if you ask them, you will
sound stupid.
More important than asking questions is that you must demonstrate the ability to figure things out
on your own. Ask questions when you’re stuck or unsure, but determine your plan first. Refrain from
bombarding others with annoying questions that may not even matter in the end; instead, ask
questions only after pre-meditating what you believe a correct response would be, and then check
your plan of action with someone before careening off into hours of wasted effort. After all, the firm
hired you for your ability to come up with a hypothesis. Develop a plan, develop an approach, and
then check that with someone.
I’m not proposing in any way that you don’t ask for help when you’re lost. Let’s be clear—you
wouldn’t want to mess up just because you thought it was wrong to ask questions. I’m saying that
there’s an appropriate way to check in that barely seems like asking a question.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say in the first 4 weeks you’re conducting a market research
assignment. You’ve been given the task and you’re excited to get started. You have no real direction
on where to start, but you take a crack anyway. An hour into it, you realize you literally have no foggy
clue what you’re supposed to be doing. After another hour you realize that you are completely lost
and have no idea where you’re going. You don’t want to waste all of your time in a black hole, right?
So, what should you do?
You have 3 options. Most people take the first option, which is the easiest way out. Namely,
you find somebody, anybody, in the firm and you ask them what in the world you should do. Just
remember—asking an open-ended question in consulting will remind them you are the new guy,
which is not the impression you’re going for.
Your second option is to ask your supervisor. This is even worse, because asking a supervisor
will quickly send you well on your way to annoying the very person you want most to impress.
The third option, the one that I’m proposing, is that you come up with a plan, even if it’s a
crappy one, and you ask someone to validate the plan. If you do that, you’ve demonstrated that you’re
being proactive. Their answer might be the same as it would have if you had asked a blind question,
but probably not—better questions get better answers. More importantly, you’re beginning to set
yourself up for what is considered top performer mentality—somebody who takes initiative and
thinks through potential solutions instead of taking the easy way out by asking open-ended questions.
If you ask open-ended questions without any premeditated effort, you are essentially asking someone
else to do your work for you.
You’ve got to start thinking with the mindset of a consultant. You’re the one who’s supposed
to know the answers. At the very least, before going to anyone for help you should have a clear
identification of what your problem is and some basic plan in place to solve it.
I didn’t learn this lesson until a few months into the job. After I got that first review, I had my
sights set on the top bucket and I was thinking about the key differentiators between people at the firm.
Nobody told me about this one, but the writing was definitely on the wall…literally.
One of my managers at Bain had a saying up on his white board: “Don’t bring me problems,
bring me solutions.” He required a plan from anyone who came into his office. No one was allowed
to come in and say, “We have a problem with this model.” However, someone could come in and say,
“We’ve got a situation here and we have come up with three options to resolve it. Which one do you
think is best?” Yes, that would work. But coming in with a problem and no solution was a completely
futile exercise, and a team member who did that was publicly berated on his way out of the office.
Being prepared before asking questions will keep you safe from public humiliation, and it
will also set you up when it comes to understanding the hierarchy you should use when you actually
do need to go find information.
Mistake #3:
Being silent
Moving to the opposite end of the spectrum, being silent is just as fatal to your early career as
asking too many questions. You were hired as someone with a brain, an opinion, and thoughts that
count. You may be fresh out of school, but you’re not in an administrative function sitting by ready to
take orders, or following people around on a job shadow. You were hired to contribute, so
contribute!
Contributions aren’t always opinions, like “I think the best way to do it is…” It’s probably best
to steer clear of strong opinions in your first 3 months anyway. Contributions can be questions or
suggestions. “Have we thought about this?” or “Are we considering this as well?” are powerful ways
to add your voice to a conversation without being too pushy.
By now I’ve more than likely scared you into being serious at work and being more on guard in
the beginning. Some of you might have a tendency to over-correct by sitting quietly in meetings, trying
to absorb as much information as possible—but don’t be completely silent! You can ask too many
questions, but silence is at the other extreme. Your goal is to proactively find a way to balance the
two of those.
One of my mentors at Bain, a female Manager, gave me some of the best advice I’ve received
during my career. She had noticed that I was usually quiet and understated in meetings, but that when I
did contribute I gave exceptional input. Her advice was simple and brilliant—she suggested I make a
comment in the first 5 minutes of any group conversation in order to be considered a legitimate
participator. People who take part in the early discussion set the tone and are automatically
considered key players. The comment didn’t have to be substantial or wow my colleagues. It just had
to be enough to make my presence known. I tried it, and the results were amazing. I’ve utilized her
advice in every business meeting I’ve been in since.
Again, a lot of people, because of the desire to speak out, are going to throw anything out there.
The goal is not only to make an introduction of yourself, or pose some kind of question in the first
five minutes. It’s got to be accompanied by a real contribution, which could be something as simple
as validating a colleague’s comment. “Eric here. I’m working on XXX. I just wanted to confirm this
is what you’re saying…” It does not need to be complicated; it can be something very, very simple
that you can’t mess up.
Women have to pay the most attention to this. They’re the easiest to overlook, especially in an
overwhelmingly male environment. As an illustration, picture a 22-year-old woman straight out of
undergrad, in a meeting room with 8 wealthy C-level clients in their 50s and managers and partners in
their 30s and 40s. In reality, that analyst could be the daughter of almost every other person present. If
you’re the 22-year-old female, your confidence needs to be bullet-proof, and your communication
needs to be up to scratch. Specifically, women should lead with data-supported contributions; don’t
try to be “one of the boys,” but show off your intellect with hard-hitting, relevant facts and insights.
Why does being silent hurt you? By not contributing to the discussion, you’re putting yourself in
a position of inferiority, saying (without words, obviously) that you don’t have anything to contribute.
The longer you wait in any group conversation, or on a call, or even in a client presentation, to add
your voice, the more difficult it becomes. Get into the habit early, starting with your first meeting.
As you practice, you’ll begin to feel more comfortable doing it, and before you know others will be
looking to you for direction.
In fact, start now. In your next group meeting, even before you are on the job, make sure you
speak up within the first 5 minutes with a comment or question that contributes in a meaningful way.
This could be uncomfortable for some of you—especially if you’re used to letting someone else lead.
I promise, it’s better to get over the hurdle now than wait until you’re being scrutinized on the job!
One quick note: there is one exception to this rule. In major interim or final client update
meetings with a partner presenting, only speak when spoken to unless you’re a manager or above –
period. Do not be the control freak attention-getter, or you risk being berated in front of the whole
team (if not worse).
Mistake #4:
Assuming you’ve already proven yourself
Consulting firms hand-pick the best and the brightest from top schools, so you’re obviously no
dummy. The interview process you went through was grueling, and getting your offer was more
competitive than getting into MIT. So does that mean you get to show up and relax for the first few
weeks?
Many new hires will assume that because they’ve been selected to join the firm, they’ve already
proved themselves to be substantial contributors to the company. To some extent this is true—but
what you’ve proved is your potential to be successful at the job. What you haven’t proved yet,
however, is that you’ll actually been able to fulfill the promise you’ve made. There’s a huge
difference between having the capacity to do the job and actually performing.
In other words, you’ve only proved you SHOULD BE ABLE TO do the job, not that you can
do it WELL.
Here’s a good way to think about it. Take a U.S. Marine recruit. By being accepted into the
Marine Corps, he’s proven that he has some core capabilities—e.g., he’s fit enough to run and lift,
he’s healthy, and he’s got good eyesight. He may even have passed tests for other qualifications, like
math or writing. He hasn’t yet proven that he’s ready for combat, however. That’s will only be
determined through rigorous training, simulations, and finally actual combat.
Think of your first day as a consultant as day one of boot camp—you have to assume you need to
prove yourself instead of assuming that you’ve already been proven. Don’t take anything for granted.
Assume that no one knows how capable you are, and that they don’t understand the quality of your
work. This will force you to be extra thorough and remind you to communicate proactively. Remind
yourself every day that you’re there to prove that you’re capable of the job—and not only of average
capability, but the most capable staff member out there.
Mistake #5:
Working with staff that are too senior
One of the greatest urges you’ll experience early on is to work directly with the Engagement
Manager on your first project. You recognize immediately, intuitively even, that this person is going
to be important. They’re going to write your recommendation, they’re going to write your review,
they’re going to be the one who will ultimately rate your overall performance. Contrary to the pull
you’ll feel, it is best to work as little as possible with them early on. Why? It’s like attempting to
speak a second language with somebody who’s fluent—it can be exhilarating, but if you are socially
aware and they are busy you will feel like an absolute idiot.
The key for this is to understand what qualifies as appropriate interaction with different levels of
seniority. The short version is this—you collaborate with your peers, you seek the advice of your
direct supervisors, and you present to the most senior staff.
Essentially, you should try to withhold almost everything you’re doing and everything you’re
saying from managers and partners until it’s been reviewed by your peers or other people not senior
enough to have influence on your performance evaluation. You want to focus on establishing your
role as someone who presents to senior staff once you’ve finalized a project, not someone who tries
to collaborate with them on a solution. You shouldn’t be asking them questions or working through
answers with them—all that nitty gritty work is happening behind the scenes. You’re bringing a
solution, or your piece of the project, to them at the end with a very thorough explanation of
everything that you’ve done.
It’s logical that you would find yourself trying to interact with senior level staff—if you didn’t,
you’d be missing out on one of the opportunities to take advantage of really valuable resources at the
firm. You might feel like you’re brilliant and ahead of the curve, and feel that your work is on par
with that of more senior level consultants. That may be true, but what you don’t realize is that you’re
still years behind…so far behind, in fact, that the gap completely eludes you.
What makes this even more difficult is that these senior staff who you so desperately want to get
close to may, in fact, offer to help. They are nice people, and their offers to help will be totally
sincere. They will tell you that they have an open door policy. Why? Their main concern is that
you’re going to run off on a tangent and finish something—or believe that you’ve finished something
—that is riddled with errors or is incomplete, putting them in a bind later on. Their offer to help is
predicated on their desire to preserve their own reputation.
With that same perspective in mind, your manager will ask you for a lot of communication early
on. They’re managing a new resource, an unknown, and they too want to ensure that you’re not doing
anything to make them look stupid.
So if you’re supposed to avoid your supervisor, you’re wondering, what type of
communication is appropriate? Any communication to your supervisor should be all about informing
them. Give them interim updates—lists of what you’ve done, items you’ve completed, what your plan
is—all to confirm that you’re on the same page and to demonstrate that you’re not straying too far
from the pack.
What shouldn’t you do? Don’t turn your update into a working session to figure out your next
steps—instead, send them a weekly or bi-weekly email outlining your plan for the following days and
leave it up to them to let you know if they want you to change direction.
To put it into consulting terms, you’ll be giving mini-presentations to tell them you’re on the right
track. There should be no indication of attempting to collaborate or work with a supervisor on a
peer level in your first 3 months.
A lot of the firms make a big point about the fact that they’re “flat”—having few or no levels of
management between management and staff level employees. In consulting, the smaller the office, the
more “flat” it’s likely to be, and the more pervasive this feeling of approachability will be. I got
excited about this, because I’m a firstborn child, and I have always really loved the company of
adults my parents’ age. Never in my life had I been shy about interacting with someone older than me.
Does your confidence mean you can approach managers and partners as if they’re peers? Well, it
does mean that you can approach them, but it doesn’t mean you get to waste their time. You have
to be ready to present a completely formulated thought when you’re in their presence, whether it’s in
a meeting or during a visit to their office.
At the end of the day, you are the one who dictates what you draw from your supervisor and
others in more senior positions. Know that they’ll be open to working with you in any situation, but
subliminally they’re going to be more impressed if you come to them well prepared instead of
drawing on them for resources. It’s a fine line you have to walk—you have a grace period where they
don’t expect a lot from you, but it’s also the same period in which you distinguish yourself as a top
performer.
Mistake #6:
Not introducing yourself to support staff
As a newbie you’ll be tempted to think that it’s more important to make an impression on your
superiors—senior consultants, managers, and partners—than getting to know your support staff. You
couldn’t be more mistaken. While support staff members aren’t in voting meetings (where it’s
decided whether or not you’ll be promoted), they can make or break you when it comes to delivering
results and looking great on your projects.
Who is on your support staff? They’re the research assistants you turn to when you’ve got
numbers to dig up. They’re the nerdy tech guys managing the IT for the office, overseeing your
computer, system passcodes, and permissions. They’re the people in the copy center, the receptionist
at the front entrance, and the staff of the department that books your travel. These are people who
have been at the firm for much longer than you, but their direct influence is different because
they’re not part of the professional client-facing consulting staff. They are going to be amazing
resources, and time and again you’ll rely on them for your projects.
Some typical support pods at consulting firms include:
Administrative Support
Technical Support
Research
Statistical Analysis
Presentation and Formatting
Mailing, Printing and Copying
Marketing
Travel
You will work with your support staff on a daily basis. And by work with I mean you’ll be
asking them for something—it’s rarely the other way around. At Bain, I could go to our team of
dedicated research staff and ask for information on anything – for example, the size of the industry for
baby playpens. The team would literally spend 24 hours on it, using researchers in the U.S. and in
India, to get me the info.
Although you’d like to think so—and some new hires learn this the hard way—you’re not the
only one putting in a request. Support staff pods have a lot of demands on them coming from all
over the company. If you’re ever in a tight spot and need a favor, you definitely want them on your
side. When you get a request at 5pm due at 9am the next morning, do you think someone you don’t
know is going to stay late and help you deliver those results? Not likely.
Thankfully, I picked up on this quickly. At the end of particularly grueling project, I sent
cheesecakes to the staff members who had helped our team under tight deadlines. Although I didn’t
know it at the time, 2 months later I would be in the same situation—guess who got preferential
treatment then?
Here’s a way to practice avoiding this mistake now. Introduce yourself to someone in a support
role at your office, at your school, or at your internship—make sure it’s someone you’ve never
interacted with. It could be someone in the graphics department, or accounting, or even IT. Spend a
few minutes with them learning about their world—what they complain about, what they like about
their job, and how they interact with other departments at the company.
Mistake #7:
Missing face-time opportunities
It’s true that in consulting firms you’re not required to clock in—no one’s checking to see if you
show up at 9am sharp. But there is definitely merit to coming to work on a regular schedule (8am
arrivals preferred), arriving at least ten minutes early to meetings, and working in the office on
Fridays. Without the strong presence these actions create, you’re missing out on major face-time
opportunities.
I was like many new hires—concerned about my work-life balance. Like everyone else, I had
heard the horror stories of wicked consulting firms running analysts into the ground—I didn’t want the
firm to own me!
As I mentioned before, when I found myself “on the beach” during my first 3 weeks, I took the
opportunity and made a trip home for a few days. Everyone told me, “don’t come in, there’s nothing
for you to do.” It was true—I didn’t have an assignment and there was no expectation on me to
deliver. I took their comments at face value and drove home to Pennsylvania—and in the meantime
missed out on the opportunity to learn in the office.
Thinking about it now, it really was a prime time to be present. Without the pressure of project
deliverables on me, I could offer to help out with other projects, take time to introduce myself to
support staff, and have lunch with other consultants. I didn’t know what I was giving up when I
hopped in the car and scooted out of Atlanta.
Don’t be surprised if you’re not assigned to a case right away—it’s more common than you’d
think. There were three of us in the same training class—and only one was assigned to a case right
away, while the other two of us were just hanging out. I wasn’t penalized for escaping the office—
how could I be if I was actually told I wasn’t needed there? It was never mentioned as a fault in my
reviews. When I did a self-evaluation of my first 3 months when I was writing this book, however, I
realized this was a place where I missed an opportunity.
If I had stayed in the office, I could have presented myself as someone who was incredibly eager
to work, willing to learn, and available to volunteer even on mundane extra projects. For example,
clients are always requesting proposals, and partners are always preparing proposals. Even if they
don’t charge you out for doing research to support a business development proposal, it’s a great
opportunity to learn. Another option would be to offer to assist somebody else who’s just a little bit
more senior than you, maybe by a year or two, on one of their key projects.
All you’re doing is showing up in the office and being productive, even if nobody knows what it
is. But all that time you’re learning, and you’re showing up, and you’re there—your ears are hearing,
your eyes are seeing, and you’re absorbing the culture. You don’t want to miss out on opportunities
to demonstrate your presence in the office, and the fact that it’s important to you to be there.
For your first 3 months, plan to arrive early and stay late every day. Plan to work weekends,
maybe just for 1-2 hours, and even if it’s not required of you. A 60-hour week is something you can
always step back from, but it will be very difficult to establish yourself as a top performer if you’re a
strict 9-5er from the start (and yes, it is possible to pull 40 hour weeks in consulting—at least for
seasons). Working a regular 8-hour day might be within the realm of possibility, but if you establish
yourself as a 9-5er who doesn’t work weekends, the people you work with will always have this
lurking question about your loyalty to the company.
When there’s a problem, you want your team to think of calling you—because you’re available,
you’re already at the office, or you’re just 10 minutes away. Being useful and making yourself
available in your first 3 months will set a tone for the rest of your career. If your colleagues know
you’re not usually in on weekends, they’re not going to call you in for reinforcement when an
urgent client situation arises on Saturday—they’ll call Jim, another new hire who seems to be always
available and eager to help. And who do you think will get props at the next quarterly update? Yep—
Jim.
Be Jim. In everything you do, give off an attitude that you’re available, you’re eager, and you’re
willing to work. Like I said, you can always set boundaries later on, but it is very difficult to
establish yourself as somebody who’s of necessity when you set those boundaries too early.
If you have a direct manager on your case, make sure they see you at your desk when they’re
leaving—that means you leave after them, every day. Even for training, show up an hour-and-a-half
early and spend the extra time at your desk organizing yourself, checking your email, etc. There’s no
reason to rush in or out when it comes to being there early or staying late, and it establishes a sense of
calm and approachability over you.
One of the benefits of getting into the office early, before everyone else, is that you don’t always
have to use that time for work. You can use it for anything you want, like reading news, reading the
company blog, or looking up the 10-Ks for some of the firm’s clients.
Some of my clients have asked me—“But what about the fact that the firms say face-time doesn’t
matter?” My response? “If you’re a terrible performer, face-time doesn’t help you make the grade.
But you’re more likely to be a top performer if you put in the face-time, and perception is one of
the defining forces of reality, so do yourself a favor and be present—as much as possible.”
For the first 3 months, you’re an unknown quantity. The company isn’t exactly sure who
they’ve hired, apart from what they know from your resume and the hour or two they spent with you in
interviews. By being in the office and getting as much face-time as possible, you’re establishing that
you’re mature, you’re capable, and you’re able to do the job.
Although you may at times be more productive working from home—and you will be given the
option—avoid it completely in your first few months. You will be set up to work from home—the
firm may even offer to pay for your phone and internet service because they want you to be connected
24/7. But when you’re working at home, you’re missing the ability to have face-time opportunities.
You’re taking yourself out of a possibility for being available for research when you’re in the office.
In the beginning, plan to spend almost no time working from home. Keep your social calendar
clear so you can work late and stay at the office. If you need to, order food in from somewhere nearby
(I suggest you develop some favorite take-out spots). If you need to take a cab home because you’re
working until 1am and the metro is no longer running, do it.
Should you date in your first 3 months on the job? Probably not the best idea, but if you do, make
sure you’re very clear with your date that your time is not your own—not yet, anyway.
When you’re tempted to give in and tell yourself, “Hey, it’s late. I’m going to work from home,”
don’t surrender! Set a pattern where any time you’re working you’re in the office, and establish the
expectation that you’re going to be in the office as much as possible. It won’t last forever. You’ll
have plenty of 20-hour weeks later on, but of course you’ll have some 60- and 80-hour weeks too.
If you’re traveling for work, the “office” extends to the airport. Arrive to your flights a full 2
hours ahead of time—whether you’re flying on your own or meeting your team. Your goal is to be
the first one there—every time. You can always use the down time to catch up on daily news or
work on a research project.
Mistake #8:
Working from remote locations
The firm may have satellite offices nearer to your house than the main office where your boss
sits, or vice versa; your boss may sit in a satellite office but you live closer to headquarters. You
might have Dallas as your home office, but recently developed a city crush on LA, where your client
is located. What’s the rule on working from remote locations?
In general, you want to be where the action is, where the largest part of your team is, and most
importantly, where your assigned supervisor spends their time. Otherwise, you’re losing out on the
opportunity to interact, learn, and shape yourself as a reliable resource.
You will have an official boss or manager who you’ll report to, according to the firm’s org
chart, but you’re likely going to be assigned to be mentored by a senior analyst or associate to start
out. This senior analyst is going to be the one who you can safely pose questions to. Their job is to
ensure a seamless work stream, and you’re responsible for a tiny part of their overall assignment.
Because your job is to make them look good, and make them comfortable with your ability, you want
to be side-by-side with them as often as possible. What if they work from another office? Situate
yourself where they are. That means if they move around to five offices, follow them. If they work
from home, however, our earlier advice prevails—don’t head home too. Pick an office to go to for
the day.
If you feel like you’ve got lots of people you’re working for, you may be a little confused about
who to spend your time around. Follow this general rule of thumb—find the person who you’re
directly responsible to and stay close to them. Again, you’re just trying to alleviate the concern that
you might be working for five days on a piece of a project that you are unable to complete, or that
you’re doing something all wrong and wasting valuable time. At a minimum, you’re trying to assuage
their fears, make them comfortable with you as a staff member, and avoid creating any situations that
might make someone else look bad at the end of the day.
Practices at firms vary—compare Booz Allen Hamilton’s federal clientele with a firm like
McKinsey who deals primarily in the private sector. The way they interact with their clients on- and
off-site will differ widely. The dynamics of where you should be on a daily basis—when your boss,
the client, and your team are spread out—can get cloudy. It’s not always obvious. If you’re unsure,
it’s okay to ask someone a little more senior than you, but just wait until after you’ve been staffed on
your first case. If you get a generic answer on the first try, like, “there’s really no protocol,”
reformulate your question. Ask, “what would a top performer do, someone who really wants to
demonstrate that they are valuable and committed?” You’ll get the real line instead of the generic
party line they’re used to throwing out.
To recap, your overall job in the first 3 months is to make people you interact with at the firm
aware of how dependable you are. Take actions to demonstrate yourself as a valuable resource. Make
a commitment that 100% of the time you’re going to work from an office location where the person or
team you support is working. If it happens that some members of your team are in one office, and your
boss who is managing the team is at another, trail the person directly responsible for your
performance.
If you’re on a travel case with an MBB firm, you will likely have flight benefits, meaning you
can travel anywhere on the weekend and say you’re “working from home.” Sounds like a great perk,
right? Spending a weekend in Paris and crunching numbers over a latte from a café with a spectacular
view of the Eiffel Tower? It is a totally acceptable option, but one that’s better to take advantage of
only after—you guessed it—your first 3 months. If you want to travel over the weekend, do it on your
own time—fly out Friday evening or Saturday morning and return Sunday evening—but still try to do
as few trips as possible in the first 3 months. If you do leave, make sure it’s late enough on Friday that
you’re still one of the last to leave the office. If anyone from your team is lingering, you need to be
there too.
Everyone will tell you that you CAN work remotely—but it doesn’t mean you should in your
first 3 months. Save it for later—and don’t worry, I’d be the very first to tell you that after 3 months
you should take advantage of every flight benefit available because my sense of wanderlust is
unparalleled. For the first 3 months, however, stay away from weekend travel, working from other
offices, and working from home. You’re not only missing out on face-time, it’s an indicator to others
of how serious (or not serious) you are about the job, even if they’re not interacting with you on a
daily basis.
Mistake #9:
Not being a pro-active communicator
You may think that because you’re not the boss, you shouldn’t be driving communications. But
it’s the opposite in a top consulting environment. You are the junior staff member when you first
arrive, so you need to take the burden off anyone senior to you—and that’s pretty much everyone
at this point.
Proactive communication is a huge distinguisher between the good and the GREAT
performers. It’s not so much determined by the quality of your work, but the quality of your
communication. Great communication is an indicator of great leadership skills.
At the end of every day, especially in the first two to four weeks on your project, write an
update on what you’ve accomplished, any outstanding issues, and what you plan to accomplish the
following day. Even if you just do this for yourself and never end up sending it via email, it’s a good
habit to get into. Whether you send the update to your supervisor or not is not necessarily important.
By going through the exercise and setting the pattern you’ll become great at knowing how and what to
communicate. Again, status updates should go to your mentor or peer—someone who’s not
necessarily responsible for your overall review—as opposed to someone who’s further up the
ladder, like the engagement manager.
Initially, you may feel like you’re communicating more than you need to. That’s okay. As you
keep your supervisor informed of your activities over the first few months, you’ll find your updates
can decrease in frequency and detail without compromising their trust. Even if they provide you with
feedback— “You’re updating me too much!”—that’s sending an overachiever message, so it’s
okay.
There are some standard formats you can follow when writing status updates—I wasn’t
kidding when I said that we spent an entire orientation module on how to write appropriate emails!
Here’s one sample:
open with the person’s name and a one-line explanation of the email contents
give a brief list of what you’ve completed/accomplished since the last update
itemize projects that are still in process
outline your next steps plan for completing them
indicate where you need your supervisor’s help or input with boldface type
propose a meeting to review the plan at a time you know is free on their calendar
Always, always, always include your action plan for completing the project or working through
problems. It’s not really task status that you’re communicating— it’s ownership. A top performer
shows ownership and accountability. You want to give your supervisor the feeling that you’re
managing yourself.
Here are a few good examples of how to be a proactive communicator:
Schedule regular check-in meetings with your supervisor to cover progress and solve any
issues that may have come up since your last meeting.
Send daily or weekly emails explaining your progress to your supervisor and your plan going
forward. The key is to keep them informed, so they don’t have to wonder or ask what you’re
doing.
Confirm plans before taking action so you don’t waste time and resources that are irretrievable.
Follow up on outstanding items before they’re due.
Offer to send emails to the team that capture key points from meetings.
Send friendly reminders on due dates a day in advance.
You’re the new kid on the block, so you might literally just be an observer for the first weeks or
even months on your first case. Take it on with fervor! Maybe you’ve sailed through your first week
without an assignment and feel like you have nothing to report in your first status update. Come up
with something! You didn’t just twiddle your thumbs for 50 hours.
Arrive with a written status update you can show your supervisor. At the very least, outline
what you did during the week—even if it was just onboarding meetings with the research staff or
reading last year’s company presentations. Take it further by asking questions that came up during the
week. How can they advise you? How can they help you? Include your plan for the next week and
moving forward.
Taking a proactive approach will show that you’re somebody who’s really thinking ahead and
going above and beyond what is required. What it also means is that any time you go into a meeting,
you should have taken 20-30 minutes before the meeting to think through what you want to
accomplish.
Being a proactive communicator is not required—it wasn’t in your job description and there are
very few people who have a natural tendency for it. You’re going to notice, however, that the mostrespected consultants are excellent at this. Very skillfully, they are making everyone comfortable
that they’re getting done what needs to be done on time, and that any issues that are arising aren’t
going to be fire drills at the end of the day. They’re keeping the senior staff advised of potential
nightmares on the horizon, and they’re letting them know that they understand their job is to make
others look good.
Mistake #10:
Not pre-planning for meetings
So someone tells you, “I’d like to meet and talk about how we’re going to solve this problem.”
You could show up empty-handed and use the hour to brainstorm ways to address the issue, but that’s
what a lazy underperformer would do. A better option would be to spend at least 15 minutes
beforehand coming up with a list of ideas or possible solutions. In your first few months, taking this
approach is essential.
Before every meeting, call, or client interaction that you go into, you need to spend 15-30
minutes pre-planning. When you see people at the office early in the morning or late in the evening,
this is usually what they’re doing—collecting their thoughts on what’s happening, understanding their
part in the next days and weeks of effort, planning what they want or need to happen, and taking steps
to prepare for it. Pre-planning for every meeting and every major to-do item is incredibly important.
An element of effective pre-planning is showing up early. If you’re supposed to join a
conference call at 2pm, call in at 1:55. If you have a meeting scheduled at 10am with a client across
town, arrive at their office by 9:45am. Not only are you demonstrating your professionalism and a
respect for the people you’re meeting with, but you’re building in time for yourself in case an
emergency arises and you need a few minutes to react (for example, your phone dies and you need a
minute or two to get to an outlet).
Setting the precedent of pre-planning will begin to prepare you to deal with clients. Direct
client interaction, which might happen very early on for you (I wasn’t on a travel case, so it took me
about 4 months to meet my first client), is one of the things that sets up the standard of excellence for
your firm. When you go into a client meeting with a clear set of expectations, and you’re able to
communicate those to the client, they feel comfortable and safe knowing that you know what you want.
You avoid wasting anyone’s time, or not efficiently asking questions. If you can show that you’re
good at this independently, you could get accelerated into a client-facing role much faster, which is a
demonstration that the firm recognizes your value.
Mistake #11:
Not clarifying expectations
One of your new team’s biggest concerns is that you will spend all of your time working on
something that’s critical to the overall end point of the case without clarifying what’s really required
of you—and therefore, getting it wrong.
In a case, you should recap the main points and the objective before diving in; you’ll do exactly
the same thing when you’re on the job. When you’re given a market sizing problem in an interview,
one of the worst things you can do is move too quickly through the problem without clarifying
essential elements, like what the units are and if the market is being sized overall or for the current
year. There are many things you should clarify at the beginning of the case—which you clearly knew
because you got the job. That skill you honed is a proxy for making sure that you really understand the
assignment that’s set out for you in real life, on the job.
If you’re given an assignment with terms you don’t understand, make sure you figure them out. If
your project leader says, “We’re going to build a cost model,” and you don’t know what that is, go
away for a few hours, make a plan, and get clarification before spinning your wheels or fretting.
You don’t always have to clarify what the objectives are in the moment. You can go off by
yourself, think about it, maybe do a little research, and then come back and ask for clarification if you
still need to. Back to the point I made about “asking too many questions”—a lot of people try to
clarify expectations so quickly up front that it leaves you looking stupid. It becomes evident that every
time you ask a question you really have no idea what you’re supposed to be doing, and it reveals that
you haven’t thought it out first.
If you have questions down the line, after you’ve digested an assignment, it shows that you’ve
taken what’s been said, you’ve analyzed it, and you’ve determined the additional information that you
need to move forward, as opposed to, “What about this? And what about this?” What scatter shot
questioning is really saying is, “I don’t know what you’re saying. I don’t understand you. Please make
my life easier by doing my work for me.”
You can clarify expectations, or you can clarify expectations correctly. Just like in a case
interview, recap the expectations, spend some time on your own developing a plan to meet those
expectations, and then make sure that your plan and the expectations are clear before you start either
one. The moment of clarification might happen in the meeting or later on. Your goal is to take it to the
next level and have some action items that help you understand whether the clarifications make sense.
Pretty simple, right? Each of these 11 insights is just common sense when you think about it.
If you care at all—and most of you do—you’ll stumble on these insights sooner rather than later.
When you’re first getting started, there are so many things to think about that it’s easy to get derailed.
To begin to establish yourself as someone who is capable, confident, and mature, who has the core
skills that the firm is ultimately going to be looking for when you’re being considered for promotion,
you’ve got to get these 11 things right.
Recommended reading
To supplement the 6 Prep Steps, I put together a list of recommended reading materials. These
are core consulting resources covering topics from how consultants think to business theory and
frameworks.
I’ve categorized my recommended reading list into 6 parts:
1. Firm-specific books
2. Best-selling authors
3. More strategy books
4. Subscriptions
5. Company propaganda
6. Company blogs
Enjoy!
Firm-specific books
If you’re working for McKinsey, Bain or BCG, these books aren’t only recommended reading
—consider them required. For everyone else, they contain amazing insights and lessons that you can
apply with any firm.
McKinsey
The McKinsey Way, The McKinsey Mind, and McKinsey Engagement
This triple feature by former McKinsey consultants gives insight into the problem-solving tools
and management techniques of the world’s top strategic consulting firm.
The first McKinsey book uses case studies and anecdotes to describe how McKinsey solves
business problems. The second book explains step-by-step how to use McKinsey tools, techniques,
and strategies to solve core business problems and make any business venture more successful. The
third volume is more of a toolkit or guide on how to apply McKinsey methodologies for consistent
results.
Bain
Profit from the Core, written by former Bain consultants, shows how focusing on the core of
your organization (not distracting adjacencies) is the foundation for success, especially during times
of economic turbulence.
The Ultimate Question 2.0 introduces the Net Promoter Score, a metric based on the question
most critical to your company’s future: “Would you recommend us to a friend?” This is a book we
used often at Bain.
Answering the Ultimate Question is the follow-up book that tells how, using a variety of case
studies, to embed Net Promoter discipline in organizations of all types.
BCG
The Boston Consulting Group on Strategy offers an overview of the firm's best ideas on strategy.
Best-selling authors
Michael Porter
Michael Porter, a strategy pioneer and HBS professor, has 3 works I recommend.
Competitive Strategy – a core book on business strategy, capturing the complexity of industry
competition and explaining his well-known “five forces”
Competitive Advantage – the second volume in Porter’s trilogy, the book describes how a firm
actually gains an advantage over its rivals
On Competition – a collection of Porter's landmark articles from the Harvard Business Review
Jim Collins
Built to Last – Collins’ first work that showed how great companies triumph over time and how
long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very
beginning.
Good to Great – Taking it a step further, Collins identifies the universal distinguishing
characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great, basing his research on a comparison
between companies that went from good to great and those who failed to make the leap.
More strategy books
The Pyramid Principle is an essential read that teaches you how to get your thoughts organized
for highly effective written communications and business presentations.
The Lords of Strategy is the story of the four men who invented corporate strategy as we know it,
setting in motion the modern, multibillion-dollar consulting industry. The fab 4 are Bruce Henderson,
founder of Boston Consulting Group, Bill Bain, creator of Bain & Company, Fred Gluck, longtime
Managing Director of McKinsey & Company, and Michael Porter, Harvard Business School
professor and former director at Monitor Group.
The 80/20 Principle describes the 80/20 mindset that every consultant must understand—that 80
percent of all our results in business and in life stem from a mere 20 percent of our efforts.
The First 90 Days is about managers establishing themselves on the job in the first 90 days. It’s
focused on leadership in general, and does not directly apply to consulting, but is an excellent
supplement to 3 Month Mastery (especially for more senior leaders).
Subscriptions
Get subscribed to free online news publications so you’re getting constant updates on daily
news and key things happening in the market. When you start work (and show up early every day),
grab a cup of coffee and use your first 30 minutes to browse the day’s news. It’s a great habit to get
into. Read 3 or more items so that you’re up to speed on what’s happening in the market overall. The
Economist and The Wall Street Journal should be your top priority.
The Economist
The Wall Street Journal
Businessweek
Fortune
McKinsey Quarterly
Harvard Business Review
and of course, Management Consulted
HBR case studies, especially ones written by consultants at the firm you’re joining, offer another
excellent source for market research and general trends. They can be a good tool to have in your
back pocket and will offer client insights that only the most proactive staff members can use. If you’re
not already a subscriber, go online and check them out.
Company propaganda
Familiarize yourself with your company’s recent propaganda. The best place to start is the
firm’s website. Look for pages where they’ve published white papers, industry reports, market
recommendations, case studies, and books. You don’t need to buy anything at this point—just look.
What are their topics of focus? Who are the partners that are doing the authoring? Cross-reference
titles, topics, and authors on HBR for further relevant information.
Read 1 of these a day. Having general knowledge on what the firm is producing and who is
producing it will give you an inventory of information to pull from when relating to other
consultants. I’ve pulled a variety of examples from different firm websites here:
Booz & Co. reports and white papers
Boston Consulting Group publications
Interview with a partner at Bain & Company
McKinsey study on closing the gender gap
HBR articles - specific to the firm you’re with
Company blogs
Check your firm’s website for blogs. You may find more than one—an overall firm blog, a “day
in the week” blog by current consultants, and other personal type blogs by people at the firm who give
updates on happenings in their areas of the firm.
This is another great thing to prepare to read every day. You’re going to be doing a lot of new
things, and this is a quick and easy way to keep your finger on the pulse of the business. Here are a
few firm blogs to check out:
A.T. Kearney EMEA blog
Pearl Meyer blog
L.E.K. Consulting blog
5 action steps for recommended reading
At this moment you are surrounded with information and resources about your firm that you
merely have to tap into. Start with these 5 action steps for recommended reading:
1. Subscribe to The Economist, WSJ, and any other free online news publications that you like to
get info on current business issues and events.
2. Obtain 4+ firm-specific books and get reading!
3. Find your firm’s company blog and register to receive updates to your inbox daily. Then make
time to read them!
4. Scour your firm’s website for white papers, client presentations, studies, publications, etc. Read
1 of these a day for at least 30 days.
5. Sign up for your firm’s social media sites—Twitter, Facebook, etc.—to get a feel for company
culture, events, and other interesting stuff.
Getting started on your reading list can start TODAY! Whether it’s registering for RSS feeds or
taking a trip to Amazon, this is probably the easiest way to start your prep for your career as a top
consultant. What are you waiting for?
>
Your plan for success: checklist for your new life
This next section is about logistics—from setting up high-value credit cards and registering for
airline, hotel, and rental car loyalty programs, to setting up your bank accounts and facilitating your
move to a new city. These are things you can do before your first day on the job, so that when you
do show up at the office, you can focus completely on being a consultant, not on how your Internet
connection needs to be set up at home.
Here are quick links to the various sections in case you want to skip ahead:
Credit cards
Loyalty programs
Airlines
Hotels
Rental cars
Bank accounts
Health insurance
Plan for retirement
The move
Housing
Utilities
Car
Public transportation and parking
Dry run
Change of address
Last Will and Testament
Credit cards
Firms vary on how they handle expense tracking. Some of them tell you to use whatever card you
want, and have you fill out and submit expense reports afterward. In this case, you’re charging the
cost to your personal account and the firm is reimbursing you after the fact. Other firms issue you a
company credit card with a purchasing limit (one that’s usually monitored so you can’t go crazy).
Whether the firm issues you a card or you’re invited to use your own, you won’t know which it
will be until you’re on the job. To avoid the headache later on, I recommend setting up at least 1
personal credit card that you can use exclusively for work. You may never end up using it if the firm
gives you a firm-issued card, but at least you’ve got it established and organized. If you do end up
needing to use your personal card, it’s already there, and it will make your accounting so much easier
at the end of the day.
I didn’t have a credit card set up when I started at Bain—my family had lived on a cash-basis
and I only had a debit card, which provided limitations as I started to book $800 airline tickets every
week. If nothing else, I lost out on a whole lot of reward points I could have earned in the early
days!
When we first started, one of the partners suggested a really eager new consultant make a slide
presentation on which credit card would give the partner the best value for his money. The consultant
ended up creating a clever 2x2 weighing card fees and point redemption values which was supported
by a financial model that showed which was the best card at different levels of spend. It was
awesome! You don’t have to go into that much detail, although consultants do tend to deal with basic
life decisions in incredibly nerdy ways!
Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy of that 2x2. But I do have links to some of the top U.S. cards
on the market below. See which is right for you, and then sign up. (By the way—I’m not affiliated
with any of these—just my own research). Do it now, or do it later—just get it out of the way before
your start date. One note: even though you’re looking for cards to use for your business expenses,
you’re still looking for “personal” credit cards. Business cards usually require business tax IDs and
don’t contribute toward your personal credit profile.
From the perspective of earning rewards, there are tons of great rewards cards out there—here
are some with no annual fee:
United MileagePlus Explorer (fee applies after the first year)
American Airlines Credit Card
Delta SkyMiles American Express Credit Card (fee applies after the first year)
Citi Thank You Preferred Card
Chase Freedom® Visa
Chase SapphireSM Card
Loyalty programs
You’re going to be traveling to client sites, satellite locations, and abroad. Register with all of
the major loyalty programs for airline, hotel, and rental car to start building points from day one. If
you’re traveling frequently, within a year you’ll have accumulated free stays, free flights, and more—
all to be used for your own personal enjoyment.
I recommend registering all of your loyalty programs to your personal email account, even if
the firm has given you a business account. Set them up to send to your gmail account or a personal
email that’s outside of work so that when you transition out at some point later, you can avoid any
potential drama and won’t have the hassle of changing your accounts over.
Airlines
Register with all of the major airlines. I have accounts with Southwest, Delta, United, and
American Airlines. It’s great to understand the affiliate networks, and be sure you’re registering
with a major airline instead of a smaller affiliate so you can consolidate your rewards earnings. For
example, pick United, not US Airways—you can earn points on US Airways toward United, but as the
larger carrier United’s redemption program is significantly more flexible.
As a side note, in my experience, the U.S. programs are the most generous with benefits, even
for non-U.S. citizens—but sometimes you need a U.S. address to register. If you’re a student, use
your student address—unlike your email address, it’s not critical to keep your snail mail address
current (unless you reach premier status—then you’ll need to proactively let the airline know so they
don’t send your premier cards and rewards to some unsuspecting but lucky junior in college).
At some firms, the travel department will ask you for your rewards account information when
you first start. Keep your membership info organized—put it all into a spreadsheet so it’s easy to
find and easy to share. (If you’re new to Excel, this would be a great training exercise!)
Create accounts with each of the programs below:
United - MileagePlus loyalty program
Partners include: United, United Express, Copa Airlines, Adria Airways, Aegean Airlines, Air
Canada, Air China, Air New Zealand, ANA, Asiana Airlines, Austrian, Avianca, TACA Airlines,
Brussels Airlines, Copa Airlines, Croatia Airlines, EGYPTAIR, Ethiopian Airlines, LOT Polish
Airlines, Lufthansa, Scandinavian Arilines, Shenzhen Airlines, Singapore Airlines, South African
Airways, SWISS, TAM Airlines, TAP Portugal, THAI, Turkish Airlines, US Airways
American - AAdvantage loyalty program
Partners include: airberlin, NIKI, American Airlines, AmericanConnection, American Eagle,
British Airways, BA Cityflyer, Comair, Sun-Air of Scandinavia, Cathay Pacific, Dragonair, Iberia,
Air Nostrum, Iberia Express, Japan Airlines, JAL Express, J-Air, Japan Transocean Air, LAN,
Mexicana, MexicanaClick, MexicanaLink, Qantas, Jetconnect, QantasLink, S7, Globus
Delta - SkyMiles loyalty program
Partners include: Aeroflot Russian Airlines, Aerolineas Argentinas, Aeromexico, Air Europa,
Air France, Alitalia, China Airlines, China Eastern, China Southern, Czech Airlines, KLM Royal
Dutch Airlines, Kenya Airways, Korean Air, Middle East Airlines, Saudia Airlines, Tarom, Vietnam
Airlines, Xiamen Airlines, Alaska Airlines, GOL, Hawaiian Airlines, Jet Airways, Malaysia
Airlines, Olympic Air, Virgin Australia, Virgin Australia International
Southwest - Rapid Rewards loyalty program
Partner: AirTran
Hotels
For the most part, you’ll be staying in 3+ star hotels. Don’t expect to get a whole lot of time to
enjoy the amenities, however. You’ll be at the office most of the time, and when you are at the hotel,
you’re either working from your room or sleeping.
Register with these hotel rewards programs and you’ll be covered.
Four Seasons – Incentive Card
Wyndham – Wyndham Rewards
Partners: Wyndham Garden, TRYP, Wingate, Hawthorn, Microtel
IHG – Priority Club
Partners: Holiday Inn, InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn Express,
Staybridge, Candlewood
Marriott - Marriott Rewards
Partners: Ritz-Carlton, Gaylord, JW Marriott, Edition, Autograph, Renaissance, AC, Courtyard
Marriott, Fairfield Inn & Suites, Springhill Suites, Residence Inn, TownePlace Suites, ExecuStay,
Marriott Executive Apartments
Hilton - Hilton HHonors
Partners: Waldorf Astoria, Conrad, Doubletree, Embassy Suites, Hilton Garden, Hampton Inn,
Homewood Suites, Home2 Suites, Hilton Grand Vacations
Hyatt - Gold Passport
Partners: Park Hyatt, Andaz, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, Hyatt Place, Hyatt House, Hyatt
Residence Club
Rental cars
You’ll use your rental car to get from the airport to your hotel, and back and forth from your
hotel to the office. Don’t worry, you won’t be expected to rent an economy-sized car. You’ll
usually get a mid-size, standard, or full-size vehicle, fully insured—even if you’re under 25 years of
age.
You won’t get a rental car every time you travel. In bigger cities and many foreign cities, you
will instead use public transportation systems or private taxis for hire. Would you really want to risk
driving in the centre of London anyway?
They have free loyalty programs, so why not register for every one? You will most likely use the
business-friendly Avis and Hertz brands, but just in case you can be prepared.
Avis - Preferred Service
Hertz - Gold Plus
Budget - Priority Club
National (includes Alamo) - Emerald Club
Dollar - EXPRESS
Enterprise – Plus
Europcar – Privilege
Thrifty – Blue Chip
Bank accounts
Prepare your bank accounts for great budgeting by setting up an asset allocation plan. You
have your offer letter in hand, and you know how much you’re going to make, so figure out where you
want your money to go with each paycheck. That way, once you’re on the job you can totally focus
on performance.
You want to send 20 percent to your retirement account? You want to set up 6 ING accounts to
manage your housing, utilities, food, travel, Roth IRA, and all other expenses? Premeditate that.
Think about those things now because that’s the last thing you’re going to want to be doing when
you’re actually at work, or on the job, or trying to put in some time on a Saturday. When you’ve
established how your finances will work, there will be some peace in that area in your life, allowing
you to focus entirely on your performance and your part at the firm.
My buddy Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You To Be Rich website is a great resource for setting up
your personal finances. In his book, he goes into detail on how to set up your accounts so that you
pre-allocate funds to what’s important to you. Buy the book or get the key points for free here. Read
in particular the “Save while you sleep — my step-by-step guide to automating your finances.”
For info on setting up your subaccounts at ING Direct, check out this quick how to.
Health insurance
Do a little research on your health insurance options now so that when you’re presented with the
information, you can make an informed decision. In the U.S., you’ll specifically want to learn about
the basic principles of HMO versus PPO. Visit Healthcare.gov—it gives a nice overview on
insurance basics.
In addition, if you are thinking of using a Health Savings Account (HSA), make sure you’ve done
your research and have established a compatible account. Here’s a good overview on HSAs, or
check out the official version on the IRS site.
The firm may provide an overview of your health insurance options during orientation, but they
won’t get into enough detail for you to make a choice based on your individual situation. You’re
better off doing your homework beforehand. Even asking your parents or others who have been in
the workforce for some time will shed some light on the subject. That way, you can make a relatively
quick and easy decision right away.
Plan for retirement
There are usually many components to your total compensation package—signing bonus, base
salary, relocation, annual bonus, firm performance bonus, and 401(k)s in the U.S. This last benefit,
the 401(k), is a company-sponsored retirement plan that you’ll want to understand well in order to
take full advantage of it.
With most 401(k) plans, there’s a company contribution. That company contribution can come in
one of a number of forms:
1. Set contribution. The company contributes a certain percentage of your salary towards your
retirement fund, regardless of whether you contribute to your plan or not.
2. Company match. The company matches your contributions up to a certain point (caps usually
fall somewhere between 1%-5%). If you don’t contribute, they don’t match.
3. Blended set contribution and match. Some companies offer a fixed base percentage and an
upside match to incentivize you to save for retirement.
There are overall annual caps for your personal contributions, dictated by the IRS, and there are
vestment periods established by the company. A vestment period usually refers to the employment
time period that you must make to the firm before the matching company donations are wholly
considered yours.
For instance, let’s say your firm is vested at 50% after 2 years, 75% after 3 years, and 100%
after 4 years. If you leave after 2 years, you get to keep 50% of the matched funds the company
contributed to your 401(k). The rest goes back to the firm.
For more detail on vesting, check out this article. For an overview of the 401(k), read Wall
Street Journal’s article, “What is a 401(k)?”
An IRA is another type of retirement account, but it’s not tied to the firm. There’s no matching,
no vesting, and you set it up yourself. Why would you bother to set up an IRA if you already have a
401(k)? If you move companies at some point, you can roll multiple 401(k)s into your IRA and avoid
the hassle of moving one 401(k) to another.
There are two types of IRAs—Roth and Traditional. Roth IRAs provide tax-deferred benefits
and are excellent retirement savings vehicles, while Traditional IRAs have more flexibility and
higher contribution limits. Learn about the Roth IRA here—“What is a Roth IRA?” —and get an
understanding of the differences between the two here.
When I was at Bain, I set a full 20% of my salary (the maximum allowed at the time by the IRS)
to go straight to my 401(k). In addition, I set up an IRA and a ROTH IRA. If you can make it happen,
I’d recommend the same course of action for you.
The move! Getting set and getting settled
I’m assuming you’re going to move locations or at least move cities when you start your new
job. If that’s the case, you have a lot of logistical decisions to take care of! Starting with a new
place to live…
Housing
Secure an apartment and plan to move in at minimum 2 weeks before you start work,
preferably a month before. Walk or drive around and get to know your new environment, and begin to
make a list of questions that are important to you, including:
Where will you shop for food?
Where can you get quick take-out?
If you have a car, where will you park?
Will you be living with roommates and, if so, how will their schedules impact yours?
Select an apartment that’s a reasonable distance from your office, because, face it, you’ll be at
the office a lot—especially if you follow my sage advice for the first 3 months. Another option is to
live somewhere with great access to an airport, but this is only preferable if you’re traveling
extremely frequently. If you’re taking public transportation to work, be aware of the proximity of your
house/apartment to bus stops, metro stations, and other modes of transport.
Plan ahead for the funds you’ll need to have in hand to secure and pay for your new abode—
including your deposit, first month’s rent, last month’s rent, and new furniture (new-to-you is great
too!). If you’re going to buy new furniture that you’ll keep for some time, invest in 3 main pieces – a
comfortable bed, a nice couch and a great kitchen table. Your signing bonus can more than cover
this—if you don’t blow it all on a trip to Monte Carlo.
In addition, make sure you sign up for renter’s insurance. If something drastic happens—say, a
fire—you want your new investments to be covered. Renter’s insurance is not expensive and is
required by many leases; for the minimal cost, the peace of mind can be worth it.
Again, you should plan to move into your new apartment at a minimum of 2 weeks prior to your
start date so you have time to take care of setting up your home, as well as some of the other points
we’ve included below.
Utilities
Easy to forget about, but obvious if you do. Once you’ve decided on a new place, set up utilities
in your name and get as many of the bills on auto-pay as you can (this can take 2-4 weeks for some
utility companies). Gas, electricity, and Internet are among the essentials. If you’re staying in a
furnished residence, these things may already be set up and included in your rent. Just make sure
you’re completely organized, either way.
Cable? If it’s important to you, sure. For the 2.5 years I worked at Bain, I never even had a TV
—if I really needed a TV fix, I had the office, hotel rooms, bars, and friend’s houses to enjoy, and
streaming content was always an option. I chose to have my house be a refuge for reading, resting and
socializing—but if you want TV and cable at home, you can afford it with plenty to spare!
Car
If you’re in a city that requires a car, you should figure out your parking situation at home and
find a garage for when you’re at work. You really don’t want to have to think about your car once
you’ve started work, so if you need a new car, get it at least one month before you start—you don’t
want to waste time at the mechanic or risk car trouble on your way to work. You don’t have to buy
the nicest car out there, but if you’re working for a top firm, and you go on client visits, you do need
to have something that fits the profile—newer model (last 6 years), practical (Toyota/Honda) or nicer
brand (Audi, Volvo). That VW bus that all your frat buddies envied won’t fly, and similarly you’ll
want to stay away from brands that look like you’re trying to be like senior management—Mercedes,
BMW, Porsche, Jaguar, and Cadillac are staples in the partner fleet.
If you’re moving to a new state, take a trip to the DMV to update your address and registration
tags. Don’t do it online or over the phone—you have no guarantee that things will be handled in a
timely fashion. Take a half day and stand in line at the nearest DMV to get everything taken care of in
one sweep. Also, make sure you transfer your insurance to your current state. As with other topics,
make a file where you’ll keep every piece of paperwork related to your car in case of an accident or
sale in the future.
If you haven’t bought a car yet, try to buy it in the state or country you’re moving to; you’ll only
have to sign up for license plates, registration, and insurance once.
Here are links to DMV sites for major U.S. cities:
Atlanta, GA
Boston, MA
Chicago, IL
Dallas/Houston, TX
Los Angeles, CA
San Francisco, CA
Seattle, WA
Washington D.C.
Any costs that you incur up to this point may qualify as relocation expenses under the firm’s
relocation policy. Keep receipts for all of your expenses, including a log of tolls and mileage, in
case the firm offers this to you.
Public transportation and parking
It’s often easier to take public transportation in big metropolitan cities than it is to drive a car—
which requires getting through rush hour traffic, then finding and paying for parking. Both have their
ups and downs—public transportation can be cheaper in the long run, but offers less flexibility.
Whether you’re driving to work and parking or taking the metro, subway, or bus, you can expect
to pay monthly transportation fees. Do some research on your city, and then go to a few websites to
find coupons and specials. You can often get discounts through web specials, subscriber newsletter
offers, and prepaid card purchases. If you commit to 6-12+ months, you can even ask about furthersubsidized travel programs—but remember, you might not be in town that much, so think twice before
making a long-term commitment.
In addition, check to see if your firm sponsors, subsidizes or at least provides a tax benefit for
your public transportation fees. I was the first person in the Atlanta office to commute using the
MARTA, and I had to walk the office staff through the process of putting me on the tax benefit plan
just like everyone whose parking was covered. Trust me—look into this ahead of time!
I’ve listed below some websites for parking garages and public transportation services in the
New York, Washington DC, and San Francisco metro areas.
New York
There are 1,110 parking garages and outdoor lots in Manhattan. The average price for monthly
parking in Manhattan is $431 (yikes!). Prices outside of Manhattan are less expensive, but still quite
high. Visit Park It!NYC for more info on parking and garages in NYC or learn more about the Subway
to decide which card to buy.
Washington D.C.
Depending on the area, you can find monthly parking for $100-$200. To avoid the
unpredictability of DC traffic, check out the Metro and their SmarTrip card.
San Francisco
Again depending on the area, you’ll find monthly parking rates in SF for $200-$500. The BART
runs over a large geographic region but is hopeless if you’re not using it for a point-to-point commute;
still, it’s worth looking into. Check out the different options for a BART pass. You can get the Adult
"A" Fast Pass for under $100, valid for BART trips within San Francisco and on the Muni for a
calendar month.
There’s also Caltrain—it runs south from San Francisco past San Jose, including stops at both
SFO and SJC.
Dry run
The week before you start work, test your transportation plan with at least one dry run. Take
whichever mode of transportation you’re planning to rely on—your car, the subway, or the bus—to
the office on a weekday during the time you’d normally be going to the office. If you plan to arrive
early, take that into account. Figure out where you’re going to park, or where you’re going to
disembark, and walk to the front of the building.
Did you arrive on time? Did anything unexpected occur? Adjust, so you don’t have any trouble
or stress in your first week.
Change of address
Complete all the necessary change of address forms—mail, bank accounts, credit cards, cell
phone bill, car insurance, renters insurance, AAA, etc. Make sure to update all of your accounts, and
in the process, write a list of all of your assets.
Last Will and Testament
It may seem odd to put this here because you’re just starting out on a hugely exciting journey, but
preparing a will is an important part of your preparation for the job and something you will not want
to have to think about once you’ve started. For possibly the first time in your life, you will have assets
to your name—cash, a retirement fund, maybe a residence and car— and it’s helpful to consider what
you want to have happen to those assets if something tragic happens to you.
When you sign up for your retirement plans, you’ll have to state a beneficiary in the case of
death, and the Last Will and Testament is just an expansion of that consideration.
In addition, it’s helpful to let someone you trust have a copy of your list of accounts—credit
cards, bank accounts, loyalty programs, etc.—or at least let them know where they could find a copy
if they needed to. This could be a friend, family member, or legal advisor.
Checklist for your new life
To recap, there is A LOT to do before you start at your new consulting firm, especially if this is
your first job out of school. From finding a new place to live and setting up utilities to changing your
address at the DMV and writing your Last Will and Testament, you will be overwhelmed if you save
all of these logistical to-dos until the final hour.
Here’s a general checklist to make sure you cover everything you need for getting settled in a
timely manner.
Checklist for your new life:
T-30+ days – Secure new car and sign lease for apartment
T-20 days - Sign up for credit card to use for business only
T-19 days - Sign up for loyalty programs (airline, hotel, and rental car)
T-18 days - Organize bank accounts and subaccounts; create Excel sheet
T-17 days - Research health insurance options
T-16 days - Research retirement options
T-15 days - Set up an IRA and Roth IRA
T-14 days – Move into apartment
T-13 days - Trip to DMV to update address and get new registration tags
T-12 days - Set up utilities and register each one on auto-pay
T-11 days – Find hair stylist, get hair done and set up regular appointments
T-10 days - Change address for all accounts
T-9 days – Write Last Will and Testament
T-8 days - Secure parking for car
T-7 days - Public transportation / Driving dry run
T-6 days – Find workout route/location/group
T-5 days – Complete wardrobe; send out final dry cleaning
T-4 days to start – relax, sleep in and enjoy!
Attire
You got through the interview process unscathed, so you must have avoided any huge clothing
missteps up to this point—no purple pants in your interview or black/navy combos. You probably
have a good idea for what’s acceptable in terms of attire at the firm. But just in case you still have
questions, I’ve written an entire section on the subject, covering men and women’s dress codes.
Underdressing isn’t the only problem you have to worry about. In a conversation with one of our
clients recently, I was asked about overdressing. He said that he wanted to be able to dress like
himself—very put together and polished—but he didn’t want to blow away anybody else, or dress to
the point that he stood out in an awkward and uncomfortable way, or in his words, “like I’m going in
a tux to a baseball game.”
So, how do you attain the perfect balance?
Here’s how the dress code is described at Bain Ibérica (Madrid)—
“The office atmosphere is friendly and informal. Our dress code is normally ‘business
casual’ when client meetings aren’t scheduled.”
You’ll find that most websites refer to their atmosphere as “business casual”—basically, for
men that means a uniform involving a blue collared shirt from Brooks Bros. with gray slacks, nice
shoes, and a nice belt. No tie (99% of the time). With that uniform, you’re safe. For women, it means
closed-toed shoes, a skirt at knee-length or longer, slacks, and a top that is modern, tailored and not
too revealing (think Ann Taylor, Zara or Banana Republic).
A rule of thumb is that you can never dress too conservatively, but you can both over and
underdress. In other words, you can be too formal or poorly put together—like when your hair is
messy, or you’re using a self-made hole in your belt. (Please, don’t go there!) If you’re in the standard
business casual uniform, you’re always safe.
Sometimes you’ll be asked to dress “business formal,” which usually means adding a tie or sport
coat for men, and adding a jacket or suit (and even pantyhose!) for women. However, you’ll receive
ample warning; business formal days may mean a client is in the office for a meeting or interviews
are occurring on a given Friday.
Here are the specific topics I’ll cover in this section:
When are suits required?
Training and travel
What about casual Fridays?
Your first day
Men
Women
Body art
A top performer’s wardrobe
When are suits required?
Suits are generally not required unless the client requires them. In most consulting firms, a suit
culture is not normal. There will be some clients that will require fully formal attire, like financial
services firms, but for the most part your dress with clients will be business casual. In my tenure with
Bain, I had 3 clients that required every-day business formal dress; the rest were great with business
casual.
Suits are also often required on interim or final presentation dates. If you are invited to attend, a
suit may be required, if for no other reason than to make you look older than you really are.
When you are asked to wear a suit, you do not have to show up in a fully blown getup with cuff
links and vest. You can leave out the cuff links and other bells and whistles. Ladies, pants suits are
better than skirt suits.
If you do need to dress in a suit, you will be informed at the start of a client engagement or well
in advance of a meeting. Still, it’s best to dry clean your suits well in advance so they are ready—just
in case.
Training and travel
Normally, you’ll be told to dress in business casual for training (orientation), meaning suits are
not required. Does that mean you’ll be marked as an annoying overachiever if you wear a suit, or is it
secret code that the best will be wearing suits and the others in business casual will fall behind?
There’s no secret here. It’s truly business casual. Wearing a suit will be overdoing it. But if you
feel more comfortable dressing up, you could go part of the way—wear a tie or a sport jacket without
a tie, just not both together.
What about when you’re traveling? Do you have to wear stuffy clothes and uncomfortable shoes
on long flights? Here’s the guideline. If you’re going straight to the client, then yes, you must wear
your client-facing clothes. If you’re just traveling that day, jeans are totally acceptable, but still wear
work shoes and a work top. For guys, that means a button down shirt and brown or black work shoes.
For girls, that means nice heels or classy flats.
Even when you travel, especially as you travel frequently and move up to first class more often,
you are a representative of the firm—and you never know when a current, former or future client (or
employer!) will be sitting in the seat next to you.
What about casual Fridays?
No such thing. Professional dress is required even on Fridays. You may be able to trade an
expensive pair of jeans for slacks, but don’t change anything else.
This YouTube clip from Curb Your Enthusiasm gives some humorous perspective on “casual
Friday”! (*Spoiler alert…there’s some strong adult language here.)
Your first day
It’s natural to have some jitters about how to dress on your first day, but don’t stress too much.
Think back to your interviews—did you notice what other people were wearing? How were the
newer people dressed? How were the more senior people dressed? They may have been dressed a
little more formally for the interviews in order to make you comfortable, but overall their
presentation is a great indicator for standard dress at the office.
Men
For guys, you will not be underdressed if you don’t wear a tie. If you love wearing ties, go
ahead, just keep them classy. Iron your shirt the night before, choose a nice conservative belt (brown
or black leather), and polish your shoes. Shave that morning and get a haircut the day before. Plan to
shave every day if you’re working long hours because there’s no facial hair allowed—and yes, you
will get called out if you get scruffy. Go ahead and plan to get regular haircuts—every 4 to 6 weeks
—to keep your cut sharp.
One thing that a lot of young male consultants really mess up on is their shoes. They wear
shoes that are too informal. Doc Martins, Keds, and Converse are entirely inappropriate. Go to
Nordstrom and spend the money on a classy pair of grown-up shoes that you can wear at the office, on
travel days, and with clients. Do it now, before you embarrass yourself.
Women
Because women have more elements to our style and fashion, we have more potential dress
drama. Guys have a uniform they can fall back on, while with women there are more cautionary
issues to face.
Let’s start with shoes—the most important item in every woman’s wardrobe, right? 100% of the
time you will wear closed toe shoes. They should be conservative, with nothing over a 3-inch heel,
but also not flats (unless it’s Friday or you’re traveling).
For clothes in your first 3 months, don’t wear any bright colors, or anything that’s too flashy in
any way. Blacks, grays, and browns say “I’m safe—not here to walk the runway or draw attention to
myself.” Accent with a little bit of color, but don’t overdo it.
Sleeves should always cover the arm, at least past the elbow—even in the summer. Absolutely
no tank tops or sleeveless shirts, which is hard in muggy east coast weather when you’re sweating
your face off. Unfortunately, it’s required, and if never stated explicitly, recommended. Jackets are
great, especially in those first few days when you’re really trying to give off a sense of
sophistication and maturity. Later on, you can leave them in the closet.
You should also plan to get regular haircuts—every 2 to 3 months—to keep your cut/color
sharp. Schedule cuts on the weekends and well in advance.
For pants, you’re looking for something tailored but not too tight, something that’s form fitting
and definitely not too baggy. Make sure they don’t drag—get them hemmed if you must. If you elect to
wear skirts, they should be no shorter than knee length.
When it comes to jewelry, less is more. Think of what a 35-year-old would wear—pearls,
necklaces on the chunky side, and conservative earrings. No piercings outside of one hole in each ear
—some firms even have requirements about requirements. All other piercings—multiple ear
piercings, nose rings, tongue studs, eyebrow rings—are not cool anymore. College is over. The
jewelry rule applies to guys too, and you will get “the talk” if you don’t take my advice now.
Body art
Any body art should be covered at all times when you’re on the job. The rules on tattoos apply
to both men and women.
A top performer’s wardrobe
Why do we stress the importance of how you dress? The top performers will be consistently put
together, classy, and comfortable in their new uniform. A top performer will be a natural from the
first day onward—even if, like me, you don’t think clothes and style should matter that much.
I’ll tell it to you straight—maybe it shouldn’t, but it does. So get it right.
As a general rule of thumb for new consultants, you should have at least 20 work outfits in your
closet. For some of you, that means you’ve got a shopping spree ahead of you! If you’re buying
everything new, expect to spend around $10,000 (a great way to use your signing bonus!). If you’ve
already got a decent wardrobe, you’re looking at spending anywhere from $2,000-$5,000.
Men’s clothing is usually more expensive per item, but women will require more variety in
their wardrobe. Therefore, the dollar amount you spend on your new consulting wardrobe applies to
both genders pretty evenly.
For shoes, men need a minimum of 2 pairs—one brown, one black. For women, I suggest a
minimum of 4 pairs of shoes. All women’s shoes should be closed toe.
Where possible, stay away from shirts, skirts, and slacks that are dry-clean only. If this is hard
to do, find a dry cleaning or laundry service that’s close to home, one that picks up and delivers, or at
least one that stays open late.
4 traits of the best consulting attire
When you’re ready to hit your nearest Anne Taylor or Brooks Bros., think about your first 3
months as a consultant. You’ll be working long hours, running through airports, sitting on airplanes,
and eating out frequently. You have to look professional, but you’ll want to be comfortable. Find a
balance by keeping in mind these 4 traits of the best consulting attire:
1. travel friendly
2. versatile
3. conservative
4. comfortable
If you’re super-strapped for time, remember—you can always shop online. Just make sure you
give yourself time for returns/exchanges for items that don’t fit.
Thinking ahead to your next resume
This may be the furthest thing from your mind as you start your new job as a consultant, but the
likelihood that you’re going to leave the firm someday is 95%+. When that day comes, the last
thing you want to do is sit around scratching your head trying to remember exactly what you did while
you were there. Think you’ll remember everything? Think again.
As you complete assignments and finish presentations, be diligent about keeping notes of your
achievements. Keep a file of all of your key accomplishments and contributions, especially as you
close out projects.
But won’t you be able to point to your annual performance reviews? Nope, not necessarily. At
most firms, you don’t get to keep them. At Bain, I was able to review a summary, but couldn’t keep
the detail—and the summary was too high-level to be helpful. Besides, the performance review is a
review of how you performed, not what you did.
As you’re documenting your activities and accomplishments, it’s important to record the context
of the whole case, not just your part. Often when interviewing with another company, you have to
start by describing the overall context of a project you worked on, e.g., “Bain was hired to build a
comprehensive growth strategy for Clif Bar. I was responsible for the customer segment evaluation.”
Reflect back on how the case was built and who was involved to paint the whole picture. Make sure
you include metrics!
It’s also important to document where the client company was positioned in the market at the
time of the project, e.g., “We were working with the client post-merger.” Things may have changed
drastically from the time you worked with the client to when you’re interviewing for your next job.
I suggest that you keep a running spreadsheet to track all of the projects you’ve worked on,
including your actions and results. Think about the questions you’ll be asked in future fit interviews
—“Tell me about a time when you demonstrated leadership.” “Describe your greatest weakness.” Let
those details guide your documentation. (If you didn’t buy it already, for more than 50 examples of fit
interview questions, get The Consulting Interview Bible.)
Your record isn’t something you need to be making entries on every day. Update it at the end of
every project or every 3 months, whichever comes first—on a schedule like an oil change. Set a
calendar reminder so that you don’t forget—inevitably you’ll be insanely busy at every 3-month
marker.
Professional networks
In an effort to keep your professional profile up to date, update your LinkedIn account with
your new title and employer once you’re on the job. Check out the various professional networks you
can join, and keep your alumni networks current. When you exit the firm down the road, these
networks will be great resources to leverage throughout your transition.
If you are working on a client engagement, it’s best to request a connection on LinkedIn only
after the engagement is complete, or even after you leave the firm; you don’t want to send an
internal message that you’re looking to make a career move.
When it comes to Facebook, don’t friend anyone above your peer level in the first 3 months.
What you can and can’t say
What are the rules about sharing information from your projects in an interview or on your
resume?
If there are specifics in the NDA, e.g., you can’t mention client names, or you can’t trade client
stock for 3-6 months after purchase, then those are the rules you need to adhere to—without fail,
every time.
However, there are ways to make your point without giving up sensitive information. For
example, the NDA prohibits you from sharing the name of your client, Amazon, but you can say you
worked with a Fortune 500 tech company or leading online retailer.
Some things will always be out of bounds. For instance, you did a due diligence project for your
client’s acquisition, and the deal is not yet done. Under no circumstance may you share any specific
information about the project, the client, or the target until the deal has closed and is made public.
Here’s the general rule of thumb: You cannot share any information that is not public
(especially for publicly traded companies)—leaking details that could affect the stock price will
literally land you in jail. The rule applies not only to resumes and interviews, but more broadly—
with friends, with family, and in networking spheres.
To recap, be smart about how you talk about your projects and your clients. Use common sense,
and if you have a question about whether or not it’s okay to say something—it’s probably better to
remain quiet than dance with the possibility of a potential lawsuit.
Final thoughts/what ifs
I put together a few final thoughts/what ifs on topics that weren’t captured in the sections above.
Networking with more senior members of staff
Wait to network with senior staff until AFTER your first 3 months. Why? With your total lack of
experience, you’re going to risk sounding like an absolute idiot. You’re 10 times more likely to ask
them a question that you should be asking your direct supervisor, which will only annoy them.
For now, OBSERVE and build your strategy for networking. Start paying attention to what
different people in the firm do and what influence they have, then build your networking strategy
based on that.
After the 3-month mark, feel free to start setting up breakfast, lunch, and coffee dates with your
supervisors. Never go to dinner alone with a supervisor, unless you bring at least one other peer
with you—especially if they are married. Gossip is not helpful to anyone’s career.
Transfers and grad school sponsorship
It’s never too early to start thinking about things only the highest performers have access to,
like transfers to bigger offices and grad school sponsorship, but it can be too early to ask. Your best
resource at the firm for the insider track is someone in your same position who has been there 2
years longer than you. Have a chat with them over lunch, or schedule an informational interview on
a slow Friday—but only after your first 3 months have come and gone. You don’t want to make it
sound like you can’t wait to leave before you get started! Come prepared with good questions
because you need to drive the conversation. Your goal is to understand the process, characteristics of
a good candidate, and other insider tips for applying.
At Bain, the process is as follows: You work for 2 years, and then you have your third year to
get creative. You can choose to work for 6 months on a start up, or transfer offices, or rotate through
the Private Equity practice or through Bridgespan, the firm’s non-profit consulting arm. To be
selected for an office transfer, you have to be a top performer in your office, and if you want to go to
a choice location like Australia, you have to be #1.
Going back to school for your MBA, JD/MBA, or PhD is encouraged by the firm—the more
educated you are, the higher the price they can bill you for, and the more credible you will be with
clients many years your senior. But paying for an MBA is expensive, so the firm reserves that for
top contributors. To hedge their bets, they don’t pay for your schooling outright. They give you an
interest free loan, which is then written off over time when you return to work. If you don’t return to
work and complete your 2 years of indentured servitude, you’re responsible for the fee (or whatever
prorated portion you didn’t pay back.)
Conclusion
I’ll leave you with some final words of wisdom.
Establish your reputation for professionalism. Demonstrate trustworthiness and excessive work
ethic. Make your new colleagues not only comfortable with your skills and abilities, but glad that they
hired you.
There will be lots of things that people will tell you are okay—leaving early, billing extravagant
dinners back to the firm, requesting vacation days, and working from remote locations—but do not do
them in your first 3 months. They’re totally acceptable later on, and you’ll have an absolute blast
taking advantage of the perks of being a member of one of the most elite firms in the world.
In the meantime, make sure you have access to all of the possible opportunities you can by
relating well, preparing with excellence, and starting off with passion and commitment that will
become a hallmark of your professional performance for years to come.
Good luck!
Your future with MC
We wish you the best of luck in your career as a consultant! As you grow into your consulting
role and later transition into management, or exit to a new firm or industry, keep us in mind—we have
customers we have worked with through 3+ job transitions, and it’s our honor to advise you on
resumes, interviews and negotiations. Our MC team of experts offers:
Resume/Cover Letter Editing
Update your resume or cover letter with 2 complete rounds of deep-dive edits on grammar,
format, and content.
Coaching/Interview Prep
(1, 4, and 10-hour blocks)
Get one-on-one advice on networking, fit interviews, and interviews to test your subject matter
expertise. Get mock interview practice, intensive coaching on fit questions and case interviews (if
needed), and comprehensive feedback from a consulting expert.
Packages
We provide coaching and editing packages in combination with our Case Bank and ebook
products. These are our BEST VALUE!
Job Hub
Exclusively designed for legacy professionals and current consultants, our MC JobHub provides
access to tremendous post-consulting career opportunities.
Keep in touch
Please keep in touch—we love to follow your career, and would be delighted to feature you in
our Life as a Consultant series on the site—so shoot us an email and let us know how you’re doing!
About Management Consulted
Our core team worked at Bain and McKinsey, and our guest posters on the site round out the
insight we share from global top consulting firms across the industry. Our loyal base has surpassed
1M readers, and we have 100K+ visitors per month to the site.
In the past 5 years, we’ve worked with the best and brightest students and professionals around
the world to break into super-competitive consulting jobs at the likes of McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Booz
& Co, and more.
Beyond the tips we learned through the mega-competitive interview processes (as interviewees
and interviewers) at Bain and McKinsey, two of the world’s most competitive consulting firms, we
identified secrets we never knew we were applying when we got calls for job interviews with
investment banks, tech companies, start-ups and more that hundreds of others were drooling over.
Together with the best team on the planet, we have built this company to personally guide you through
the confusing and impossible but terribly exciting consulting jungle.
We look forward to hearing great things from you!
Jenny Rae, Managing Director
team@managementconsulted.com
www.managementconsulted.com