When Things Don’t Go According to Plan

Max (not his real name) is an aspiring consultant who is looking to secure an analyst role with one of the top firms for the upcoming recruitment cycle in September 2011. His interest in management consulting was sparked by a failed McKinsey interview last year. In this series of blogs, he will be sharing his background, case preparation process, useful resources, and any breakthroughs or setbacks that he experiences.

I hope everyone is still doing well and getting lots of interviews and offers! Unfortunately, I have been dinged without an interview from most of the firms, and I have an aching feeling that the rest of the ding e-mails are a mere formality at this point. The list below contains the firms I applied to, and the current status.

• BCG – haven’t heard anything
• Bain – dinged without an interview
• Oliver Wyman – GMC dinged without an interview, haven’t hear from FS
• Roland Berger – haven’t heard anything, and I have some stories regarding their recruiting that I would like to share with all of you in a later post
• Booz – haven’t heard anything
• Monitor – dinged without an interview
• Deloitte – haven’t heard anything

For the firms who haven’t gotten back to me, I know for a fact that they’ve started interviewing people and some are at second round already. I’m guessing they’re just too swamped at the moment to get back to me with the bad news.

It’s quite unfortunate that this situation is exactly what I feared when I first started my journey (even wrote a blog post about it), and I’m trying to figure out why this happened. Some ideas I have regarding my lack of success are:

• I’m just not qualified
• My school is not a target school for some of these firms
• The fact that I’ve already graduated (2010) is hurting my chances

Of course I’m very disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to use the case skills I’ve been working so hard on, but things don’t always work out your way. I see three options moving forward:

• Give up on management consulting and focus on an engineering career
• Go for a MSc. in Management or MBA at a target school and try applying again
• Wait another year and try for an experienced hire position

At this point I’m not really sure what the best path is going forward, and I definitely have some thinking to do! Anyways, that’s my update and I encourage everyone to leave a comment and let me know what you think I should do and why – I feel it would be helpful to hear different opinions!

Related articles

• Playing The Waiting Game (firmsconsulting.com)
• Ranking McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Monitor, Deloitte, Accenture: Monitor Company…should you steer clear? (firmsconsulting.com)
• From Pepsi to Bain: My life as a management consulting star and partner (firmsconsulting.com)
• In the Hot Seat with Deloitte Consulting (firmsconsulting.com)
• Understanding Capgemini’s Consulting Team (firmsconsulting.com)
• Information and Case Tips from Bain and Company (firmsconsulting.com)
• Are McKinsey consultants in smaller offices getting worse training? (firmsconsulting.com)
• Inside a McKinsey Engagement on Finance (firmsconsulting.com)
• Case Prep Resources and List of Target Firms (firmsconsulting.com)
• Top Strategy and Consulting Firms (compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com)