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Posts from the ‘Firm Review’ Category

Sep 9

7 Comments

120 Case interview PhD practice sessions and failed a McKinsey mock-interview

“Dear Michael,

I have a question about case interview preparation which I was hoping you could answer for me. I provided some context and I am sorry if the email is far too long. I listened to the Firmsconsulting podcasts and articles I like the honest views provided.

I am currently a PhD candidate at Princeton, with an undergraduate degree from South Korea. I started casing about 6 months ago and completed about 120 cases with casing partners in my consulting club and over the internet. I bought several books and other programs. I paid to have my resume edited with an online service.

The problem is that I cased with a friend of a friend recently and it did not go well. He is a McKinsey manager. It was very, very bad and he really did not like my resume. I was embarrassed to explain to him that I did so much work. I am now a little confused and frustrated. I do not know what I did badly or correctly, and not sure what to do. I feel all my efforts have been wasted and concerned that if I continue, I will keep wasting my time.

Should I quit pursuing management consulting or am I using the wrong services?

SK” Read more

Mar 21

1 Comment

The most detailed write-up on a banking strategy study

Imagine a consulting engagement in one of the world’s most dynamic emerging markets: a literal gateway to an unbanked world. A Fortune 500 bank believes it has found a winning strategy to target consumers who subsist on less than $5 a day. The client is hoping they can capture up to 30% of this market, and push their revenue growth above the magical 10% threshold. In this market where 40% default rates are the norm, where literacy levels are well below 10% and where no formal banking channels exist, the bank is hoping, praying really, that the risk mitigation best-practices sourced from a joint-venture with Banco Azteca of Mexico will solve all their problems. The bank feels more than a little optimistic due to the significant profits of a 5-year pilot, begun in 2006, where they partnered with South Africa’s state-owned banks. The board has giddily, and greedily, given the go-ahead to end the partnership with the state bank and commit hundreds of millions of dollars of shareholder capital to building hundreds of retail branches across the rural interior. On the eve of the rollout, concerns about communicating the strategy to certain vocal shareholders has led to the appointment of a team of management consultants to assess the strategy. Read more

Mar 17

What a consultant feels travelling to new hotels weekly. It is not fun.

This article by Tatiana de Rosnay could easily have been my life with a few well placed changes to the words, dates, names and times.

One of the worst experiences for me personally, was arriving in Tokyo on assignment on an overnight flight, and then being taken straight to a client, without time to sleep, shower, eat or change. That meeting lasted well into the wee hours of the next morning. I only returned back to my room by around 2am. Set the alarm for 9am and dozed off.

However, curtains were set to electronically open onto a glorious morning, facing the sunrise, at 7am, while the TV also came on. The worse part is that I could not find the controls and needed to call the butler. So travelling can be annoying. Read more

Jan 12

2 Comments

An Experienced IT Professional Comments on Our Post about moving to BBM

I thought of putting together this post to help other relatively experienced and older candidates wishing to make a switch to management consulting.

As a former Technology implementation consultant having spent about 7 years initially in the technology domain my work involved implementing many packaged solutions – commonly termed as COTS – Commercial Off The Shelf software.

Most of these implementations were in fact a result of management consulting work streams although it was not always apparent. Read more

Jan 6

1 Comment

New Video: Understanding IT Strategy and Leveraging an IT Background into McKinsey’s BTO

IT strategy is exciting work. Most people tend to find IT cases among the most difficult for case preparation. Moreover it is actually very difficult to leverage an IT background to the level required to pass an IT strategy case, and in particular, the McKinsey BTO cases. With that in mind, we have prepared this graphical and richly researched video to carry out three goals: 1) explain IT strategy and IT consulting as done at BCG and McKinsey, 2) explain how the different pieces of IT come together to fix governance, organizational and systems issues, and 3) explain the language to be used, and frameworks to be used, when leveraging an IT background in an interview.

Rich in case studies, this 90 minute video touches on application management, enterprise architecture, IT organization, lean IT, sourcing, tech enabled operations/sales/marketing, scaling infrastructure and value assurance.

Oct 27

The part of the Rajat Gupta saga McKinsey prays you will not ask them about (in red below)

By John Helyar, Carol Hymowitz and Mehul Srivastava - May 17, 2011
Bloomberg Markets Magazine

On a sunny Friday afternoon in June 2003, Rajat Gupta was greeted at his waterfront home in Westport, Connecticut, by scores of his McKinsey & Co. partners. They had come from London, Frankfurt, New Delhi and other cities around the world — and brought along an elephant, which they tethered on the front lawn. Read more

Sep 19

15 Comments

Are McKinsey consultants in smaller offices getting worse training?

Times are indeed tight worldwide. McKinsey, a firm which spends countless hours explaining to bright-eyed aspiring consultants that they will be flown to special universities conducted by McKinsey partners, may be going…local. Read more

Sep 19

4 Comments

Understanding Capgemini’s Consulting Team

Howard was a consultant with Gemini Consulting when that name was used. He is a graduate of the prestigious Wharton MBA program and worked for Gemini Consulting in London, South Africa and New Jersey between 2000 and 2002. He has gratefully agreed to an interview over wine and tapas in Toronto, Ontario’s thriving King West restaurant scene as the temperature hovers near 35 degrees centigrade. Read more

Sep 19

1 Comment

Is Monitor Company passing the buck to Bain & Company?

Passing the Buck!!!

Image by Neil Crosby via Flickr

Earlier today we posted a report about Monitor company. In that post we profiled a pretty bad study Monitor performed for Debswana, a mining company in Botswana. We were emailed this study by a reader who says that Monitor was called in to fix the “debacle that was Bain’s 2001 study.” That’s a direct quote from the email. Read more

Sep 19

1
27 Comments

McKinsey Engagement: Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Story

Drax power station

Image by yorkshiregeek via Flickr

Stories which delve behind the scenes of consulting engagements are very, very rare. Today’s lengthy post is just such an article.  It is an in-depth analysis of a major McKinsey assignment in a developing economy, South Africa. We are going to give critical coverage of the behind the scenes issues and outcome of the project. This will be one of those rare articles. Upfront we must add this will not be a biased critiscm of the firm. McKinsey actually did very well on this engagement. In some ways this is a complimentary article. Read more

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