Consulting is one of the most sought-after careers in the Non-coding domain, and McKinsey, Bain & BCG (MBB as they say) are the top firms in the Consulting domain. Anyone interested in Consulting dreams to get into the MBB at any stage of their career because of the big paychecks. Some people think that learning consulting from an MBA is mandatory to get into these companies, but that is not entirely right.
An analyst is an entry-level job in these consulting firms and pays around 10-15 LPA depending on the company.
Having got an offer from Bain and after seeing the process closely of Mckinsey and BCG, I will share a 3-step strategy to get into the MBB after graduation.
Resume Preparation and Aptitude
The application process at MBB begins with a preliminary round of resume screening followed by an aptitude test.
Resume screening is often considered the most challenging round as they select only 10% of the total resumes received, but with a proper strategy, you can make your resume stand out. Good academic credentials (good CGPA, research projects) are essential.
How to make a stellar resume?
For a quality resume, follow these steps:
- Having a lot of internships with startups and consulting firms helps. The impact you create during your internship is more important than the quantity of work.
- You should add your co-curricular activities to your resume to make your resume stand out. Consulting is more about teamwork; hence, your resume must highlight any activities that prove your teamwork and leadership abilities.
- Your resume is an outlook of your personality. Try to make the resume as neat as possible. Attention to Detail is the key to a good resume. Avoid making punctuation and grammatical errors.
- Don’t add things that you don’t know about or haven’t done because even if your resume gets shortlisted after the resume screening round, your interviewer will catch your bluff in a minute.
- Your resume should be well structured. Utilize every line judicially, and it should be a one-page resume. In every line, you should try and cover – problem solved your role and the impact.
After the resume screening, the second round is an aptitude round. Questions related to data interpretation, verbal ability, logical reasoning, arithmetic are asked in this round. In addition to these, there is also a section of Business understanding questions.
You can prepare aptitude questions from websites like Indixbix, Pariksha and for business understanding questions, you can refer to McKinsey PST.
Case Studies and Guesstimates
The interview round after aptitude is based on cracking case studies and guesstimates. Case studies and guesstimates are a way of judging your business acumen and your logical thinking, along with your quantitative skills and structured approach.
Guesstimates are open-ended questions like “How many airplanes take off from Delhi airport in a day?” or “How many tennis balls can be fit in your room?”. These questions don’t have a fixed answer, but you need to be structured while solving.
Case studies are a simulation of business problems, the interviewer has some data related to the case, but you will need to pull that out by asking relevant questions. For example, market Sizing, Pricing, and Market Entry are generally the cases asked in the interview.
Way to solve Case studies and guesstimates
- Ask right preliminary questions. It is imperative to ask questions to scope the problem statement properly.
- Be structured in your approach. Follow a top-down or bottom-up approach.
- Speak through your approach and ensure you and your interviewer are on the same page.
- Be very neat while solving the problem; they generally see the paper on which you solve the case study/guesstimate.
- Do calculations very precisely; you can take approximations while crunching numbers.
- In the end, it is essential to communicate your answers to the interviewer properly.
For starting your prep related to case studies and guesstimates, you can learn the basics of case studies and guesstimates from Victor Cheng’s Youtube videos.
For Case study and guesstimate practice, you can refer to Havard’s case book, IIM-A casebook. The most important part of this preparation is your partner because you cannot practice them alone, so pick a good partner to practice along with. You can ask your buddies from Seekho to take some mock interviews.
Final Interview preparation
After the case study and guesstimate round, there is a culture-fit round. In this round of interview preparation, questions will be asked related to your personality, your aspirations, and general questions like:
- Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
- What is your biggest strength and weakness?
- Salary Kitna loge? (P.S: just joking)
You can be asked a few puzzles or some simple calculations. You can read a few brain teasers from google to get the knack for it.
If you follow these three steps alongside having good academic credentials, you will get into MBB. It is crucial to enjoy your preparation because if you are honest with the process, you will enter your preferred domain one day or the other. Best of luck with your preparation.
