I Want To Work In … Management Consultancy

 

Management consultancy is "The service provided to business, public and other undertakings by an independent person...in identifying and investigating problems concerned with policy, organisation, procedures and methods, recommending appropriate action and helping to implement those recommended."

Management consultants may advise on: organisational structure and development; production management; marketing, sales and distribution; personnel management and selection; systems analysis and design, and economic and environmental studies.

This is a very popular career choice for students, but is not easy to get into as a new graduate. You will need a strong academic background; good numeracy, analytical and communication skills, confidence, determination and a strong interest in business.

PROFILE: Management Consultant

INVOLVES: The service provided to business, public & other undertakings by an independent person in identifying & investigating, problems concerned with policy, organisation, procedures & methods, recommending appropriate action & helping to implement those recommended. Working with all kinds of business to enhance their short - term or long - term performance. Projects may last anything from 1 month - 1 year. Management consultants may advise on: organisational structure & development, production management, marketing, sales & distribution, personnel management & selection, systems analysis & design, economic & environmental studies.
EMPLOYERS: strategic consulting firms, software consultancies, divisions of accounting firms.
RELATED JOBS: Freelance consulting & contracting work.
SATISFACTIONS: Varied work, important jobs, good pay, excellent career enhancement.
NEGATIVES: Long hours, pressure, and little support: need to be independent & self - motivated. Primarily based in London. A few vacancies in chartered accountants' management consultancy divisions in other large cities. Much travelling is likely to be involved on assignments to clients, both in the U.K. & overseas.
SKILLS: spoken & written communication, analysing, investigating, persuading. Personal qualities required: good academic record, flexibility.
ADVANCEMENT: May move up through the firm to achieve partner status or use experience to move outside after 2 - 3 years.
DEGREE: IT related degrees are often sought after, but a number of consultancies will provide training in this field to graduates in ANY discipline.
POSTGRADUATE STUDY: MBA
TIPS: Consultancy firms like practical business experience. Relevant experience includes training as a chartered accountant & then moving into consultancy. Few vacancies for new graduates - except in I.T. consultancy (which recruits graduates in any subject). Otherwise, postgrad. qualifications may help. After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant. After relevant work experience, e.g. in personnel, finance, systems, production, marketing, O.R.

"A word of warning: we have been inundated with applications from very high calibre candidates for all consultancy vacancies ....we will finally recruit less than one per cent of the applicants we consider." (Recruitment Manager for large firm of Accountants).

 

Employers

include specialist consultancy firms, management consultancy divisions of chartered accountancy firms (see above) and IT consultancies such as Logica and Accenture.

Getting in.

A consultant is someone who takes a subject you understand and makes it sound confusing.

Consultancy speak?

AssCo has refactored the theory of M&A. The capacity to embrace virally leads to the capability to syndicate cyber-micro-extensibly. Do you have a strategy to become world-class? What do we syndicate? Anything and everything, regardless of anonymity! Think intra-24/7/365. If you whiteboard strategically, you may have to morph magnetically.

Learn how to do this properly with the Corporate Gibberish Generator

Useful information sources

Firms

 

Questions asked at interviews for management consultancy jobs

If you have been to an interview or assessment centre recently please fill in our interview report form to help other students.

MARKET SIZING questions

How to select the right person for the right job

Put one hundred bricks in a ten by ten rectangle on the floor of a closed room with an open window. Then send two candidates into the room and close the door.

Leave them undisturbed in the room for two hours, then go back into the room to analyse the situation. 

  • If they are counting the bricks, assign them to the Accounts Department.
  • If they are recounting them, assign them to Auditing.
  • If they have messed up the whole place with the bricks, assign them to Engineering.
  • If they are arranging the bricks in some strange order, assign them to Planning.
  • If they are throwing the bricks at each other, assign them to Operations.
  • If they are sleeping, assign them to Security.
  • If they have broken the bricks into pieces, assign them to MIS / Information Technology.
  • If they are sitting idle, assign them to HR.
  • If they say they have tried different combinations, but few bricks have been moved, assign them to Sales.
  • If they have already left for the day, assign them to Marketing.
  • If they are staring out of the open window, assign them to Strategic Planning.
  • If they have thrown all the bricks out the window, assign them to Business Process Re-engineering.

And then last but not least, if they are gossiping with each other and not a single brick has been moved, congratulate them and assign them to Senior Management.

These evaluate your temperament and analytical skills and are often used in CASE STUDY interviews by consultancy and banking firms. They test your logical, analytical, numerical and problem solving skills. A lot of the skill in answering these questions involved making reasoned estimates of the market size. For help with answering these see our page on CASE interviews

Competency questions. See our page on How to Answer Competency-based Questions

Commercial Awareness Questions. See our page on How to answer Commercial Awareness Questions

Other questions

Tests given. See our practice aptitude tests

Case studies. See our page on assessment centre exercises

Tips from interviewees

Comments


Last fully updated 2012