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B-School / Consulting Clubs

How to Break Into Consulting – Guide for Non-MBA Graduate Students

As addressed in my article from last week, non-MBA graduate students face a comparatively more challenging journey in their quest to enter the management consulting industry.

That being said, I know plenty of non-MBAs who have received offers from prestigious consulting firms, and so I thought it would be helpful to share some strategies that you can follow at each step of the recruitment process to increase your chance of getting an offer.

Step 1: Understanding the Consulting World

Before you seriously consider a consulting career, you should answer three questions:

  1. Is consulting the right fit for you (consider your skills and talents as well as preferred lifestyle)?
  2. Are you actually competitive for a consulting role (consider your academic history, professional experience, as well as social and leadership skills)?
  3. Which service line and industry sector is the best fit?

For non-MBAs these questions aren’t as intuitive to ask and there are fewer structured resources to provide career guidance. As a result, you must take the initiative to talk with some real-life consultants. A good place to start is your existing social network. This may be hard for some, but most people will already be indirectly connected with a few consultants. Ask family, friends, classmates, professors, alumni, the dentist, neighbors, or a gym buddy.  Keep pushing and opportunities to talk with consultants will likely emerge. Chances are that an old friend from high school or undergraduate is now working in consulting. You may be able to find them in your school’s alumni directory or by searching on LinkedIn.

Of course, if your non-MBA program has a consulting club and on campus hiring, vigorously engaging with those is a great starting point. There are a few robust non-MBA consulting clubs out there, but that support structure too often isn’t available to many non-MBA programs. Another method is to learn from MBAs, be it by taking consulting skill-oriented classes at the business school or doing projects with them. Occasionally, business schools will host consulting recruiting events that are open to all schools within the university, and non-MBAs can piggy back. However, most MBA consulting clubs and on campus recruiting are restricted for MBAs only, and it is terrible form for non-MBAs to try to infiltrate restricted events.

Step 2: Getting an Interview

There are generally three ways that graduate students can get their resume picked for an interview.

  1. Referral by a consultant at the firm
  2. Extraordinary accomplishments (such as a prestigious scholarship or being published)
  3. Being noticed by a project or program affiliated with the firm or alternative reputable consulting firm

Most of my non-MBA friends in consulting believe that they likely got an interview via referral. This is means convincing someone in the firm to internally refer you for an interview. Usually the more senior the person making the referral, the more likely an interview will be offered. Getting an internal referral is essentially an extension of networking. Firm consultants are well aware of internal referrals, so if they like a person as a viable future colleague, they generally proactively refer that person. Some firms have referral bonuses or recruiting talking points for end of year review, so the incentives are already built in. That being said, aggressively asking someone to provide an internal referral is a terrible idea.

One of the best ways to get noticed by a consulting firm is doing work with the industry during graduate school. The most expedient way to do so is to perform well in a consulting case competition. For example, Northwestern does one internally for all its non-MBA graduate students, and Duke and UNC partner to host a non-MBA graduate student one open to qualified students from any university. Some consulting firms have partnerships with a university whereby consultants mentor graduate students to conduct research projects. I also know of one PhD student who did research about consulting firms and via his years of consulting firm interaction, he landed an interview just by virtue of extensive interaction with the partners.

Step 3: Getting an Offer

Having done case interview preparation coaching for non-MBA program students, I was always amused how most of them did not take it seriously. Studying by watching YouTube and using interactive case interview websites (BCG’s website has a pretty good one) is helpful but insufficient. Getting that offer requires high quality case interview practice, which gets you ready for the in-person stress that studying simply can’t replicate. It is most helpful to practice with consultants from the firm that will be conducting the actual interview. Yet, a consultant from another firm will also be helpful. Graduate students who have significant case interview experience may be the most accessible and getting practice in with them should be the bare minimum. All of my non-MBA friends that received consulting offers spent at least a few weeks dedicated to case interview preparation, stacking a roster of personal, professional, and academic contacts to conduct live case interview preparation.

Conclusion

The key ingredient for getting a consulting offer as a non-MBA is being comfortable asking for help. In particular, this is required if you hope to truly understand the industry, the firms, and gain proficiency at consulting cases. For most non-MBA programs, management consulting is one of the less common industries that students matriculate into. Successfully navigating the journey and ultimately landing an offer means asking for help frequently.

Hall Wang is a dual degree MBA and Master of Public Policy candidate at Georgetown University. He has worked at America’s most innovative companies including Blue Origin and Facebook, as well as having done two combat deployments as a US Army Officer.

Image: Pexels

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