Alright, so I’m going to start this entry off with another edition of “Marquis bringing something good to the People”…I want to pass along some information that might help those of you planning to apply to business school in the Fall. I recently discovered a GMAT prep and B-school application counseling scholarship being offered by a site called BeatTheGMAT.com: 2009 Beat The GMAT Scholarship (click link for more detailed information). According to the detailed site, the prizes up for grabs are:
“First Prize ($5490 total value)
$500 Cash
One full Manhattan GMAT course
1 School Comprehensive Package with Stacy Blackman Consulting
Second Prize ($2310 total value)
$500 Cash
One full Manhattan GMAT course
2500-word Editing Service with Stacy Blackman Consulting
Third Prize ($2210 total value)
$500 Cash
One full Manhattan GMAT course
1000-word Editing Service with Stacy Blackman Consulting
Fourth Prize ($2020 total value)
$500 Cash
One full Manhattan GMAT course
Copy of MBA Application Roadmap by Stacy Blackman
Fifth Prize ($1990 total value)
$500 Cash
One full Manhattan GMAT course “
The last day to submit application materials, so there are still two more weeks to get your stuff sent in. I don’t know much about the BeatTheGMAT.com, but I’ve heard great things about both Manhattan GMAT and Stacy Blackman Consulting. So, this might be something worth jumping on if you’re planning to apply to business school in the Fall. Now, don’t y’all ever say that I never did anything nice for you
OK, now on to the entry…The email below is from a prospective applicant to Stanford GSB who has some questions related to transitioning into Consulting after business school. He wrote an email to me in early 2008 and I hit him with a long response, with this follow-up email coming in a couple of months later. Because I get so many emails, it’s often hard for me to respond to follow-ups from people that I’ve already helped before and, in these cases, it usually takes me a while to get to them. In this case, it took me seven months, which is probably the longest delay in a reply that I’ve ever had before. When I realized that, I just HAD to email this dude back. Let’s see if my response arrives in time for him to consider it to be relevant.
——-
SM wrote:
“Dear Marquis,
I strongly believe you are doing a great job with this blog.
Thanks for investing your time answering our queries. I am prospective Stanford student (applying in Oct.09) from India with a short tem goal of Strategy consulting.
1. What are the three biggest challenges that you experienced in your tenure with Mckinsey ? How your Stanford MBA helped you to tackle the same?
2. What are the challenges do you see in Management Consulting in near future?
3. One of the challenges is optimizing the ratio of staff/ Partner i.e. optimizing the Partner time in given assignment? During your Mckinsey careers how your team handled such challenge?
4. Do you believe that leading Strategic Planning and Execution department in a Multinational organization is a viable long term goal after working as a strategy consultant for 6/7 years? If yes, then can you elaborate the same a bit?
Regards,
SM “
——-
My response:
SM,
I hope this message finds you doing well. I know it’s been a few months since you sent your email, but, since I had written a REALLY LONG response to an email from you earlier, I prioritized some other readers’ messages over yours to share my insights more fairly with others. Well, I just realized that about seven months have past since your email came in, so I figured that it was as good a time as cany to address your questions. I’m going to try my best to answer your questions while being efficient with what I write since I put so much time into responding to the last email you sent to me.
Judging from your questions, I can see that you’ve got a strong interest in joining my former employer, which is cool, but I hope you can understand that I’ve got to be thoughtful about how I answer your questions. I might not give you the specific details that you were hoping for, but my answers will give you a decent idea of how things go down. Without further delay, here are my responses:
- “What are the three biggest challenges that you experienced in your tenure with Mckinsey ? How your Stanford MBA helped you to tackle the same?” –> Great question, but I’m not going to answer it here because I’ve been mulling over a future blog entry that will give a great answer to this one. It’s going to take me a while to dive deep on that response, so I’d rather hold off on writing about it now and save it for the upcoming entry.
- “What are the challenges do you see in Management Consulting in near future?” –> Whew! This was a pretty good question back in September when you originally emailed me, but it’s a BIG question right now as the economic downturn has intensified. The current economic environment has become a perfect storm for a wide range of industries and I don’t believe that the Consulting industry is immune from being impacted by it. Many corporations and other organizations are cutting back on discretionary spending, which affects the pipeline fof work for Consulting firms. Along with this trend, many firms are facing overcapacity of staff with the volume of work declining and many folks just chillin’ “on the beach” waiting for new projects to launch. In some cases, traditional “go-to clients” (like those in the financial services and retail industries) for firms have ceased to exist and the associated bodies of work have vanished along with them. And, now that I think about it, many companies have filed for bankruptcy in the past year and, if they hadn’t made payments to consulting firms that provided services for them beforehand, I imagine that those consulting firms would be hurting for those missing payments right about now. I have heard many stories baout how tough it was in the industry right after the dot-com bubble burst, but that drama was likely nowhere near as tough as the current state of the market.
One issue that can be a blessing and curse for the industry is the abundance of talent that will be interested in pursuing careers in Consulting. Many of the kids who wanted to become i-bankers are now targeting consulting because the Investment Banking industry as we knew it is dead. So, there are tons of kids trying to get Consulting gigs, which means there will be many high-quality candidates in the field, but the firms will have to balance the availability of talent with their recruiting needs over the next couple of years. I don’t know how long the global economy will be struggling, but assume that there will be some sort of lag between economic recovery and the eventual re-emergence of demand for consulting services. In the meantime, the firms will have to balance their current and projected future staffing needs against the available candidates, which probably will be a non-trivial task.
- “One of the challenges is optimizing the ratio of staff/ Partner i.e. optimizing the Partner time in given assignment? During your Mckinsey careers how your team handled such challenge?” –> Great question…but, I don’t know how detailed of an answer I can give you because it often gets handled on a case by case basis. What I’m going to say here isn’t specific to McK because I assume that it would work in a similar fashion at other firms. Basically, optimizing Partner time would depend on that Partner’s workload. If possible, the Partner would visit the team on-site for at least a day per week and then stay in regular contact with the Manager via phone or email to get status updates. In other situations where the partner can’t be on site as often, he or she may have regular conference calls with the team to stay plugged into what’s going on at the ground-level. Many firms have an Associate Partner or Principal role to help in providing senior-level support to project teams. If you’d like more detailed information for how specific firms handle this issue, I’d recommend reaching out to current employees at your target firms and asking about it.
- “Do you believe that leading Strategic Planning and Execution department in a Multinational organization is a viable long term goal after working as a strategy consultant for 6/7 years? If yes, then can you elaborate the same a bit?” –> I believe that one can DEFINITELY lead a Strategic Planning and Execution department after working as a strategy consultant for 6-7 years. In fact, I know of several people who have done just that after less time than that. And, even if one doesn’t transition directly into the lead role of a Corporate Strategy department (or VP/SVP of Strategy), he/she can likely move into a Director-level position after a couple of years. A great way to prepare for that transition is to focus on a particular industry/function early on in your consulting career to build up relevant skills for a given sector. As you work on different projects in that sector, you’ll gain many insights about the inner workings of the sector and see that several issues pop up again and again. You’d want to leverage these learnings as you talk to company recruiters and headhunters to find the right fit in a Corporate Strategy role. I’m not saying that it’ll be easy, but the process is relatively straightforward because many consultants have made a similar transition into running internal Strategy organizations in corporations over the years.
I hope these answers are helpful to you. Take care and good luck on your Stanford GSB application in the Fall.
-Marquis
“First Prize ($5490 total value)
$500 Cash
One full Manhattan GMAT course
1 School Comprehensive Package with Stacy Blackman Consulting
Second Prize ($2310 total value)
$500 Cash
One full Manhattan GMAT course
2500-word Editing Service with Stacy Blackman Consulting
Third Prize ($2210 total value)
$500 Cash
One full Manhattan GMAT course
1000-word Editing Service with Stacy Blackman Consulting
Fourth Prize ($2020 total value)
$500 Cash
One full Manhattan GMAT course
Copy of MBA Application Roadmap by Stacy Blackman
Fifth Prize ($1990 total value)
$500 Cash
One full Manhattan GMAT course “
The last day to submit application materials, so there are still two more weeks to get your stuff sent in. I don’t know much about the BeatTheGMAT.com, but I’ve heard great things about both Manhattan GMAT and Stacy Blackman Consulting. So, this might be something worth jumping on if you’re planning to apply to business school in the Fall. Now, don’t y’all ever say that I never did anything nice for you
OK, now on to the entry…The email below is from a prospective applicant to Stanford GSB who has some questions related to transitioning into Consulting after business school. He wrote an email to me in early 2008 and I hit him with a long response, with this follow-up email coming in a couple of months later. Because I get so many emails, it’s often hard for me to respond to follow-ups from people that I’ve already helped before and, in these cases, it usually takes me a while to get to them. In this case, it took me seven months, which is probably the longest delay in a reply that I’ve ever had before. When I realized that, I just HAD to email this dude back. Let’s see if my response arrives in time for him to consider it to be relevant.
——-
SM wrote:
“Dear Marquis,
I strongly believe you are doing a great job with this blog.
Thanks for investing your time answering our queries. I am prospective Stanford student (applying in Oct.09) from India with a short tem goal of Strategy consulting.
1. What are the three biggest challenges that you experienced in your tenure with Mckinsey ? How your Stanford MBA helped you to tackle the same?
2. What are the challenges do you see in Management Consulting in near future?
3. One of the challenges is optimizing the ratio of staff/ Partner i.e. optimizing the Partner time in given assignment? During your Mckinsey careers how your team handled such challenge?
4. Do you believe that leading Strategic Planning and Execution department in a Multinational organization is a viable long term goal after working as a strategy consultant for 6/7 years? If yes, then can you elaborate the same a bit?
Regards,
SM “
——-
My response:
SM,
I hope this message finds you doing well. I know it’s been a few months since you sent your email, but, since I had written a REALLY LONG response to an email from you earlier, I prioritized some other readers’ messages over yours to share my insights more fairly with others. Well, I just realized that about seven months have past since your email came in, so I figured that it was as good a time as cany to address your questions. I’m going to try my best to answer your questions while being efficient with what I write since I put so much time into responding to the last email you sent to me.
Judging from your questions, I can see that you’ve got a strong interest in joining my former employer, which is cool, but I hope you can understand that I’ve got to be thoughtful about how I answer your questions. I might not give you the specific details that you were hoping for, but my answers will give you a decent idea of how things go down. Without further delay, here are my responses:
- “What are the three biggest challenges that you experienced in your tenure with Mckinsey ? How your Stanford MBA helped you to tackle the same?” –> Great question, but I’m not going to answer it here because I’ve been mulling over a future blog entry that will give a great answer to this one. It’s going to take me a while to dive deep on that response, so I’d rather hold off on writing about it now and save it for the upcoming entry.
- “What are the challenges do you see in Management Consulting in near future?” –> Whew! This was a pretty good question back in September when you originally emailed me, but it’s a BIG question right now as the economic downturn has intensified. The current economic environment has become a perfect storm for a wide range of industries and I don’t believe that the Consulting industry is immune from being impacted by it. Many corporations and other organizations are cutting back on discretionary spending, which affects the pipeline fof work for Consulting firms. Along with this trend, many firms are facing overcapacity of staff with the volume of work declining and many folks just chillin’ “on the beach” waiting for new projects to launch. In some cases, traditional “go-to clients” (like those in the financial services and retail industries) for firms have ceased to exist and the associated bodies of work have vanished along with them. And, now that I think about it, many companies have filed for bankruptcy in the past year and, if they hadn’t made payments to consulting firms that provided services for them beforehand, I imagine that those consulting firms would be hurting for those missing payments right about now. I have heard many stories baout how tough it was in the industry right after the dot-com bubble burst, but that drama was likely nowhere near as tough as the current state of the market.
One issue that can be a blessing and curse for the industry is the abundance of talent that will be interested in pursuing careers in Consulting. Many of the kids who wanted to become i-bankers are now targeting consulting because the Investment Banking industry as we knew it is dead. So, there are tons of kids trying to get Consulting gigs, which means there will be many high-quality candidates in the field, but the firms will have to balance the availability of talent with their recruiting needs over the next couple of years. I don’t know how long the global economy will be struggling, but assume that there will be some sort of lag between economic recovery and the eventual re-emergence of demand for consulting services. In the meantime, the firms will have to balance their current and projected future staffing needs against the available candidates, which probably will be a non-trivial task.
- “One of the challenges is optimizing the ratio of staff/ Partner i.e. optimizing the Partner time in given assignment? During your Mckinsey careers how your team handled such challenge?” –> Great question…but, I don’t know how detailed of an answer I can give you because it often gets handled on a case by case basis. What I’m going to say here isn’t specific to McK because I assume that it would work in a similar fashion at other firms. Basically, optimizing Partner time would depend on that Partner’s workload. If possible, the Partner would visit the team on-site for at least a day per week and then stay in regular contact with the Manager via phone or email to get status updates. In other situations where the partner can’t be on site as often, he or she may have regular conference calls with the team to stay plugged into what’s going on at the ground-level. Many firms have an Associate Partner or Principal role to help in providing senior-level support to project teams. If you’d like more detailed information for how specific firms handle this issue, I’d recommend reaching out to current employees at your target firms and asking about it.
- “Do you believe that leading Strategic Planning and Execution department in a Multinational organization is a viable long term goal after working as a strategy consultant for 6/7 years? If yes, then can you elaborate the same a bit?” –> I believe that one can DEFINITELY lead a Strategic Planning and Execution department after working as a strategy consultant for 6-7 years. In fact, I know of several people who have done just that after less time than that. And, even if one doesn’t transition directly into the lead role of a Corporate Strategy department (or VP/SVP of Strategy), he/she can likely move into a Director-level position after a couple of years. A great way to prepare for that transition is to focus on a particular industry/function early on in your consulting career to build up relevant skills for a given sector. As you work on different projects in that sector, you’ll gain many insights about the inner workings of the sector and see that several issues pop up again and again. You’d want to leverage these learnings as you talk to company recruiters and headhunters to find the right fit in a Corporate Strategy role. I’m not saying that it’ll be easy, but the process is relatively straightforward because many consultants have made a similar transition into running internal Strategy organizations in corporations over the years.
I hope these answers are helpful to you. Take care and good luck on your Stanford GSB application in the Fall.
-Marquis
