Hey everyone. I know it’s been a while since I posted anything, but that’s because I’ve been pretty busy getting acclimated to my new job and learning what I need to “swim and not sink” in the role. So far, the new job is fantastic and I’m really excited about the nature of the work that I’m doing. Plus, the team of folks with whom I’m working are hella cool and have made the past couple of weeks in the office really fun. This was definitely a good move for me careerwise.

The email below is from a reader who found me through the interview that I did for ManagementConsulted last year. He’s an engineer with a project management background who was recently invited to interview with Bain. He’s really excited about it, but feels like he has a long way to go to get prepared for it. He’s asked me for suggestions on resources that he can leverage during his preparations. As my long-time readers know, I’ve answer questions like this MANY times, so I ended up advising this reader to check out my archives for more details. For now, I’ve just given him some quick-hit items to think about and figured that it might be helpful to some of you out there too.

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EB wrote:

Hi Marquis,

I got to read a couple of your stuff from your interview on managementconsulted.com and your blog. Thanks for posting all those information and helping out.

I was contacted by Bain & Company for first round interviews. I am really counting on this opportunity since it has been my dream going in to business consulting. If feel that spending a couple of years in this field will add a lot to my skills and experience.

I have an engineering background with project management experience (I am certified PMP). I feel I am very weak on the business side and very worried about case studies. I am also not very good with fast mental mathematical analysis. Do you have special advice or resources that you can recommend to improve that?

I want to prepare as much as possible and make the most out of this opportunity and I really appreciate your help and resources.

Cheers,

EB

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My response:

EB,

Congratulations on being invited to do an interview with Bain. They’re a great company and you would learn a LOT about being a strong businessperson after a couple of years there. It usually takes me a while to respond to people’s emails, but your was one that I knew I could knock out quickly. Plus, I’ve posted a lot of advice on how to best prepare for consulting interviews on my blog, so you can go into my archived messages for more detailed information about that.

At a high-level, I’d say that you should focus on three areas as you prepare for your interviews:

1. Case interview preparation – I would HIGHLY recommend that you purchase a case interview prep book if you’ve never done case interviews before and have concerns about how you’ll perform. These books will give you an introduction to how to structure cases and the timing/process for a standard interviews. You’ll find that there are hundreds of books on the market, but I always recommend that people check out “Case in Point” by Mark Consentino. It really helped me to become familiar with using frameworks to solve standard business problems and, once I combined my own creativity with his methods, I was able to develop a fantastic approach to knocking out consulting cases. Also, in November 2006, I posted a consulting case interview prep guide on my site, which gave a really quick overview of what one would need to know to dive right into tackling case interviews. You might want to check it out as a starting point and then go buy a more thorough case prep book like “Case in Point”.

2. Developing your quick math capabilities – I had to basically teach myself mental math tricks and included some descriptions of techniques that I found helpful in the case interview prep guide that I referenced above. In the past couple of years, I have come across some resources on the Web that you might find helpful, including:

http://www.purplemath.com
http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Mental-Math-Mathemagicians-Calculation/dp/0307338401
http://betterexplained.com/articles/mental-math-shortcuts/

I would imagine that a quick Google search would yield a load of similar websites to these that might help you get better at mental math.

3. Learning how to think in a business manner – This is more of an art than a science in terms of learning how to do it, but it is something that is highly important, especially for people like us who come from technical backgrounds. My advice to people on this point is to start reading business magazines and the business/money sections of newspapers to get a feel for how different actions have an impact on companies, their strategy, and the overall markets. Once you’ve established that baseline, you should start doing mental exercises to think through the potential implications of different actions. An example would be to think through how Apple’s recent introduction of the iPad might impact the business of traditional computer makers like HP, Dell, and Sony, who have been releasing standard laptops, netbooks, and tablet PCs. And, when you’re thinking through these implications, don’t just stop at the surface level implications…you should also think through second and third order implications, as well. I provided more details on this in the case interview prep guide that I referenced earlier.

I hope this is helpful to you as you prepare for your interviews. Take care and good luck with Bain.

Marquis