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KP wrote:
Hi Marquis
Hope all is well at your end. Please recall our previous conversation where I told you that I’m joining the GSB this year. Well here I am and I’m feeling the heat.
I wouldn’t say it’s a high pressure environment but it’s certainly one that keeps you on your toes. Running from FOAM to LPF to lectures to squad meetings sucks almost all of the hours that I’m awake. I do not know if this is a good time to think about internships but I do not wish to be left behind in the race and I would really appreciate a little bit of your help in this regard.
I do remember that you had starting reaching out to companies fairly early in the first year at Stanford. Since I’m interested in strategy consulting as well, would you please guide me as to how I should go about this entire process? I’m especially skeptical because I have never worked in the US before and do not know how to get in touch with the right people to help me in the process.
Your guidance would be extremely helpful.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Cheers!
KP
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My response:
KP,
Congratulations on getting your start at the GSB. I know that it’s been a tough road so far, but it will get easier once you get used to it. It’s difficult to drop everything and go into an environment where they push you constantly, but, by the time the two years passes, it will have seemed like a blur. Trust me on that.
I’m glad that you’re looking at the summer recruiting process this early on because I didn’t start thinking heavily about it until December of my first year and, by then, it was far too late. People at B-schools all across the country had been prepping for the consulting interview cycle for months by then and I was essentially playing catch-up. I tried to prep for the interviews during my Winter Break, but, because I started thinking about it all too late, I never established a good framework and cadence for preparations. I didn’t REALLY start prepping productively until I got back to school in January and, at that time, I was two or three months behind everyone else. I did have a good showing with getting a bunch of second round interviews on campus, but, as you know from my old blog entries, I got turned down by every consulting firm with which I interviewed. Thank goodness the off-campus job search worked out for me and I was able to get Accenture Strategy for the summer because I was feeling very hopeless at that point.
As the old saying goes, hindsight is 20/20, so I can easily pick out all of the things that I did wrong when I was going into the internship recruiting process. If I could do it over again, I would have done it the right way, but I can’t really feel too badly about it because the overall experience of being kicked in the teeth by 12 consulting firms for the internship made me work harder to be ready for the full-time process.
The following are a few things that you should think about or do as you look at trying to get a summer internship in strategy consulting:
- Start learning to prep for cases as soon as possible…and, when I say that, I mean IMMEDIATELY. There are likely people in your class who have started prepping for cases already and, more importantly, there are likely more people at other schools who have also started preparing. When it comes to the internship process, you’re not only competing with GSB people, but also people from the other top B-schools and even folks from the lower-ranked schools. I would recommend buying a good case prep book today (if you haven’t already) and getting yourself used to the thinking that will lead to success in these interviews. The first step to getting ready for the interviews is understanding the way to problem-solve in a structured manner
- Find case practice partners and start doing live practice case interviews. This is where you would put what you learned from reading the case books into action. You’ll need to get used to thinking through the problem; managing the interviewer-interviewee interaction; doing math on the fly; structuring your initial approach to the problem and using it as a roadmap; and synthesizing key information and insights…and doing all of this while the clock is ticking. It seems easy when you’re reading a book and thinking through it, but it’s much more difficult when you have to run through it all live without freaking out.
- Start researching the different consulting firms and learn as much as you can about them. You’ll want to start off by reading the firms’ websites to learn general information that’s available to everyone. Next, you’ll want to reach out to your classmates and other friend who might have worked at the firms prior to matriculating at B-school to ask more specific questions about their experiences and to learn about the nuances of company cultures. After that, you should connect with second-year MBA students who might have done summer internships at these firms to find out how their experiences were, what was expected of them as summer MBA interns, and get more insights about company culture. Finally, reach out to alums who currently work for the firms to ask whether you can set up 15-20 minute long calls to pick their brains for information about the firms.
- Based on the research you’ve done, pick a set of firms that you’d like to focus on for the recruiting cycle. Think about what it is that you want out of an employer and map that to the information you’ve found out the consulting firms. Key points would include office location, company culture, type of work, promotion track, experience for employees who come from international backgrounds, and fit with your personality. It’s really important to leverage your research because you’ll need to make sure you’re targeting firms where you’d actually want to work. Spending time on companies that are poor fits for you or that you wouldn’t work for if you receive an offer is just a big waste of time, which you can’t afford, especially in such a down economy. Whatever you do, DON’T SPREAD YOURSELF TOO THIN!!! I can’t emphasize the importance of this point enough. I tried to dive deep on a dozen companies by going to all of their recruiting events and getting to know all of their people, but, in the end, it didn’t help me at all because I couldn’t get deep enough on any of them for it to matter. Plus, I sacrificed interview prep time in order to attend recruiting events for companies that I couldn’t have really cared less about.
- Think about alternatives for the summer. You probably don’t want to think about this possibility, but, with the economy being so bad and there not being many summer positions in Consulting, there’s a chance that you might not score a summer internship at a consulting firm. If that happens, you’ll want to have a fallback option for your summer that would give you an interesting experience and could position you well for the full-time Consulting recruiting cycle. Just remember that the summer cycle is important, but the TRUE goal is to get the job that is right for you as you’re going out of business school.
- TRY TO RELAX!!! I know that you may be feeling a lot of pressure right now, but you HAVE to recognize that the world won’t end if you don’t get a job in Consulting. B-school can set you up for any kind of job outside of practicing law and medicine, so remember that you’ll be able to find a job that will interest you. Too many kids allow themselves to be kept up at night with fears around getting a job in Consulting, i-Banking, Private Equity, etc. and I was one of those kids back in the day. Now that I’ve been out of school for a while, I can look back and see that I really shouldn’t have been buggin’ out so much about it all. You’re getting an MBA from a place that will set you up for life, so focus on that.
I hope these comments are the kind of thing that you had in mind. I know that they may seem like a bunch of random comments, but, at some point, you’ll look back and realize that all of these comments are completely on-point.
Take care and good luck on the internship search.
Marquis
