Emails like this that ask about how things go in other countries are tough for me because I only have what I’ve read about business customs in other nations to serve as a foundation for my response. That said, I put some thoguht into his question and *hopefully* provided a few actionable pieces of advice that will help him out. I hope he will update me in the future on his situation to let me know if he actually gets his big break into the industry.
—–
KS wrote:
Hi Marquis,—–
This is “KS” here from India. I’m currently studying in a top rung B-school in India(I’m in 1st year; we follow a semester system) which enjoys great position for all functions of MBA other than consulting. Since I am one of the select few here who really wish to make a career out of consulting, I try to follow it diligently. That involves going through various guides available from HBS, Chicago Booth etc as well as going through websites which provide cases; practicing with friends is also a part. I also enjoy your blog which provides some refreshing insights. But right now I am in a dilemma as to how to proceed with my preparation. Most importantly, here in India, the top firms look at undergraduate school pedigree and that leaves me out in the cold as my school lies a little low in that order. Can you just suggest a way ahead as to how to get an interview because even though I am preparing diligently, the pedigree issue and the post grad college are both a hindrance? Looking forward to your reply.
PS: I’ll be doing my summer internship in a not-so-reputed Consulting company, in the niche field of Eco-Energy.
Warm Regards
KS
My response:
KS,
I hope this message finds you doing well. I’d like to start by thanking you for checking out my site over the years and for bringing your issue to me. I enjoy helping folks out when I can. Also, I’d like to apologize for taking months to get back to you. I’m sure that you can imagine how difficult it can be to respond to people in a timely fashion.
Fortunately, you have a summer internship locked in and are thinking ahead to the full-time recruiting process that will start in a few months. Based on your email, it looks like you’re targeting a position at a Consulting firm with a good reputation, which is a good way to approach the job search. What I mean is that some candidates go into the process wanting a job at Firm X, Y, or Z, so, if it doesn’t work out for them at one of those firms, they consider it as a failure. Because you’ve got a wide solution set early on, you’ve got a better chance of achieving an end-state that will satisfy you.
Now, let’s get to your questions…I need to be very upfront with you and say that, based on your email, it sounds like you’ve got a tough road ahead of you. Unfortunately, I don’t know the Indian market for Consulting as well as I know the U.S. market, so I can’t definitively refute anything stated in your email. I suspect that you may be overstating the hindrance that you’re facing though. If your school has great positioning for jobs in most business functions/industries, then I can’t see why your school would be a bad look for a job in Consulting. It’s possible that your school has low placements in Consulting, but that could be a function of the aspirations of the student body and not the school itself. In other words, your situation may not be as bad as you think it is. I could be wrong, but that was my gut reaction after reading your message.
The following are a few words of advice that I hope will prove helpful to you as you work toward your desired career path:
- Start being confident in yourself: I firmly believe that a person has a 0% chance of winning if he goes into the game thinking that he will lose. From the sound of your email, you believe that you will lose when it comes to getting a job in Consulting. You may argue that I’m reading your email wrong, but I definitely see lots of sketpicism about your chances in your words. When you get a chance, take a look at a blog entry that I wrote a few years ago at http://www.marquisparker.com/2007/06/i-wanna-break-free-story-of-pigeonholed/. In that entry, I was responding to an Indian IT professional named Suresh who was hung up on his shortcomings in the MBA application process. He actually had a really good background, but didn’t want to let himself believe it until I actually “shook some sense into him”. It seems like you’ve got a similar mindset about your own chances in Consulting as Suresh did in his candidacy for business school. If you don’t have at least some kind of confidence in your chances of scoring a spot at a Consulting firm, you’ll probably end up exhibiting that worry unconsciously and recruiters won’t give you a shot.
- Work your networks: If what you say about your graduate and undergraduate institutions not being targets of reputed Consulting firms is true, that doesn’t mean that your networks are necessarily useless in your job search. I would recommend reaching out to senior businesspeople in your alumni community to introduce yourself and find out more about their backgrounds. If possible, ask if they would be willing to have a 10-20 minute conversation with you to talk about their backgrounds and how they worked their way to their current positions. Hopefully, you’ll also have a chance to talk about yourself in these discussions and, if so, you can shre your aspirations to join a Consulting firm. You never know if these people may have a contact at one of the major Consulting firms with offices in India and, if you make a good impression, one of them may be willing to pass your resume along. When it comes to the networking game, you’ve got to be creative about how you make your networks work for you.
- Get REALLY deep in some subject area: You stated that you have an internship coming up with a Consulting firm in the Eco-Energy space, but you don’t seem excited about it because the firm doesn’t have a top reputation. Instead of seeing that as a negative, why not look at it as an opportunity to develop deeper expertise on the topic of Eco-Energy? There’s a chance that you could leverage that knowledge to position yourself as a sort of subject matter expert, which could make you attractive to some of the more reputed firms in India. You didn’t mention what you did prior to business school, but this could be a great way to rebrand yourself as an “Energy guy”, which is an in-demand type in the Consulting industry and could attract the attention of a few firms.
- Start preparing for the interviews: It sounds like you may already be doing this, but, if you aren’t, start now! These preparations would primarily involve practicing Consulting case interviews, but it would also include developing your story for why Consulting makes sense for you, doing research on firms, and thinking about what you would do after you depart the Consulting industry. You never know when that interview invitation may come, so you have to be ready for it.
- Be open to non-Consultant positions at Consulting firms: If it doesn’t work out for you to get a position as a Consultant, consider applying for a non-client-facing gig at one of the firms that interest you. Given the skills that you’re acquiring, you may be able to get a job working in Finance, Accounting, Marketing, or Service Operations at a Consulting firm, which would get your foot in the door. Then, later on, you could try to facilitate an internal transfer into a client-facing Consultant position. When I was at McKinsey, I met a kid who did just that. He’d graduated from a college that wasn’t a core recruiting school for McK’s Business Analyst program, so he ended up joining The Firm as a Research Analyst in the group that did research for McK consulting teams. After 1.5 years of kicking butt in that role, he was able to transfer to a Business Analyst position and spent a couple of years serving clients. There’s no reason why you couldn’t do the same thing in India.
Marquis
