Back before September 11th a couple years ago, it seemed like lots of people graduating from my school (University of Chicago) had no problem getting consulting jobs… I guess consulting firms embraced people with liberal arts degrees who were creative, innovative, knew how to solve problems, think critically, etc, etc.
Anyway, I was thinking about applying for a job at one of these firms (namely, Boston Consulting Group). I graduated with a BA in music. The company places high importance on the skills mentioned above, and furthermore, prior business or economics experience is not required. However, a look at their “interview prep” cases completely overwhelmed me and seemed to contradict this claim…
Of course, I’m terribly skeptical of my ability to offer any sort of business strategy (at this point, with no training), but I swear people like me were getting jobs like this left and right just a couple years ago. I’m wondering if anybody on these boards might have experiences to share, advice on what firms are looking for in recent college graduates, whether this is a ridiculous thing I shouldn’t even pursue, etc.
I have a music degree and work in the business world. I know and have known many other folk in a similar position with varying degrees. In my experience, having a degree is significantly more important than what the degree is in. If it were important, one wouldn’t see as many philosphy bachelor’s and other types of degrees that have less fiscal solvability. The degree not only represents specifically what you know (ie, Music) but also that you were able to do a lot of other well rounded things which is what it takes to survive in the business world. Basically much of what you will have to do is pretty general (ie, work with the PC, be able to use most of the word/excel/etc types of software, think creatively, and write well). All of these types of things you should be able to do by the time you are done with college because of the papers that you have had to do.
That was two years ago. The consulting world is a very diferent place these days. Most firms have been downsizing. Consulting services are one of the first expenses a company cuts during a recession.
Good luck, however BCG is considered one of the top consulting firms in the world (along with McKinsey and Bain). Competion is pretty intense even during the best of times.
Consulting firms require you to do a great deal of creating problem solving with imperfect information. What you probably experienced was an example of a “case interview”. Generally you are asked a question like “how many golf-balls will fit in a 747” or “how many people travel through JFK airport on a weekday”. They aren’t looking for a correct answer (so don’t start memorizing stupid facts!) but for a methodology on how you would solve such a problem.
Don’t worry, you won’t be. At least not by yourself. Generally you work as part of a team. As a new “consultant” or “analyst” expect to make a lot of Excel models, Powerpoint slides, Viseo process flow diagrams and org charts and conduct a lot of research and interviewing.
You might also expect to do a lot of SAP or other technology consulting if you join a firm like CSC, EDS, Accenture or Deloitte Consulting.
It’s worth pursuing if it is something you want to do. Be aware that it is a fairly grueling lifestyle. You WILL travel up to 100% of the time. Generally most firms use what they call the 3-4-5 model - Three nights, four days at the client site and the 5th day back at the home office. Expect to live out of a suitcase.
If you are not staffed you are on what they call the “beach” or the “bench”. When on the beach, you are expected to reach out to managers to get staffed, improve your skills, or do whatever you need to to keep from going insane from boredom.
Firms are basically looking for academic excellence. High grades, prestigeous schools. Excellent communication skills. That kind of stuff. Basically, your job is to be a hired brain.
Oh and I almost forgot. Consulting firms tend to hiring in “classes” at the college level. The recruiting season generally begins in the early fall. Check with your campus career services office for firms interviewing at your school. Also, seek out alumni from your school who work at firms you might be interested in working for.
Qazzz - I just left one of the top consulting firm’s Strategy practice a couple of months ago after being there since business school.
msmith53’s insights and advice are pretty much spot on regarding the process.
Additional thoughts:
Strategy consulting, as an industry, right now is basically dead and will be for some time. Why? A number of reasons - the dot-com bust left a bad taste in companies’ mouths because so many consulting firms got it so wrong. The protracted downturn in the economy means that most companies are not interested in Strategy work - strategy work, in the most typical way it is understood, in not as bottom-line oriented and only impacts profitability over the longer term - since companies need results now, they are looking to other help. If any help at all - and that is another reason: Most companies have gotten hip to bringing in their own experienced and fresh-out-of-undergrad/b-school types to do in-house strat work (for years, companies thought that having in-house strat work was too costly and that they would benefit from a consulting firm’s cross-industry/client experience - our failures during the dot-com bust dulled the luster of that perception…).
With those forces at work, the Integrations firms that had strategy practices - Accenture, EDS, CGE&Y, etc… are completely dismantling their practices - huge layoffs with the rest being assimilated (eek) into other practices. The Strat houses - BCG, McK, etc. - are experiencing charge-ability rates of 40% where their average is normally in the 70% range - again, huge layoffs and a panic’d scramble to sell other kinds of work.
For all consulting firms, the culture right now is toxic, due to these forces at work. And most are doing token college hiring at best.
When will it turn around? Hard to say - obviously, when the economy globally is firmly on its way up and their are strategic questions companies are asking - “How are my peers leading this upturn? What should I be doing?” - you will see an uptick in Strat business. But this lags an economic upswing by 6 - 12 months, so don’t look for it until the end of '04 at the earliest. And I suspect that Strat consulting will be a different beast by then.
Smaller - less than 100 professionals - consulting firms are still doing okay, because they are made up of deeply experienced industry veterans and/or consultants who both sell the work and then do it, at rates far below the big boys…
Sorry for the bleak picture, but I am trying to be honest - I have spend over a decade playing with the big boys and hanging out with CEOs and this is what I have seen.
So I would worry less about your music degree, and instead ask yourself if you really want to be in this business…at least for now.
I have to agree with WordMan’s view. I’ve worked for two of the Big Five (Big Four, now) accounting firms for the last few years. A large chunk of our business was consulting - business processing re-engineering, environmental risk, technology risk, SAP implementations, e-business security, etc, etc.
As said above, the downturn largely destroyed the market for these services (as well as natural changes in what companies need). My job started out as 50/50 IT audit and consulting, now it’s about 80/20 or 90/10 and I don’t see that changing in a while. I’m not a strategy expert but a lot of our BPR and strategy types ended up moving into internal audit, particularly for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance work in the US.
I can’t speak for the US, but there is recruitment - kind of. We’re crying out for decent quality graduates in IT audit/consulting (although, obviously, more the former than the latter), and there are a lot of jobs in the UK available for more ‘assurance’ type consulting work - i.e. helping companies cut costs and control their risks, not spending their money on shiny new projects.
I would re-emphasise WordMan’s word of warning: the culture can be toxic at the moment. Every firm I know of, audit or consulting, is totally focused on their books - training and your work/life balance goes out of the window since everyone is pressured to be 100% billable (in other words, spending all your time on work that can be charged to clients). I think that’s why recruitment’s becoming an issue: people are leaving in droves to join smaller companies or to move into non-consulting jobs.
I’ll echo what WordMan said. I worked for a strategy and operations consulting practice in one of the Big-5 after B-school. For a better part of a year, I had little or no billabile work which means doing a lot of BS projects just to get a few billable hours, sales proposals and assorted other crap work. I could have accepted a transfer to their technology implementation practice but after 4 years of IT consulting the last thing I wanted to do was get back into programming custom software. Thus laid off.
My advice if you want to get into business is to take a few accounting electives and pick an industry that interests you. After a few years when the market picks up, you might try going into consulting as an industry expert. It’s a little better anyway since you can focus your consulting career more instead of being a jack-of-all-trades generalist.