Case interview in point-the only way to consult-2

Part 2: Resume Preparation and knowledge reserve

Sun Jie Alex sun

You have always had this question: what is the background, what kind of resume can be favored by the world's top consulting companies, so as to get an interview opportunity. In fact, the answer is not certain, because the background of the consulting consultant is relatively diverse, the consulting work requires a lot of knowledge, so there is no certain standard.

First of all, I think we should talk about your resume first, because it is the first step in your dealings with the consulting company. The quality of your resume also directly affects whether you have any opportunities for future development. During recruitment, a general consulting company sets up a team responsible for the screening of resumes. The team member mainly includes the company's Human Resources Director, Business Analyst, consulting consultant and partner. Each person focuses on different aspects. After reading his/her resume, each person scores his/her resume and obtains the score of each team's member by weighted average, resumes with a total score lower than a set value will be screen-down. In addition, there will be a comment on each submitted Resume, which is also divided into different levels. If the resume is very impressive, the comments will be high, making the interviewer feel very eager to see this nickname.

generally, HR mainly focuses on the applicant's educational background, academic achievement, and English proficiency. business analysts (employees who have just entered the company in the past two years, because they are familiar with the situation in the school) mainly look at some of the applicant's extracurricular activities, scholarships and honors, the key is to confirm the authenticity of the content written on the resume, check the body; the level of consultants and partners is relatively high. They are looking for 4 things:
1. academic Excellence (Award, GPA etc)
2. leadership Experience (social activities, especially leading roles)
3. drive to excellence (always wants more, continued improvement)
4. personal impact (less important in resume screening)
the best candidate is what we called unsecured over-achiever. it means that you are an over-achiever-successful in everything you do; and you are still un-satisfied with your achievement and want more and working hard for it.

In the final analysis, several parts of the resume are the most striking:
1. Educational background
In other words, it refers to your school and major. The consulting company does not require the applicant to have a professional background or graduate from any school. The composition of the personnel is also diversified. For example, Bain's recruitment is quite diverse. offeree has the characteristics of reading geography, reading Medicine, reading information management, and reading law, graduated from beiwai and other schools. However, McKinsey and BCG focus only on the students of Peking University, Tsinghua University, Jiaotong University and Fudan University. Their majors include foreign languages, management, computer and communication. (However, they are not absolute, wait for you to change ). It is hard to say which of the masters and undergraduates have more advantages. The key lies in the overall quality and ability. To be honest, a master's degree does not have much advantage over an undergraduate student.

2. learning scores
The score is relatively hard. I won't talk about it in this article, because it is very clear in looking beyond the case interview. A higher score is always good, and a lower score is not a problem. Don't be too low. The key is that you need other parts to score. However, scholarship is really important, so we should emphasize it again.

3. English proficiency
I think the English proficiency mentioned here is not necessarily required to win the first prize in the national English competition, or to take an advanced interpreter, GMAT, GRE, TOFEL, Tse, etc. In fact, the English language used in the interview is not very demanding, and it is not necessary to speak as fluent as native speaker (if you can). The key is to be fluent in expression and accurate wording, to put it bluntly, let others understand what you mean and you are not tired of talking about it yourself.
Of course, good English during the interview may bring you extra points. However, I personally think that a foreign language is actually a tool that helps you better express yourself and understand others. As long as I can reach this level, I think this English ability is enough to meet the needs of daily work.
For applicants who are not very good at speaking English, there is no chance or chance. McKinsey, Boston Consulting, colny, and Roland Berger may all adopt Chinese interviews in a round of interviews to allow applicants to better express their ideas and present themselves. However, at last, McKinsey, BCG, and ATK were very good at English.

4. extracurricular activities and honors
the experience of extracurricular activities sometimes makes up for the impact of low scores. Because you participate in extra-curricular activities and have achieved excellent results, you can broaden your horizons and improve your communication and expression skills.
today, there are many extracurricular activities, such as McKinsey's schlar program, l'oreal's estrat, brandstorm, danone Global Business Planning Competition (both teams of Jiaotong University won the China Championship and world runner-up in the previous two sessions), shell gourami Business Challenge, ja Global Business Challenge, and entrepreneurship program competition, exhibition planning competition, Financial Analysis Competition, bertelman media inside, hpair, Stanford Asian tech entrepreneurship activities and so on.
another advantage of participating in extra-curricular activities is that it helps you build your own connections and expand the network for future use.

5. Community Work
community work mainly reflects whether you have leadership and good communication and coordination skills. Participating student organizations, international nonprofit organizations, and nonprofit organizations all reflect your abilities. The job of the Community is not the most important, nor does it require every applicant to be the student union chairman, the chairman of the Research Association or the president of the Association. This is because in the future work will be a team. Not everyone is a team leader. In the work, communication and collaboration between leader and member are required, more often, you will find that it is more important to become a good cooperator than to become a leader.
of course, if you have served as a leader, this may bring you an advantage, whether you are the president of the Student Union, the president of the Community or the department Minister, the abilities of the leadership team can be reflected. Your achievements or gains in the leader stage will become the focus of the discussion during the interview. Some student cadres just stick to their names and do not do practical work. Then he certainly cannot say anything during the interview, and such a person will be eliminated in the end; however, some students talk about what difficulties they encounter when they start their work, how they overcome the difficulties and solve the problems, and what gains they have. These are what the interviewer wants to hear.
I think teclast mentioned this in looking beyond the case interview: Whether you are in a student club or in a student union, whether you lead a team of 300 people or five people, as long as you are fully engaged in improving yourself, the idea is to build this team more powerful, then you will certainly hone the leadership and communication skill that the consulting company values.

6. internship experience
Internship experience is also very important. The consulting company I mentioned above hopes to find "low-risk" People. Low-risk means you have already done similar work in this line and have a better understanding of this line. So if you want to consult, the best internship experience is undoubtedly the consulting company.
Currently, companies such as McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Roland Berger, Lek, bah, ATK, and monitor all have part-time job or intern recruitment systems. BBS often has such information. However, alumni recommended is another way to go to these consulting companies for a high chance of internship. If you have experienced senior siblings or friends or family members who work in these consulting companies, we recommend that you receive internships more easily, at least for an interview.
Some of the students I know have never had an internship or a part-time job before, but they wanted to enter the top consulting company or some of them for their first internship and never did a non-technical job, it is not practical to switch from a technical company to a consulting company. This is a step by step process and has a certain Matthew effect. Therefore, you must accumulate more practical experience, whether it is a company in the industry or a service industry, whether it is a technical or non-technical job, starting from the bottom layer, this will not only train work ability, but also accumulate certain industry experience.
On your resume, you don't need to list too many internships. Just list 3-4 internships. Otherwise, you will feel too active and insecure. BTW: Don't put the Tutor experience or volunteer experience into the internship experience, which is not uncommon.

To sum up, one sentence is to do your best to highlight your strengths and characteristics in your resume, but never write false information or exaggerate the facts, once discovered, you may lose the chance of an interview, or even be considered to have a bad character, affecting your future employment. After preparing your resume, let's take a look at the information required by the consulting firm and the case study?

If you are a non-administrator, the interviewer may not have a lot of requirements on your management knowledge during the interview, but I think the necessary basic management knowledge is still necessary, these knowledge may also include:
P (product, price, place, promotion), which is the best way to analyze and solve marketing problems
2. Fixed cost vs. Variable Cost
3. BCG Matrix
4. Porter's Five Forces (Michael Porter's important strategic theory) and three strategies
5. Financial Statement (balance sheet, income statement, Cash Flow Statement)
6. Sort ate Finance (stock, bond, interest rate, NPV Net Present Value Method, Capital Asset Pricing Model-CAPM, WACC, etc)
7. Basic knowledge of M &
8. Product Lifecycle
9. Value Chain Analysis
10. benchmark and Best Practice
And so on. For more information, see looking beyond the case interview.

In addition, it is very important to accumulate necessary industry knowledge. For example, the automobile industry, the financial industry, the fast-moving consumer goods industry, the telecom industry, the energy industry, and the manufacturing industry are all popular industries in case interviews, interviewers will also prefer to use cases in these industries.
You can read more newspapers and magazines at ordinary times, for example, Economic Observer, 21st Century Economic Report, Harvard Business comment, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and McKinsey Quarterly, these readings will help you access the necessary industry knowledge and gain expert insights on such issues. In addition, you can participate in some excellent organizations, such as the Jiaotong University-share Association (haha, advertising). You can have some knowledge about different industries.

After completing the Resume Preparation and knowledge reserve stage, let's take a look at the case interview. Once you pass the case interview, you can achieve your dream of entering the consulting company. What is case interview? Why the case?