Giving advice on building key skills for Consulting…along with a quick PSA

What’s up, y’all. As some readers have noted, I haven’t written much about myself on this blog for the past couple of years and that’s mainly because I wanted to focus on providing helpful info to all of you. Well, I’m about to take it waaaay back to how I used to do a few years ago and write something about how I’m feeling right now. I’m writing this entry with a heavy heart because I found out early yesterday morning that a dear aunt of mine back in VA passed away peacefully in her sleep. I don’t even know why I’m telling y’all about this…I’ve had several other emotional “blows” over the past 8-9 months, including the death of another dear aunt over the summer, getting dumped over the phone by a female that I was ready to propose to, and the uneasiness that came from starting over in Chicago, and, at those times, I didn’t write anything about what went down. I just dealt with them internally and kept it moving, but, this time, it’s different and I don’t know why. Over the course of the evening, my aunt’s passing and those other things I listed have all come together in my mind and hit me hard and I’ve been completely out of it all night long. Emotions are really funny, man. You know…at a time like this, the most prevalent emotion is grief and it hits HARD right after someone passes, but, in time, grief can subside and be replaced with warm memories of the person that has been lost. A secondary emotion that is hitting me now is guilt because I’m realizing that I didn’t make the most of my opportunities to connect with my aunt over the past few years…and guilt is something that doesn’t necessarily subside as time passes.

For the first half of my life, I was around my family members often and kept in regular contact during both special and random occasions. Despite the ups and downs of growing up, these were always happy times because my family had my back even when I was that scraggly little dude from the country with big glasses, crooked teeth, and little good sense. Before Princeton…before Stanford…before McKinsey…before all the international trips…before everything I’ve accomplished, they were checkin’ for me for simply being Marquis, especially this aunt that just passed away and the one who passed in July. But, throughout the second half of my life, I was so consumed with trying to accomplish things and make my peoples proud that I allowed that level of contact and interaction to start fading. It seemed that I was either away at school or living somewhere far away, so I stopped being able to see my family in person as often. I should’ve made up for being away by picking up the phone and calling folk, but I guess I was too preoccupied with doing big “life things” that I never thought I’d be able to do. My mother would often tell me to call this aunt and, when I did, I could always hear her excitement from hearing the sound of my voice…why that didn’t make me call her more is something I’ll never know. And, because I’m once again living far away, I can’t even get back to VA next week to attend my aunt’s funeral and pay my respects. My parents have been telling me that everyone will understand why I’m not there, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. It’s all good that my family won’t hold my not being there against me, but this is between me and my aunt and I can’t help feeling like I’m letting her down by not seeing her off in person. For my other aunt’s funeral in July, I was able to drive up from ATL and serve as a pall-bearer, but, I can’t do that this time around and overall guilt I’m feeling is crushing.

Now, I sit here wishing that I turn back the hands of time and do it all over again differently. I got through a full day of work yesterday and earlier today and was so busy that I was able to delay the impact of this. Since getting home this afternoon, it’s all finally settling in and I’m feeling the impact of this loss. I’ve spent most of the night going to my freezer to take swigs of “that good Russian special-ness” in hopes of calming my nerves, but it hasn’t worked yet. I don’t want to ruin anybody’s Friday night by calling them and blabbering about all this, so typing it all out in this entry is somewhat theraputic to me. For the last 5.5 years, I’ve tried to figure out the lessons and “golden nuggets of wisdom” from my screw-ups so I could share them on this blog and I’ve got one more for y’all now. If you get nothing else out of reading all my entries, just please understand the importance of letting your loved ones know how much they mean to you. Trust me, the last thing you want is to have someone pass away and be left thinking about everything you should have said and done to/for him or her. That’s something that can stick with you for a long time and I can’t really give any recommendations on how to manage it. Time and attention are two gifts that cost nothing to give but are priceless to the person receiving them. I hope this motivates you to give just a little more of both to the people you truly care about before you no longer have the opportunity to do so.

Whew, emotional venting session over…hope y’all didn’t mind letting those things pour out for a little while. Now, let’s get to today’s entry. The sender is a college sophomore who came to this site after seeing my interview for Management Consulted. She’s interested in moving into Consulting following her graduation and is seeking suggestions on how to build the skills she’ll need to make that transition. I’ve tried to take a structured approach to answering her question and hope I covered all the bases in my response. I actually typed out my response on Wednesday night, but, after receiving the bad news yesterday morning, I totally neglected to send it off. We’ll see if she finds it helpful…

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SG wrote:

“Hello Marquis,

I read your interview on Management Consulted, and found it very helpful. Thanks for the great advice. I also visited your blog after that and found it to be a great resource for aspiring businesspeople like me. I am a 2nd year undergraduate student and am considering a career in Management Consulting post graduation, and perhaps a summer internship next year. I have been doing some research and just as you mentioned in your interview, analytical skills, critical thinking skills, problem solving skills etc are required to get into this field. I was wondering, how can one develop these skills? I mean, I don’t think that my regular foundational classes and coursework are enough…so it would be great if you could give me an idea as to how I can go about attaining these skills. Additionally, you tipped “Get really good at Excel modeling (or any other core skill to the job) as early as possible”. Can excel modeling be self-taught through books and cds, or is taking a course the only way of learning? Also, what other core job skills do you recommend developing? Thanks a lot, and keep up the great blog! 🙂

SG”
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My response:

SG,

I hope you’re doing well. I’m glad you enjoyed my interview on Management Consulted and decided to use me as a resource for your questions. I don’t know how many of my past entries you’ve read, but I’ll tell you up front that I don’t always have the “right” answers, but I do take the time to think through reader questions and give whatever insights I can. OK, now let’s get to your questions and see if I can be helpful to you.

So, you’re interested in pursuing Management Consulting positions after college and want advice on how to develop some key skills, right? As a college sophomore, you’ve got a headstart in building these skills, so you could become a killer by the time you have to interview for full-time gigs. The following are some tips that might help you build up some core skills that will be useful in Consulting:

1. Get a good case prep book to learn how to think through different business scenarios and frameworks — I’ve written about the importance of a good case prep guide on my blog several times, so I’ll leave it up to you to read through my archives for more information on this topic. What I will say here is that any decent case prep book will introduce you to the concept of frameworks, which are very useful tools to help you think through the structuring of solving a range of business problems. It could be somewhat difficult to use these frameworks at first, but, once you get used to them, it’ll become second nature for you to think in a more structured manner.

2. Learn to think business — I won’t write too much about this here because I recently wrote an entry about it on my blog. Basically, you’ll want to train yourself to think through the implications of different actions that can take place in a business situation. Read through my recent entries and you’ll quickly find the one I wrote on this.

3. Strengthen your basic math skills — When doing back-of-the-envelop calculations, it is helpful to have a few math tricks in your back pocket to tackle the numbers easier. Refer to the case interview prep guide that is referenced in the aforementioned recent blog entry and you’ll find a couple of slides with examples of helpful math tricks.

4. Learn to read and interpret data presented in various ways — Often, data will come to you in many ways, whether it’s in a chart, graph, or tabular format, and you’ll have to quickly be able to figure out what the data is telling you. From what I’ve seen, learning how to do this is more of an art than a science, but a book that might help you with this is “Say it with charts” written by Gene Zalazny (Link to the book on Amazon.com: HERE). The book gives tips for how to present data in a range of ways and is a good tool for Consultants who re just starting out. You might be able to use it in a reverse manner to get a sense for what the various charts and graphs you might see are telling you about the data. This is a skill that will definitely come in handy during your consulting interviews…trust me on that one.

5. Develop Excel modeling capabilities — Your question about learning how to build Excel models was a great one and is one that I can’t remember ever being asked before. I’d recommend checking out a book called “Decision Modeling with Microsoft Excel” written by a Stanford GSB professor named Jeffrey Moore (link to the book on Amazon.com: HERE). This was the textbook used in my Excel modeling class during my MBA1 year and I found it to be a a great introduction to getting the most use out of Excel. It was written for an older version of Excel, so, if you’ve got the latest version, some of the commends may be different. But, it should still give you some step-by-step instructions on how to structure and build models. Honestly, the best way to develop modeling skills is to actually practice, so I’d suggest starting off by building simple financial models (ex: to do your personal budget) after learning the basics. After a while, you’ll notice that your ability to think through, structure, and implement Excel models will develop very quickly.

Good luck with your preparations for moving into Consulting in the future. You’re giving yourself a great headstart, so, if you put in some good work, you’ll be more than ready in a couple of years when interviewing for full-time positions. Hopefully, the economy will have recovered by then and you’ll be golden. Take care.

Marquis