The message came to me from a student who is pursuing a Master degree in Business Management from a business school in Brussels that doesn’t have a global brand that anyone would recognize. He’s really interested in Consulting, but worries that he won’t get a shot because of where he goes to school. His question to me is about how the recruiting process works at the major firms and, further, whether he might be able to get into the pipeline.
If you read the email and my response below, you’ll see that the reader attached a copy of his resume to his email. As a general rule, I stopped giving detailed feedback about resumes to my blog readers a couple of years ago because doing so took too much time. I just happened to give this one some high-level comments because it popped up when I viewed his email, but this definitely isn’t a sign of my willingness to resume doing this on a wider scale.
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GE wrote:
Dear Sir,
My name is [GE], I am 22 years old, and I am living in Brussels, Belgium. I wanted to start-off by saying that I am a huge fan of your blog, and really interested in the pieces of advice you give about Management Consulting.
I’m currently studying at the ICHEC Brussels Management School. I graduated last year in a Bachelor degree in Business administration, and I am now busy studying a Master degree in Business Management, my major subject being Finance and still hesitating between two subjects for my minor subject: Tracks Financial Management, or European Perspectives.
The ICHEC Brussels Management School is really known for its international openness, languages-teaching skills, and for its focus on the reality of the outside world. Those were the main qualities that attracted me to study over there, because I attach great importance to them as well.
Indeed, I am deeply interested in international experience, especially in English-speaking countries, such as the USA or even England. I speak fluently English and Dutch, and have some knowledge in Spanish, thanks to an Erasmus program I followed last year in southern Spain, and my mother language is French of course.
I want to work in another cultural environment to open myself a maximum to new visions of business, and especially to new visions of Management Consulting, and therefore, I am deeply interested in finding an internship in one of those so-famous American Consulting groups.
As an international student, I think I can help providing new ideas of another culture, offering a new way of thinking and a new way of managing relationships with clients for instance.
My problem is that I have no specific information about how it works for international students. I’m not graduating from a very fancy big B-school, but I am deeply convinced my B-school provides qualities that even the most popular B-schools in the USA don’t. Who do I have to contact, which company should I choose, assuming that none of the Big 3 firms will even look at my resume?
You will find my resume enclosed, if you have any suggestion of activities that would make it more attractive, it will be kindly appreciated!
A really big thank you for reading all of this, and in the hope of getting an answer,
Yours faithfully,
GE
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My response:
Hi GE,
Thanks for reaching out to me with your question. I apologize for taking so long to respond, but, as you can imagine, I receive a lot of emails and, with my busy schedule, I am usually not able to reply quickly. I hope this message gets to you in time to be helpful to you.
As you stated, Management Consulting is a great way to start off a career in business. From my own experience, I can attest that it is a fantastic way to see a range of problems in many different contexts, which is a great learning experience for a young person in the business world. Unfortunately, there are a finite number of available roles, particularly for the summer, so competition is intense for the few spots out there at any given time.
The large global Consulting firms, especially the Big 3, tend to focus their recruiting efforts on a set of core universities where they’ve had success in finding strong candidates in the past. This allows them to be more efficient in their allocation of recruiting resources, while also increasing the chances that the applicant pool will be stronger. This is great if one is a student in one of these core schools, but it sounds like your business school is a relatively small program and, while I feel bad to say this, that will be a big hurdle for you. I’ve written about this in past blog entries, so check out the archives on my website and you should find quite a bit of content on this.
Since your business school is probably not a core school for the larger Management Consulting firms, I would recommend applying online for a summer internship and holding out hope that the recruiters who see your resume tag you as someone worth talking to. This may seem like a non-direct approach, but it does work for some people and, if you can make a case for yourself as a strong candidate, you could also become a person for whom this works.
Also, you might want to consider applying for a position at a boutique consulting firm for the summer to gain experience and then applying for a full-time role at a larger global firm in the Fall. I’ve written a few blog entries about this in the past, so you should look through my archives to find more information on how this sort of thing would work.
Before I close out, I’d like to give you some quick thoughts about your resume. I usually don’t review resumes for folks who email me because doing so takes too long, but, in this case, yours displayed on my iPad while reading your email. If I were a recruiter reviewing your resume, I would see it and quickly place it in the “non competitive applicant” pile. You may be an amazing candidate, but that isn’t apparent from your resume.
Right now, it is far too high-level and does not give the reader any depth on your background, where your skills lie, where your academic interests are, and what you’ve actually done in your activities/internships. Simply listing out academic programs, organizations, and internship employers is not enough to distinguish yourself among the thousands of applicants to firms in a given year. I’d recommend doing some Google searches for examples of resumes that one would use to apply for general business, strategy, consulting, and/or finance roles to get a sense for the kind of information that should be included. You will have to develop it quite a bit if you want to have a chance to compete for an interview invitation at a Consulting firm.
I hope that the information provided in this email is helpful to you as you plan your path toward a role at a Management Consulting firm.
Marquis
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