Tips for a soon-to-be MBA1 targeting a career in Consulting

What’s happening, folk. I know that it’s been a while since I posted an entry, but please know that it isn’t because I haven’t wanted to do so. I’ve been seeing a lot of happenings on the news and in the economy that I’ve wanted to comment on, but I’ve been SWAMPED with my real-life stuff lately. I’m going to try to get caught up with engaging with my reader community in the next few days and I’ll start by addressing one of the emails that has been in my Inbox since February.

The message was sent to me by a soon-to-be first-year MBA student at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. He has six years of work experience in Software Development, so I might be a pretty good person to give him some advice 🙂 He’s hoping to transition into Management Consulting after grad school and he was looking for my advice on what he should do over the five months following the sending of his email to prepare for that. Well, since it took me so long to get to his message, that five months has shrunk down to two months, but I hope he finds some of my comments to be useful anyway.

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NK wrote:

Hi Marquis,

I have been reading your blog over some years now and it has been a real inspiration for me. Thank you for your effort and passion.

Its been a long journey and I have now got an admit at Ross School of business. I am looking to move into MC and I have 6 years of work ex primarily in software development. I would like to know if in the next 5 months I could do something useful to be better prepared for transitioning to Consulting.

Kind Regards,
NK

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My video response:

Tips for a soon-to-be MBA targeting a career in Consulting from Marquis Parker on Vimeo.

Key points:
– Start researching Management Consulting
–> What is consulting?
–> What do consultants do?
–> What differentiates the firms from each other?
–> What are your target firms and why?

– Learn to “think business”
–> Read business periodicals
–> Watch business-related news and TV shows
–> Pre-study of Core MBA topics

– Start learning how to do consulting case interviews NOW
–> Case interview process
–> Use frameworks
–> Practicing cases

– Develop your story
–> Why do you want to become a Consultant?
–> What do you hope to learn in Consulting?
–> How does your background make you a fit for Consulting?