Financial Modeling in Consulting?

I'm interested in the Breaking into Wall Street Program - is the skillset gained from this program applicable to consulting / strategy?

IE will learning this be relevant / useful for FT recruiting for consulting? There's personal interest but I want to know if there would be more productive uses of my time.

Thanks.

 
Best Response

I don't think so. My ex is at a firmMBB & said they have all there models pre built. She does consulting for LP's of PE/HF/& a little VC. She said she did have a leg up in the training because of her banking background. But it didn't play into at all to her getting hired.

I was obsessed with getting a McKinsey a year or two ago & found out a couple things: 1) Rockstar GPA 3.8+ (& 4.0 from non targets) 2)Tons of leadership/extra circulars 3)High test scores (SAT) 3)Some unique combo of academics and work experience 4)Anything that has a wow factor

Ace all your PE interview questions with the WSO Private Equity Prep Pack: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/guide/private-equity-interview-prep-questions
 

I've got no idea what the program you mention involves but I assume it does two useful things:

(1) Force you to structure problems and approach them rigorously (can actually be helpful for thinking through the x drivers of a variable, which can be helpful for certain case types e.g. market sizing)

(2) Teach you financial modelling (which can be very valuable once you're in as in fact sometimes you will need to create financial models)

So if you got nothing else to do this is probably helpful

 

Going along with what everyone else here has said, you don't really use financial modeling in the same sense in consulting, so from a practical perspective it wouldn't teach you the ropes of what you need to know on the job.

Consulting has less in the way of "hard skills" than finance, which is why there aren't many (any?) prep-type programs for consulting.

The program may still be helpful for you under the following scenarios:

1) You do consulting, but then you want to move into PE - hard to learn the modeling / "prove" that you know it unless you do some self-study.

2) You work with a lot of financial services companies, or you help out with due diligence on M&A deals and you want to understand how deals work and the math behind them in more detail.

3) You're just intellectually curious and you want to learn about accounting / valuation / modeling.

So if any of those apply, the program will be helpful for you.

 

Ya I would definitely read over an ib interview guide. WSO's is pretty good for a baseline understanding of company valuations and DCF's. That being said, if you were interviewing at an S&O consulting firm I wouldn't waste too much time knowing it backwards and forwards (It's rare that you hear about these questions popping up in management consulting interviews). Spend a few hours reading it and getting the high-level stuff, then set it aside until the day before the interview, and refresh the main points.

I half expected a response by now along the lines of "no, most of them are ugly."

-------- Right now this is a job. If I advance any higher in this company, then this would be my career. And um... Well, if this were my career, I'd have to throw myself in front of a train.

-------- Right now this is a job. If I advance any higher in this company, then this would be my career. And um... Well, if this were my career, I'd have to throw myself in front of a train.
 

this question reminds me of a meeting i was in years ago when i was a relatively junior associate. when asked why the process was taking so long, very senior banker from very prestigous bank replies, "we've had to redo everything that they've done...these fing McKinsey guys don't know the first thing about how to build an fing model"

Author of www.IBankingFAQ.com
 
smuguy97:
Consultants don't do nearly as much financial modeling as bankers, but the models they do build are often far more complex than anything you'd see in banking.

It's really just an issue of adapting financial understanding to a preexisting skill set.

i worked on both a PE case and a strat case while i was interning. to suggest that consultants don't have the "chops" to model is ludicrous. we did a lot of modeling, just not a lot of financial modeling.

i learnt enough that i could successfully describe the model i built (non-financial) to my PE interviewers. they liked what they heard.

 

Bro, I know you only made like $55k traveling to Bumblefuck, Idaho every week to provide “strategic insight” and “thought leadership,” but please, at least go to TJ Maxx and get some some slightly imperfect Brooks Brothers.

I figured, maybe consulting isn’t all aligning boxes in Powerpoint and “value-adding” and ocean-boiling and ass-pounding. Maybe there was something more to it than lop-sided Pyramids and uninterpretable charts. But boy was I wrong…consulting really must be some serious horseshit.

Two of his funniest paragraphs... I can't believe how funny the guy is, especially given that he didn't work in consulting or banking.

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