Consultant

Cover letter + resume, but networking helps (consultants and above can make some tangible differences here I believe). Once invited to the interview, I believe it's purely merit driven. 2 1:1 with consultant and principal who was just promoted and they surprisingly gave me (ADC/PhD candidate) two straight-forward profitability cases, and few obvious fit questions. My 1st round was in a southern office where everyone was friendly and open (and interesting). Got invited to Chicago for the final round, and while everyone was nice and friendly there as well, the atmosphere was a bit different than the Southern office. Final round consisted of 2 1:1s with partners, one was a written case and the other a standard case. The written case is the new format that Chicago office has been piloting for a few years and while there really isn't much special prep you can do for the written case, I'd advise others to try to make any and all writings immediately presentable, and to spend sufficient amount of time to come up with 2ndary insights rather than spending all time analyzing data. The other standard case was also another straight-forward profitability case, but the partner was either very impatient or stress-testing me where he demanded answers really fast and asking to do calculations on the fly.