General TRS consulting advice

Last week someone reached out to me for some advice on breaking into TRS consulting. I thought the advice would be helpful to people looking to get started on recruiting. Just a caveat, I only have only been working full time in TRS for about a year and joined at the undergrad, but I believe it to be directionally correct for TRS recruiting in general.

Here is my full message slightly edited for clarity and anonymity.

If I could give you a word of advice in applying to jobs in the TRS space it would be 5 things:

1. First and foremost, at a firm like AP you are a consultant, and you are working at a consulting firm. This means you must be personable in your interviews and come across as a likable person. I can’t stress this enough. If they don’t like you, you will be weeded out. People can smell when someone isn’t personable, and they will try and make you show it. Make sure you have a life and friends outside of school that keep you grounded.
2. Understand how the roles of the banker, consultant, and lawyer work together to advance the interests of the client (and of course restructuring more generally), I would start with this book: Corporate Financial Distress, Restructuring, and Bankruptcy: Analyze Leveraged Finance, Distressed Debt, and Bankruptcy by Edward Altman
3. Understand the 13-week cashflow
4. Don’t be picky about just doing consulting or IB. Just focus on getting into TRS and understand that once you are in, you can be fairly mobile.
5. When prepping for interviews prep like an investment banker. I recommend reading the PariPassu newsletter, any other RX material you can get your hands on, and using the guides from this website: restructuring interviews . com (sorry had to post it like this to get past the filter) to find interview questions (its like your standard IB questions but geared towards distressed and turnaround situations)

If you do these things along with all the standard other prep that you would do to get into IB you should be fine. 

The biggest issue is that there are not a lot of spots. From what I understand there are ~100 full time roles for fresh undergrads and about the same for interns. Recruiting will pick back up a couple years after you graduate when you have more experience so if you don’t get it now, just keep trying. 

I got a masters in finance to get into the industry, which basically put me on the same standing, if not a little lower than the other undergrads. Overall the industry is interesting but at the junior level it doesn't really feel that different than other professional services jobs.

Happy to answer any general questions in the comments, if there are firm specific questions please DM me.