I am very interested in a career in consulting and am trying to learn more about consulting projects. I would like to learn about what type of projects there are, what the role of a consultant is in those projects and what the actual day-to-day work involves for a junior consultant. I would be very thankful for any information or sources relating to the questions above.
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I'll give some answers below, but there is a load of available info already on this forum about exactly that. I would therefore recommend searching the forum for old posts (as well as YT and other consulting-specific websites, like Management Consulted, etc.)
Consulting project types
Consultant role
Day-do-day
Thanks for the detailed response!
It would be great to understand how the day-to-day work differs between different types of projects. For example, how would the day-to-day work differ between projects on commercial due diligence, cost cutting and geographical expansion?
A DD is basically the same, except that I might have more content sessions / check-ups with our leadership team throughout the project and will have a lot more of those expert calls during the first week or two.
That's because we need to stay very clearly aligned at every step of the project (re the content sessions) and have a lot to learn about a niche industry in a short amount of time (re expert calls).
Also, DDs typically don't involve travel, unless you're colocating with your team when you're spread over multiple offices (not super common but can happen). Hours are typically a little long, but they are a lot more predictable. In a regular strategy case (whether pure strat, market entry, cost cutting, or other) you may have lower-intensity weeks (40-45h) or higher-intensity weeks (60-70h) depending on the situation (e.g., preparing for a big Steering Committee or a down week when the client is on holiday).
I would expect only minimal differences among non-DD strategy cases. For example some may involve you dealing with sensitive client data, in which case you might need to be on-site at their office 4 days a week every week.
Hi, thanks for your thorough response. As someone interested in the work pre-university, what sort of case studies, or internship material can I find online to help me learn about what you might look for in an interview process (in terms of technicals etc. - I know IB has like "Walk me through a DCF esque questions" - what is the equivalent of this in CO?).
If you want to learn how to case, it's not very complex, but it will take some time to be good at it (just like learning to do a DCF or LBO really well).
Here is a link where you can find casebooks: link.
If you want to learn to case, I have some advice I wrote here about casing and about prepping for case interviews (here is another link, but less detailed, but below there is great advice from Parmesan).
This is pretty spot on^
Do you tend to work a lot during weekends?
Not even once. If I did, it would be driven entirely by me. Our Partners and Senior Managers sometimes do a bit of work on the Sunday, to prep the week, but they leave the teams alone normally
Shameless plug but current MBB consultant here - if you're interested, check out this video I made about what you can expect from a DD-type project in consulting:
Extremely helpful video that gives a lot of very practical insights. What do you think are the biggest benefits of working in PE group vs. the general practice of BCG?
I should first note that you don't need to stay in the PE practice - in fact, many people do a few months within PIPE (the BCG version of PEG or PEPI) and leave if they decide its not for them. If you stay in the generalist pool, you can still do diligences along with a wide variety of other projects. I would say its probably a good idea to do DDs within PIPE if you can though, because the people there are experienced and there's less of a chance of ending up with an in-experienced team.
DDs themselves are pretty intense but definitely one of the more interesting and engaging case types in my experience. You are diving extremely deep into a single company and market, often putting together very interesting pieces of analysis for investors using both traditional and alternative data sources. If you're interested in moving to the buyside eventually, its 100% worth doing a few.
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