Corporate strategy undergrad internship interview preparation for entry/undergraduate/analyst level?
Hi everyone, I was wondering how to best prepare for a corporate strategy internship interview at the entry/undergraduate/analyst level. Thanks!
I'm a student, most of this is secondhand and incomplete info, so take this with a grain of salt. Different companies define their corpstrat groups differently, here are the two ways I see them described:
Internal consultants: http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com/topics/strategy/what-is-corporate-st… For this you'd probably want to use case study guides, WSO has its Consulting Case Guide, which I've heard is solid for management consulting (management consulting would be the equivalent of corporate strategy, but as a service). It seems like more strat groups are geared this way, just from my limited view.
M&A-focused: you're essentially looking at what most people label corporate development. I'm guessing you'd want to know the things you'd need to know for an i-banking interview. WSO's technical interview guide can handle that I think.
Hopefully someone else on here can give you a better idea of what's up. I obviously don't know all that much about it, but that's what I've been able to glean from conversations with people, reading the forums, etc.
Thanks for your response and resources! I definitely have a better understanding now. I think the first one is more applicable to what I am looking at, that spans across multiple divisions.
Yea, definitely, you might be able to get some more insight posting on the consulting boards. There are probably some guys there that know about corpstrat (maybe not for someone straight out of UG, but in general). Leave this thread, though, in case someone does know what's up with this.
Hmm...thanks for the advice! Maybe I can move this thread and leave a redirecting thing here.
EDIT: That didn't work, lol. I'll just make a new topic in Consulting forum.
Yea, just stick with the new topic, best to leave this here in case someone reads this forum tomorrow and knows the answer.
How to prepare for corporate strategy undergrad internship interview? (Originally Posted: 03/23/2012)
First off, is corporate strategy akin to consulting? How are they similar/different and how would I prepare for an undergrad interview? Thanks in advance.
I asked him to post this here, and I'm curious to hear your guys' thoughts as well. I hear a lot about how strategy is somewhat of an "internal consulting" team and that they draw a lot from MBB. Appreciate the responses!
The lifestyle and culture are very different; they typically are 40-hr weeks with no travel. Many people also go into consulting for the variety and industry exposures, which corporate strategy work will be limited in (there might be lots of circulation within the company, but in the end, you're still really working on the same things).
I interviewed with a F500 corporate strategy group. The interviews were very similar to consulting case interviews: behavioral + case. The cases were specific to that industry and it really helped that I had brainstormed the major revenue streams + costs involved in that industry prior to the interview. Try looking through casebooks for cases involving that industry, and look for trends between the cases (e.g. for the pharmaceutical industry, you might find that patents are a major driver in many cases).
The cases didn't push me as much as consulting ones, didn't require as much out-of-the-box brainstorming, and seemed to generally have a "correct" answer.
Thanks for your reply. I've only prepared for IB interviews, so I don't know the first thing about consulting/case studies. Do you think it's worth it to pursue this interview? I think I will laughed out of the office for being so clueless. It's at a BB bank, so I don't know if that makes a difference.
Man, in this job market that would be foolish. Just prepare as best you can for it. Cases aren't extremely difficult, if you go through WSO or some other case study guide a couple times, you should be able to answer most questions reasonably well, or at least get them started off.
Strategy at a BB?... I think that internal consulting/strategy would be a very... unfulfilling at a bank. If a group isn't performing, would you have the gall to recommend they go away? These are people who will be your co-workers and friends, not just a random client. Are the suggestions actually implemented?
Hmm..interesting. Would you mind elaborating more on internal strategy, or direct me to some good resources to learn about it?
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