How hard is it to prepare for both consulting and banking interviews?
I have started preparing for banking interviews covering the basics like accounting, multiples, etc (still need to get into more advanced modeling).
Is consulting harder to study for than banking??
How much time should I dedicate to studying?
Thanks for all the help!
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This depends on what your background is in undergrad and your exposure to the industry before applying. Assuming you did econ/finance/accounting banking Interviews take a long time to prep for especially if it is for FT. What worked for me is a month of prep (while attending a non-target university):
From talking to people in consulting the prep there is also pretty intense, but that focuses mainly on nailing your case studies. People I know in the industry will get case study books from business school consulting clubs and anywhere else they can get reliable cases from and work through them about 2-3 hours per day for an extended period of time.
Hope this helps and good luck, its always better to be over prepared.
I am curious to see how long people from target universities prepared for interviews
Preparing for Consulting vs. IB SA recruiting (Originally Posted: 08/05/2014)
Hey guys, long time lurker here - thank you to everyone for all of the helpful posts.
I was hoping to get your opinions on the best course of action to prepare for SA recruiting. I had been pretty focused on IB, but the only internship for this summer (rising junior) that I landed is more of a strategic development gig and its gotten me pretty interested in consulting.
If I'm interested in both fields, should I try a broad approach and apportion my interview preparation time equally between the two? Or is it best to make up my mind and dive deep into learning as much about one field as I can after I've mastered the financial basics?
Quick background: Econ major at LAC w/ high GPA - BBs have some OCR, not much in the way of MBB OCR
Thank you!
This should be a decision you should make yourself....if you want to try for both and see what happens then spend the time to do it. If you're definitely way more interested in consulting and not so interested in IB, then do consulting...
I understand my options, I am just looking for some input from anyone who had tried to land offers in both fields and whether they felt like they spread themselves too thin or whether it gave them more options.
I got offers in both fields. Didn't feel like the one excludes the other. Especially preparation for ib interviews shouldn't take that long. Just read IB - Rosenbaum and the WSO technical guide and you're done. Preparation for consulting takes somewhat longer but if you start reading Case Interview Secrets now and then start doing a few cases with your peers every few weeks you should be fine.
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