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Career Resources
Did a search and a few books some former McKinsey consultants mentioned were Marvin Bower's Perspective on McKinsey, Gene Zelazny's Say It With Charts and Say It With Presentations, Strunk & White's Elements of Style, and Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle
I'm not at MBB, but I'll provide some suggested reading anyway as I think you'll be hard pressed to go wrong with these books.
I would say that Lords of Strategy is a must read since it essentially a history of the strategy consulting industry.
You'll get a bunch of books. I think D's list is a good start. I'd like to add Dale Carnegie's How to win friends, Gene Zelazny's Say It With Charts, and Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle.
And you'll be bombarded with your firm's thinking. E.g. McKinsey gives you Marvin Bower's Perspective On McKinsey. Bain gives you books like Zook and Allen's Founder's mentality or Mankins Time, talent energy. BCG gives you books like Silverstein's The Ten Trillion Dollar Prize: Captivating the Newly Affluent in China and India or Luc de Brabandère's Thinking in new boxes.
I chuckl'd healthily
Any books on life in a consulting firm? (Originally Posted: 11/25/2009)
Are there any books about life working in a consulting firm?
There are some hilarious books on being an investment banker like Poker's Liar, Monkey Business, etc How about consulting biz? Can anyone recommend me something?
the mckinsey way...not really entertaining, but one of the defining reads on McKinsey...
how many entertaining stories can you get from drawing ppts all day and eating at applebee's in some Boonesville Tea (bagging) party state
Gettingdrunkinfirstclass.com or so will give you some idea.
Mr. eiffeltowered, is copy-pasting numbers from pdf into xls and then ppt more challenging?
‘How to build a successful consulting service’ is a book written by Jack Philips that is about starting a consulting firm and also about working in one.
Two other books are McKinsey Mind and Fast Track
I know some consultants who liked Up in the Air (the book), though I haven't read it and can't say for sure. The main character isn't a management consultant, but the whole living out of a suitcase struck a chord with them.
Consulting also isn't particularly hilarious (though Getting Drunk in First Class is pretty funny), so there are no "hilarious books" about it. Nobody's pissing in bottles at the Christmas Party, throwing phones at trainees, or eating five pounds of guacamole at the mortgage desk. It's less of a frat house than the stereotype of banking (which may or may not be true), and the trading floors of Liars Poker have been toned down big-time.
"The Trusted Advisor" was given to me by a family friend who works for a tech consulting firm. I thought it was very interesting and had some great advice about how to deal with people who you work for, both clients (consulting and otherwise) and bosses. I would say though that it's aimed at more senior people overall.
Books for a new consultant? (Originally Posted: 02/22/2011)
I am getting started in my first consulting gig and was wondering if there were any good books to read before I start. I am not looking for strategy/management consulting focused books specifically, more just general books that would help consultants. I figure this has been discussed before but the search function was not returning much that was useful.
Thanks
Interested.
Read Charles Koch's book. Nice read. Basic material, but as he points out, a lot of stuff people just read about once and never revisit.
The billionaire who wasn't - Not so sure what you are looking for in a "consulting book" - but this is a great book about building a business. Also, there was a brief chapter about his run in with McKinsey which I found interesting.
7 Cs of Consulting by Mick Cope.
OP: Reading through as many case interviews guides as you can get your hands on might not be a bad idea.
I highly recommend "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie.
+1
Find a list of the top however many business books and read their reviews on Amazon. It doesn't take a full 300 pages to understand Blue Ocean Strategy or any of Porter's bricks; check out a couple short summaries and you too can own those buzzwords and act unimpressed when someone says that they read the book.
Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used
The Management Myth by Matthew Stewart
Here's a snippet: http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?play=1&video=1210252880
Here's the article the whole book was (supposedly) based on: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-management-myth…
The Trusted Advisor: http://www.Amazon.com/Trusted-Advisor-David-H-Maister/dp/0743212347/ref…
Consulting Training Materials (Originally Posted: 01/26/2011)
Anyone have good resources as well as training materials for first year consultants?
Suggested reading (books, articles, websites, blogs) appreciated as well.
I'm itching to give away some SBs, thanks in advance.
SQ
If your excel skills aren't great, get them there. Make sure you can do pivot tables and can work with large data sets. Your firm will likely have some pre-training exercises for you to go through, but it doesn't hurt to ask them what's coming your way.
Make sure you can read financial statements...you don't need to be at banker-level, but you should understand the basics of accounting.
Other than that, make sure you're reading the WSJ and know what's happening in the world. Most of the knowledge base you'll need to build can't happen until you're staffed on a case, since you're essentially going to become knowledgeable about a very small slice of an industry very quickly, but you don't know which one yet.
I came in from a non-business background though, so if you have a business background, this probably isn't helpful.
I don't even know what a pivot table is. I haven't used Excel since high school economics. Any suggestions on how one could "Make sure you can do pivot tables and can work with large data sets," as you say? Thanks!
Pivot tables: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/pivottable-reports-view-da…
Along with pivot table, you probably want to know these formulas: - vlookup and hlookup - Indirect - GetPivotData - Concatenate - Multiple criteria if statements (for sumif, countif, etc.) applied on arrays - Anything related to data cleansing and such, especially converting text to numbers, removing unwanted characters, etc., including, but not limited to, text(), left(), right()
Thanks guys, keep 'em coming.
Consulting Books: Are they worth it? (Originally Posted: 05/26/2013)
I've already bought Case In Point and the WSO Make Your Case guide. I know that there are a lot of options, services, and books available for people looking to break into Management Consulting. I am dedicated to becoming a consultant and am willing to do whatever it takes, but I think an important question to ask before I go any farther is:
Is it worth it? I could easily rack up a $1000 charge in a day just buying resume, cover letter, and personal statement edits - not to mention the loads of books and programs out there for aspiring consultants.
Are there people on here who've used a lot of these services and got into MBB? Do you know other people who have? What would you say is worth it and what is more a waste of cash?
I prepped for my interview with Victor Cheng's Look Over My Shoulder guide with a bit of Case In Point and Ace the Case. I found the LOMS guide was the most helpful - it's a set of recordings of people doing case studies with comments by Victor as to what people are doing right/wrong in each case. I went into my interview feeling prepared even though I'd never done a case study with anyone and I'd only really looked at case studies for a couple of weeks.
I don't know about MBB in particular because I only applied to one consultancy (Vault top 10.) Nevertheless I got an offer from them so clearly it worked for me...
I used Victor Cheng's resources as well. I will have an interview with a MBB in less than a week so I cannot yet comment on whether it worked or not. But I feel fairly optimistic after going through LOMS and Case Interview Secrets.
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