Hey guys,
I am graduating soon and may enter into a consulting career.
I am just curious,
how different is what you guys actually do compared to say, the cases we look at during case interviews?
Are your hours reasonable, and is it true that consultants get drunk three days a week on company bar tab?
Thanks!
-Hopeful Future Consultant
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From my short internship experience quite a while back, the following thoughts came to mind: - the hours were brutal. Really brutal. Got to the client site at 8am, often didn't go to sleep til 2-3am. No weekends. I took a weekend off (or rather, saturday lunch to sunday morning) but they sent me work. - no relation to the case interviews, at all. I crunched numbers and made slides for my seniors. I contributed a grand total of one insight. - the case was almost an epic stereotype of consulting: company was rapidly losing sales due to a stupid decision they made (price their product 2x as much as indistinguishable competitor product), hired us with what was left of their budget to justify their error to the board. I learnt one valuable thing: the shareholders, the board, and management are three separate entities with sometimes misaligned incentives and direction. We produced ample amounts of BS in 400 slide decks (guess who was making the slides) presented weekly to the board. Yay. - food majorly sucked. Usually takeaway pizza at midnight. Lunch was a sandwich from the sandwich machine, because walking 5min to the canteen was too much time lost and there was so much work. I put on loads of weight. Forget exercise, if you have spare time you sleep. I did find a steak delivery service which worked til 11pm and that became a staple of our diet. - 5* hotels were awesome. I especially remember one boutique hotel with stuffed deer everywhere. Although in a sleep deprived zombie state, it was still new enough for me (I grew up in a small mountain village, def not Upper East Side) that I took valuable sleep time away to explore some of the facilities, like the huge bath tub, rooftop pool, and freshly made breakfast (including fresh baked bread, muffins, etc.). Sort of made up for it. Drinking was however not a good idea as it compounds the zombie state. - drinks with your team are rare. When the partners were in town they would pay us the odd dinner, and sometimes even a drink. But I picked up the tab for a cocktail I foolishly drank with the partner on my case at 2am, a nice 40 USD for what... listening to the guy show off about how many expensive whiskies he had in his cellar. - the women we hired were amazing. Beautiful, smart, cultured, really friendly. Wife material (unlike bankers). Unfortunately they also couldn't handle the workload - girls either took an early cab to the hotel, or missed breakfast and turned up 2 h late at the client site to say they "overslept" (and not because of a co-worker - they just couldn't handle consecutive 4h nights). I'd say the most common career wish for a consulting girl is "emerging market development" and they all want to do a Masters in IR. But yeah... I have never forgotten my colleagues and rarely met such awesome women later in "real life", away from the natural filter of consulting. - dress... doesn't matter, if you can do the job (this was in Europe, though). My boss liked his suits from the supermarket, and his shirts went from green to pink to purple and even a deep brown one. Really horrid stuff. And I was starching my cuffs and collars... but he was awesome, really delivered on all projects against all odds and taught me quite a bit. Re: ironing shirts, after a year I saw people stop bothering and buying non iron shirts, and no longer shining their shoes. We had a deal with the corner laundry shop, with a significant discount, because we almost single handedly kept them in business. The home office was stuffed with laundered shirts on Fridays (the "not at the client day"). - Partners are not pleasant people. In fact, but my sample size was small, the ones I worked with put me off consulting - I couldn't stand working for them, having the idea that these losers' equity was increased by my sweat, tears and several years knocked off my life expectancy. At least in banking you work for your own bonus. They were small minded idiots, who worked short hours, were masters of BS, and lived by the Brand (Porsche 911, IWC Portuguese, etc.). I did however have huge respect for the founding partners that I met, that had come from the US or Canada - the offices there seemed to hire much better senior staff. But by and large the good people left after Associate or maybe EM level. Also the higher up they get the lazier they get. - I came out with much higher standards for meaningless things like aligning things on PowerPoint (which my next boss, in trading, told me off for wasting time on). However, these standards and the extreme work ethic stretched my ability to get things done fast and well, and were very useful in trading vs fresh grads who just did what was asked of them.
Subscribed. And insightful post above
This year, I've personally been on 5 engagements. None of them were similar to the cases I dealt with during the interview process. Our office did get one job which was close to one of my cases but I wasn't on it...fortunately.
Depends. Some factors affecting your working hours include the scope of the job, if your partner/principal takes on additional scope as the engagement wears on, what the interim/final deliverables are, client demands, your EM's/PL's flexibility, and engagement team culture. The 80-100 hours per week jobs are those with partners/principals who overpromise, EMs/PLs who value face time over actual work, a hierarchical team structure, clients who don't cooperate (e.g. withhold data, deliver it later than promised, cancel meetings etc), multiple presentations, and a final report. Removing one of those factors brings your hours down.
The best job I've been on was just me and another associate on the ground, with a principal who checked in for 10 minutes a day, a partner I never saw, and clients who stayed the hell out of the way. Worked 9-5 everyday, wrapped up work a week ahead of schedule. Presented the week after. Done. Absolute bliss.
We most certainly don't get drunk 3 days a week. Not on the company dime at any rate. We'll charge team dinners to the client, maybe something a little more extravagant at the end of the engagement if the budget allows it. Partners/principals are pretty cool when it comes to picking up the tab when we're just blowing off steam, but that's a bimonthly kind of thing.
Do you actually get exposed to high level decisions and recommendations made by the firm? As someone who has no business experience interviewing at Mbb for the undergrad position, would I learn a lot about business strategy?
You don't get to turn up to the presentation as a junior; you will know more than enough about the problem from taxi discussions, proof reading the slides, etc. But your boss is usually smarter than you. The English Literature Oxford graduate who joins a BCG team thinking she knows how to run a business better than a 40 year old with 200 cases behind him... is just wrong.
Delete
Ok so based on that, would you say an offer in a rotational program at a fortune 10 is better than going to MBB for general business strategy? Even if the program is brand new?
Awesome insights. Subscribed
I'm quite surprised by the answers of #2. It's very easy for us to drink on the company tab, and a lot of people on my current engagement do. You just expense the drinks as part of dinner. Then again, it's a very large engagement so maybe that's why people like getting drunk...
EURCHF's post is pretty good but I disagree on the case study point. Yes initially you'll only be a Powerpoint/Excel drone but a few years in you will need to structure problems and that's where you have case interview-like situations and those can be fun. You also need to be quite on the ball in meetings with Mr. CEO when brainstorming the next 5-year-plan / with Mr. Blackstone MD when discussing the viabilitiy of a planned buyout.
The issue is that at this point when consulting finally is fun you need to do what you can to GTFO so you can keep / restore your sanity.
No, because you are less likely to be around good people.
It's a discussion that often came up during dinner at midnight, actually. Job existentialism is a HUGE part of consulting.
Take my earlier post with a pinch of salt: I worked as an intern, in Europe, at the heart of the crisis, on a project that was rotten from the start (but revenue generating to pay for all these new 2007 partners) and understaffed (how do you think we got the project). Half the team quit, the other half moved to other offices (such as Dubai, the wonderful holiday + "only pie in the sky strategy projects" location with amazing hotels). The plural of anecdotes is not data :P
To expand on the above: 1. the people you work with will be much more important than what you work on. Great colleagues and a great boss are invaluable. 2. there is no "consulting experience" or "banking experience" (although it is fair to say that what is marketed to you and what actually happens are different). McKinsey New York is different from Bain London which is different from BCG Shanghai, and similarly McKinsey New York in 2006 is a world apart from McKinsey New York in 2009, itself another world apart from 2012. Hence the oft given advice to check who you will be working with, to "reverse interview" them at interview if you will. Of course brand is the most important thing and McKinsey on the CV is more valuable than BB, themselves more valuable than Monitor or Booz.
Sounds like the grunt work and the hours/traveling can be as bad if not worse than banking
Holy EURCHF's internship experience sounds like the complete opposite of mine =/ (probably due to the circumstances he described) - unspoken no weekend policy at my office (east coast MBB). People who'd been there for 2-3 years said they'd worked maybe 2-3 weekend during their entire tenure. There was an office soccer team so played soccer on weekends. Sometimes I'd do some reading and emailing on Sunday evening to get ready for the week. - people also want to get off at a reasonable time on Friday, so even if you have to crunch the rest of the week (say, 9am-11pm M-Th), it's 60-some hours tops. - my summer avg was somewhere between 50-55 hours/week, which was probably on the higher end for the interns (many got off at 7-8pm M-Th) - I don't think these hours/weekend policy were specific to my office/firm. Was told pretty similar things by all the firms when I was recruiting - food was awesome. I actually looked forward to dinner orders sometimes given the options were actually quite good. Lunch options were great as well in the area for quality/price. Also got to go to more upscale dining for a myriad reasons (training, birthdays, team dinners, etc) - getting drinks on the company's tab 3 times a week is a bit of an exaggeration. More like 3-4 times/month - agree with the point that the girls are amazing, but disagree that they can't handle the workload. From what I saw, if there was any reason for a team needed to be at the office super late, it's not like the women left early. Regarding consecutive 4 hours nights, even I would personally not be able to handle that. - partners were super-friendly people and very interesting to talk to (as each one has a unique story). Some came to team dinners and went to an event hosted at one's house
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Great insights! Very useful!
For those of you consulting this summer... (Originally Posted: 02/26/2009)
Here's an idea of what to expect if you get on a M-Th travel case. I spent last summer at a west coast MBB (and asked for a travel case).
9 weeks on the road (of 10 weeks working)
27 nights in a hotel (20 of them in Starwood!)
34 nights in my own bed (48%! All other nights were on red eyes, visiting friends, etc)
$87 - my rent per night spent in my apartment (The view: priceless)
27 flight segments (and god knows how many delays)
26,176 miles flown (plus ~15,000 for west coast trips in the spring - recruiting, sell, etc!)
119,865 “points” accumulated (frequent flyer, hotel points, credit card rewards)
$1,800 - approximate value of points earned
$13,196 dollars expensed (not including airfare, not all my own expenses - i.e. group meals)
56.2 average hours worked per week (max: 76, min: 40, median: 54.5)
$7.7/hr in non-cash compesnation (estimated - points + meals)
...the joys of consulting
hahah funny breakdown
Nice...
I guess the only 'benefit' is you get to save on F&B expenses but I'm not sure if it is worth it with all that travel.
I don't think I would find consulting attractive WITHOUT all the travel. Granted, I'm starting in the fall so my perspective may change six months in.
I think I got tired of traveling about 5 weeks in... but I made the most of it. I'll be able to go on a nice European or Asian vacation with free flights + hotels next summer.
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