+
MBA2012 Fit Interview Workshop Gavin Crouch, AD Consulting Careers Stuart Jagot, AD Career Services Learning & Development J-P Martins, AD Consulting Careers
Personal Brand, Interviews and Cover Letters for Consulting
+Who’s done the prework?
1. Read key sections of the Case Book
2. Create a list of your relevant, differentiating strengths
3. Outline your answer to the request “tell me about yourself”
4. Create an evidence table to prepare yourself for competency based fit interview questions
+What’s today about?
What is consulting and is it for me?
Who are the consultants and to which would I be best suited?
How do I tailor my CV for [strategy] consulting?
Detailed CV reviews and feedback
Introduction to problem solving ½ day workshop Consulting Club crack a case
programme
What is my personal brand?
How can I reflect that…
At interview
Tell me about yourself
Competency answers
In cover letters
Previously Today
+Brands
+Valuable brands
Convey rich meaning clearly and simply
Are relevant to target segment
Are distinctive
+What’s your brand?
In pairs – tell your partner what is your personal brand?
In one short sentence, phrase, or even word!
Clear and simple?
Relevant to a consulting recruiter?
Distinctive from others in this room?
Exercise 1 5 mins
+[Good] brands are backed by distinctive characteristics
What are three key characteristics1 of the brand?
Are they consistent2?
1 Eg product, service, image 2 Eg cars, trucks and vans, A-class vs S-class
+What are your relevant, differentiating strengths?
Relevant, differentiating
strengths
Differentiating but not relevant
Relevant weaknesses
Irrelevant weaknesses
How strong are you relative to
your peers?
Very strong
Very weak
Average
Very Not at all
Average
How important is this strength to your specific
recruiter?
+What are your strengths?
In pairs – tell your partner what are your top 3 personal strengths for consulting?
Are they:
Distinctive from others in this room?
Motivated strengths? (ie you are interested in them as well as strong)
Relevant to a consulting recruiter?
Consistent with the high level view of your brand?
Backed by evidence?
Exercise 2 5 mins
+Interviewing movie
Chapter 7 – “Karaoke Skills”
Play until end of scene
+How to succeed at interview
In pairs – tell your partner what ensured your success at previous interviews?
What 3 things helped you perform well during an interview?
Exercise 3 5 mins
+How are you being assessed?
What? How?
Can you do the job?
Do you have the appropriate problem-solving and communication skills?
Case interview will be the primary assessment mechanism*
Will you do the job?
Are you really motivated to do the job?
Are you driven to excel in the job?
Will you fit in?
Will you fit into our culture?
Will we enjoy working with you?
Will you inspire the team?
* For many consulting interviews, this will comprise 80-90% of the interview time
+Will you do the job? Questions to expect:
Type of question
Description Examples
General/open Gives you a platform to introduce & sell yourself, for example
Tell me about yourself
Motivational Checks why this specific role and company for you, now in your career
Tests understanding of role, company, sector
Why are you doing the MBA?
Why do you want to be a consultant?
Why apply to Bain?
What do you want to be doing in 5 years’ time?
Competency Collects evidence of your achievements, that demonstrates your skills and behaviours
What is the greatest challenge you have overcome?
+Would you fit in? Questions to expect:
Type of question
Description Examples
Personal Your abilities and development needs, interests and values
What excites you?
Competency How you handle certain situations
What’s the toughest problem you’ve had to solve?
What would your classmates say about your communication skills?
Give an example of where you’ve demonstrated great leadership
What does it take to make you give up?
Company Your understanding of the business, its culture and values
How will you fit into Booz?
+Consulting competencies - recap
Problem Solving
Intellectual capacity
Analytics/quants.
Creativity
Business judgement
Comfort with ambiguity
Personal Impact
Presence
Confidence vs. ego
People skills
Team player
Sense of humour
Leadership
Maturity
Track record (sporting, clubs)
Integrity
Inspirational
Willing to take personal risks
Drive/ Aspiration
Driven by results – action oriented
Enthusiasm
Desire to excel
Other interests
Could I put you in front of a client on Day 1? Could I spend 24 hours flying from London to Sydney with you?
+How to prepare for a competency interview
1. Identify competencies for the specific job
2. Identify your evidence & achievements for each competency – see pre-work exercise 4
3. Structure your answer: Challenge – key business drivers Action Results – quantify where possible, include outcome & impact
Note: Emphasise your role, and be specific about what action you took
+Example: Leadership
Challenge Needed to transform an inefficient and ineffective global finance function in an FMCG business
Action I led the process team of 10 company representatives from across the globe that designed 20 future blue-print global finance processes and implemented them within a 12 month timeframe
I initially built relationships with each team member face-to-face, then lead the team via weekly conference calls
Results I realised budgeted cost savings (30% reduction in OPEX) and delivered the client’s expected project value (IRR of 15%)
Describe a situation when you had to lead a team to a achieve a challenging goal
+So tell me about yourself
60-90 second answer that covers…
1. Your key competencies or strengths, that reflects you & your brand
2. 2 or 3 summary key achievements, that you are most proud of
3. Your interests & motivations, that differentiate you
4. Close by creating a bridge between your strengths, motivations and the role / Company you are applying for
…that reflects you, your brand and engages the interviewer!
+Breakout rooms – go directly there, and be back in 90 minutes
+Session 3: Reflect on your individual performance
How did you perform during your interview?
If you performed well, why was that?
If you performed less well, how can you improve?
What’s missing from your performance?
What will the recruiter remember about you?
Take a few minutes to reflect, and write down 3 or 4 specific actions you will take to improve after today’s
session
Exercise 4 5 mins
+Recruiter feedback
Up to 80% of an impression comes from things other than what you say: Image
Body Language Tone of Voice Eye Contact
Builds rapport from the beginning
Listens to questions and reads signals
Speaks no more than 50%
Engages in a dialogue and asks questions
Your ‘fit’ is also based on the impression you make
Speaks articulately and succinctly
Stays calm under pressure
Presents negative information clearly, concisely, with a positive approach
Communicates they’re motivated to do the job
Great grooming
Good eye contact
Firm handshake
+What questions are you going to ask them?
Will they appear random, or reinforce your brand?
+Cover letters
I haven’t got one of these
+Not all firms are the same
Doesn’t want a cover letter
Say it’s ‘optional’
What’s the upside of writing one?
Downside?
Does want a cover letter
All about motivation:
Why consulting?
Why Bain?
Why Paris, Kiev, or Timbuktoo?
Note – not how great your problem solving is, or your leadership…
Eg: McKinsey Eg: Bain
+ If you do write one, please keep your brand!
Dear xxx
I’m at LBS and applying for a consultant job
Consulting is interesting as you work in lots of different industries
I’m quite interested in Bain as I met Bill, Jim, Suzie, Alex, Samantha, Igor and Tsusoko at LBS and they impressed me with how many different industries they worked in. I’m now passionate about FMCG
I have what you’re looking for:
Problem Solving: I once built a spreadsheet to work out our monthly sales and improved reporting times by 10
Personal impact: I’m really really good on this one and once climbed Mt Kilimanjaro
Leadership: I led a team of three people to complete a complex, quant, market segmentation that helped clinch a $3bn deal
Drive: I play basketball every week and won a state championship while at Uni
Please consider my application and give me the job as I’m sure it will be great for me and my development
Yours
yyy
Typical cover letter – do this only if you can’t think of anything else
+So how to reflect brand in cover letters?
Why not consider…
Organising your cover letter around motivations, as on the previous slide?
Organising your cover letter around your key, relevant, differentiating strengths?
Using your words, not those of my presentation or even the ad?
Double-checking relevance
Writing in a narrative rather than bullets?
Generating a tag cloud – and check that the relevant ‘strength’ words dominate?
Relevant, differentiating
strengths
Differentiating but not relevant
Relevant weaknesses
Irrelevant weaknesses
How strong are you
relative to your peers?
Very strong
Very weak
Average
Very Not at all
Average
How important is this strength to your specific
recruiter?
Remember this?
+Final exercise – what do you recall?
What do you remember about individuals’ brand statements at the start of the day?
Think about – how much will a recruiter remember about you at the end of a solid day of interviewing?
Exercise 5 5 mins
+Next steps
Keep practising cases Individually Informal groups Club Crack-a-Case
Refine your brand Slide presentation? Mock up some cover letters CL reviews 4-14 January
Practise ‘fit’ Informal groups PLP Mocks with Career Services this
term (22 November to 3 December)
Practise ‘fit’ (contd.) Mock recalls 4 to 14 January Group practice 4 January to 28
February Super Saturday 8 January
Attend OCR events Introduction to OCR, 29 November
to 1 December Coffee chats November/
December Presentations begin CP Week, 4 –
7 Jan
Apply CP deadlines start 9 January Other recruiter presentations start
10 January Interviews from 24 January
This will happen sooner than you think!
+Appendix
+Prework: Create a list of your relevant, differentiating strengths
Area of strength Strength relative to MBA peers
Importance to my recruiting targets
Ranking (identify your personal top 4, and order of strength)
Problem Solving
Personal impact
Leadership
Drive and motivation
I’ve listed the mandatory ones - add other strengths here
Very strong, strong, average, weak or
very weak
Very high, high, average, low or
very low
Fill this in!
1=strongest, 4=weakest
+Prework: Outline your answer to “tell me about yourself”
Summary Tell me about yourself Recap
Fill this in!
What are you going to say Say it, and substantiate it (evidence – examples)
Recap – to sum up, what were you trying to say!
+Prework: Create an evidence table
Competency Challenge Action Result
Problem Solving
Personal impact
Leadership
Drive and motivation
Prepare yourself for competency based fit questions using the challenge-action-result framework Fill this in!