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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!