Am I the problem or is it the downturn? Cant land an interview to save my life.
Hi all,
I'll start w/ a little context about me:
a) Type of Consulting interested in: Strategy, Technology
b) Type of Role: New-Graduate Full time
c) Region: Canada
d) Resume/Experience: Public Company Corporate Strategy Internship (16 month), University program development (8month), Start-Up intern (bus dev. 4 months), lots of extracurricular exp in case comps and leadership through the past 5 years (mix of internal and external case comp's, totaling around 12).
I had a good number of coffee chats with consultants on the team I wanted to get on- to the point where they verbatim said ' we can get you started on the interview process'. I had connected with them through a reference from my professor. Turns out the timing too late for the most recent recruitment cycle so they said to go ahead and apply for the next upcoming cycle (2024 start date). I applied for that and wasn't even offered an interview/hirevue.
Im at a bit of a loss on what to do next or how to approach that conversation with my connections (not to mention a bit demoralized).
EDIT: I should maybe of mentioned this too, but my prof was a referral to a partner and from lurking in other forums that tends to be a shoe-in for at least first round. I know beyond that, its all on me but I found it a little jarring there.
bump
I think with your experiences, in any decent year you could've landed a decent consulting gig. It's probably the economy making everything hyper competitive even more than it was.
For the U.S., a good gpa (3.7+) at a target/semi-target school and one big brand internship at a respectable company (IB/PE/HF/VC, F100, Big Tech, smaller consultancies) would usually guarantee an interview from at least one of MBB and generally a very good chance of receiving interviews from other consulting firms. Two or more big brand internships paired with a good gpa would very likely get you all three MBB interviews and more. I think it’s safe to say these benchmarks are not applicable this year.
Consulting firms said in the previous recruiting year that they would pare down hiring for incoming class of 2023, but they clearly still over hired. Over hiring and a poor economy (firms having less clients and being less busy) means that they have much less open full time positions (if any). You would imagine that there would be returning interns taking up some of those few open slots. And, for hires particularly out of undergrad, firms prioritize diversity, so if you are a non-diversity candidate (aka White/Asian male), there are frankly even fewer open positions you are actually competing for with thousands of candidates.
All this to say, this is clearly not your fault, don’t be too hard on yourself.
GPA was very lukewarm in all honesty and D&I certainly isnt working in my favor (I am White, Asian and Male so I rolled a nat 1 on that one). Any insight on how to approach a conversation on this?
d&i is sadly not really something that you can control or talk about, since it’s an initiative that firms push. In regards to GPA, firms have a pretty strict cutoff to pass candidates onto first round interviews. They say it’s 3.5 (I personally don’t believe this), but I would say it’s closer to 3.7 if you want to be competitive as a non d&i hire. Of course, there are ways to bypass this GPA cutoff, mainly if you have stellar internships and extracurriculars. Even then, you probably need someone inside the firm to vouch for you and your experiences to offset a lower GPA, which gets to the topics of referrals.
You would be surprised to know that partners generally don’t really have much influence (and are not very involved) in the earlier stages of recruiting where candidates are selected for interviews. So a referral from a partner may not guarantee a first round interview, unless you keep pushing a partner to physically pass your resume to HR (which may get the partner annoyed). The people you want to network with are actually the younger analysts/associates who are directly involved with recruiting. They are the ones who will recognize your name on the resume and pass you on. If you go to a target school, you know exactly who they are because they are the same ppl who conduct coffee chats on campus. If you don’t go to a target/semi-target or if the firms don’t directly come to your school, you generally need to dig deep to find who the recruiters for your school are and potential ppl that might read your resume.
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I have a (top) BB IB experience with almost perfect GPA from target and only got Bain interview.
T2s and T3s screened me out, which is CRAZY. Wouldn’t want to work at these shit companies anyway, just wanted to get some practices for the MBBs - apparently I am not good enough for them :D
Insane dude, is it all just lower hiring across the board, or have consulting firms stopped caring about gpa and internship experience? It seems like most incoming MBB interns at my school have 3.6s and random internships
As someone at MBB, who also helped multiple students secure MBB offers this year (in the economic downturn), MBB still cares about GPA and internships, but mbb cares about a lot more than that. Honestly, we get flooded with apps from people with top bb IB internships and top GPAs from targets. Most of them just want MBB because of better hours or no return offer, and a lot of these candidates don’t do well on cases or are seen as uninteresting or not having a good reason for why consulting. We care a lot about background and experiences, and are more receptive to students with more unique experiences such as national debate awards, abroad experiences, leaders of unique clubs, startup or non profit founders, and students with interesting personalities, rather than your “typical” IB intern finance hardo (Given that they do well on cases).
Perhaps share in your cover letters why you didn’t convert any of your internships into full time offers. That is always my first question during interviews with college kids. Every internship I’ve ever had led to an offer, so it could be a red flag that is singing you.
What is your comp ask?
Might be a little late to the party but I’m in a good position to add some context here..
I work in Tech Strategy Consulting at a T2 in Toronto and have some visibility in our undergrad pipeline.
Consulting, and strategy consulting specifically has always been competitive - however this year is a different beast. Deal flow has slowed greatly across the board but in general, strategy is one of the groups that gets hit hardest in poor economies. This is because it’s not considered “absolutely essential” unlike some implementation or support groups.
This year, my firm received over 9,000 applications for ~120 spots (2-3 will be strategy while the rest will be distributed across other groups in the firm).
I can say with confidence this is not your fault. Continue to schedule coffee chats, look for work outside consulting to get experience in the meantime (or travel).
This economy is not forever and if Strategy is what you want, then staying prepared and keeping your eyes open for off cycle opportunities is how you will get it.
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