January is starting to look pretty busy

I had my first round interview with a small consulting company last week and I think it went well. That company is off cycle, all the other companies are interviewing in January. After my initial success getting that interview, things started to go bad. I got rejected at BCG and KPMG and was worried that I wouldn’t get any interviews with big name companies. I started getting bitter about consulting and things got dark. I even started thinking crazy thoughts like maybe I should do a start up instead of going for consulting. That would have been a big waste of tuition dollars.

Things started to turn around late last week. I got interview invites with two more small consulting companies and Ernst & Young. The past 24 hours have been insane. I got interview invites at Bain, McKinsey and LEK, all companies that I am very excited about. All told I have received interview invites from 7 out of 10 of the companies I applied for and am waiting to hear back from another 15. If things continue at this rate I could have 15 or more interviews, which would be pretty crazy. I’m still waiting to hear back from Deloitte, PWC, Cognizant, IBM and Accenture along with a lot of small companies.

I’m so excited!!

Now I need to switch focus to casing prep. Preparing for consulting interviews is more intense than pretty much any other interview. Not only do you need to prepare for behavioral questions but a case interview too. It can take more than a 100 hours of preparation to be ready for casing. I have probably invested 70 to 80 hours already and plan to do a lot more over the winter break. I don’t want to get too cocky and assume that I’ll get an offer from a top firm. After all only 11 Stern students got MBB internships out of about 100 people going for consulting.

My First Interview Invite

I started my MBA in September at a business school in NYC. Business school is an incredibly busy, stressful yet fun experience. For people who are recruiting for finance, consulting and CPGs, the fall is a very busy time. A typical week has 3 to 5 corporate events plus an additional 3 to 5 one-on-one informational interviews (coffee chat). On top of all this we have classes, homework, group projects and hopefully a social life. Every corporate event and coffee chat results in more and more thank you notes, more than you would ever want to write. Sometimes it seems like all I do in business school is write thank you notes. It is important to have a strategy for keeping track of all of the contacts that you meet.

Why do we go through all of this hassle? To get interviews and then job offers. My biggest nightmare is that I pay $200K and give up two years of income and then don’t land the dream job I want in consulting. Thankfully I just got my first interview invite from a small boutique consulting firm. I don’t know a ton about the company but I am very excited that I have at least one interview and I’m looking forward to learning more about it.

About a third of the consulting companies have their deadline for applications and the rest are in the next couple weeks. I’m sure I’ll be getting invites from other companies but it is a relief to get the first one.