CQ_Consultalks | Manthan Doshi | L.E.K. Consulting

Thank you Arnav! Yeah sure, let’s have a discussion. Please go ahead.

During my CDC internship time I had given interviews for many profiles but for placements, I only have interviews for management consulting companies, so let me just focus on the interview process for the consulting profile. LEK and BCG are the companies in which I had my shortlist. There are other companies too like Dalberg, McKinsey & Company, Arthur D’Little, etc, that come to campus but my focus was LEK and BCG at that time. So management consultancy is a very niche area wrt to campus placements because there are very few offers from the companies. The selection process includes multiple rounds, most of the rounds being a combination of a case and fit interview. A case is like a general discussion on a certain set of problems with the interviewer and the problems would be specific to a company or a situation. A fit interview includes the HR section, where your personality and your body of work is discussed. Apart from that, you asked ‘how many rounds’, so that is not very specific as it depends from compa

As I have already mentioned to you earlier I was preparing for consulting. It’s not a technical thing, it’s managerial, and we don’t have technical questions so there are not any puzzles or any other such things that are asked in the questions but we are asked cases, and cases are containing different problems or different situations; let me list down a few to you. Cases are usually considered of two types one is a guesstimate and the other one is a business situation. Business situations could vary from profitability problems to market entry problems to growth strategies to product launching, to let’s say mergers and acquisitions to even policymaking, the categories are huge in numbers. Talking about the guesstimates, a few of the questions that I was asked in my interviews were “Calculate the number of private schools in Mumbai”, “Estimate the number of birds in Australia’’, “Guess the number of cheques processed in a bank per day”, “Calculate the total market for steel in Russia’’ etc. I think these were t

Like I said there are some major skills required in Consulting 5 of them being teamwork/leadership skills, academics, entrepreneur activity, research, and analytical ability. So, the pre-final year students must think of their strengths and weaknesses and start taking measures to consolidate their strengths further if they will there is still scope to consolidate them, as I believe no one can excel in all 5 parameters, one needs to consolidate 2–3 parameters where they find themselves strong. Also, one should try to build certain USPs for themselves if needed. Any external person evaluates you on these factors majorly, as though how good you are at these parameters. Now if you find that you are not good enough in at least 2–3 areas too then I think you should work upon that area which you find can be improved in a year because consulting requires a great amount of body of work so for them to shortlist you have to be worth it. So for any pre-final year student, you have one year, I would say don’t rest in the

Again, we don’t have any ‘technical round’. First I was shortlisted then there is nothing much changed actually. Let me just be very honest the way it happens in consulting that you have a body of work so you somehow know where you will be shortlisted, in my case I was sure that I would be shortlisted for at least one of the companies. I started preparing before the shortlist. Before the final shortlist the D-day 28th September, I had my notes ready. I only read my notes and didn’t practice any cases and just revised the structure which I had done. On that day I was supposed to have 6 interviews and it ended well.

For the 1st and 2nd-year students I would like to say is to be true to your work. Explore, work hard, and be true to whatever you are doing, don’t work for the sake of getting PORs just because that will help you with your placements. For the 3rd year students: the students who have already built a good profile should prepare and focus on the areas that they are strong at and improve those, to cover up for any weak spot. The student who doesn’t have a good profile as of now, see 1 year is enough to build your profile as far as consulting is concerned and work hard in whatever you are doing and try bringing in the one impact that is unique for them; then I reckon that things can turn around in a year very well. You should know how to solve cases because it is the case that would make you get through many rounds.

Thank you Arnav! Yeah sure, let’s have a discussion. Please go ahead.

During my CDC internship time I had given interviews for many profiles but for placements, I only have interviews for management consulting companies, so let me just focus on the interview process for the consulting profile. LEK and BCG are the companies in which I had my shortlist. There are other companies too like Dalberg, McKinsey & Company, Arthur D’Little, etc, that come to campus but my focus was LEK and BCG at that time. So management consultancy is a very niche area wrt to campus placements because there are very few offers from the companies. The selection process includes multiple rounds, most of the rounds being a combination of a case and fit interview. A case is like a general discussion on a certain set of problems with the interviewer and the problems would be specific to a company or a situation. A fit interview includes the HR section, where your personality and your body of work is discussed. Apart from that, you asked ‘how many rounds’, so that is not very specific as it depends from compa

As I have already mentioned to you earlier I was preparing for consulting. It’s not a technical thing, it’s managerial, and we don’t have technical questions so there are not any puzzles or any other such things that are asked in the questions but we are asked cases, and cases are containing different problems or different situations; let me list down a few to you. Cases are usually considered of two types one is a guesstimate and the other one is a business situation. Business situations could vary from profitability problems to market entry problems to growth strategies to product launching, to let’s say mergers and acquisitions to even policymaking, the categories are huge in numbers. Talking about the guesstimates, a few of the questions that I was asked in my interviews were “Calculate the number of private schools in Mumbai”, “Estimate the number of birds in Australia’’, “Guess the number of cheques processed in a bank per day”, “Calculate the total market for steel in Russia’’ etc. I think these were t

Like I said there are some major skills required in Consulting 5 of them being teamwork/leadership skills, academics, entrepreneur activity, research, and analytical ability. So, the pre-final year students must think of their strengths and weaknesses and start taking measures to consolidate their strengths further if they will there is still scope to consolidate them, as I believe no one can excel in all 5 parameters, one needs to consolidate 2–3 parameters where they find themselves strong. Also, one should try to build certain USPs for themselves if needed. Any external person evaluates you on these factors majorly, as though how good you are at these parameters. Now if you find that you are not good enough in at least 2–3 areas too then I think you should work upon that area which you find can be improved in a year because consulting requires a great amount of body of work so for them to shortlist you have to be worth it. So for any pre-final year student, you have one year, I would say don’t rest in the

Again, we don’t have any ‘technical round’. First I was shortlisted then there is nothing much changed actually. Let me just be very honest the way it happens in consulting that you have a body of work so you somehow know where you will be shortlisted, in my case I was sure that I would be shortlisted for at least one of the companies. I started preparing before the shortlist. Before the final shortlist the D-day 28th September, I had my notes ready. I only read my notes and didn’t practice any cases and just revised the structure which I had done. On that day I was supposed to have 6 interviews and it ended well.

For the 1st and 2nd-year students I would like to say is to be true to your work. Explore, work hard, and be true to whatever you are doing, don’t work for the sake of getting PORs just because that will help you with your placements. For the 3rd year students: the students who have already built a good profile should prepare and focus on the areas that they are strong at and improve those, to cover up for any weak spot. The student who doesn’t have a good profile as of now, see 1 year is enough to build your profile as far as consulting is concerned and work hard in whatever you are doing and try bringing in the one impact that is unique for them; then I reckon that things can turn around in a year very well. You should know how to solve cases because it is the case that would make you get through many rounds.