Guide to consulting workshop May/June 2019

At The English Farm we teach a lot of consultants. This page will give you an overview of how to make a great first impression, understand what they do and ask interesting follow-up questions. 

Let's start with the following conversation between Jeremy and Emma, one of our more senior teachers. Emma has a background in consulting but decided on a career change—that's why she refers to her consulting experience in the past tense. 

Full disclosure: there was an intro, but it was long and waffly so it got cut. Excuse the lack of audio introduction for Emma. 

 

 

The conversation starts very basic, then Emma drops some gems and Jeremy gets into how he approaches teaching consultants. 

Some key questions that get addressed: 

  • What do consultants do? 

  • What are the differences between consulting firms? 
  • Why are consultants so busy? 
  • Why does consulting have such a high turnover rate? 
  • What does a day look like as a consultant?
  • What types of mistakes can consultants make?
  • What's the importance of diversity in a consulting team?
  • How do we effectively teach consultants? 

Common consulting vocabulary: 

  • Short-term project—Generally a month or less. Short-term projects allow consultants to build a wide network with a lot of people at different client companies. 
  • Long-term project—From a month to a few years, but typically about 3 months. 

    Working long-term is good for building deep relationships with clients.

  • Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) often result in a due-diligence (or "due-dil") project—a very short and very, very busy project. The goal is just to evaluate a target company and its assets.

  • Deck—PowerPoint slides or a PowerPoint presentation. 

  • Specialization—after about 3 or 4 years, consultants may decide to focus on one industry. However, junior consultants will not have a specialization. 
  • Framework—a set of steps that consultants may use to approach a problem. In some firms, especially at BCG and ADL, the term "framework" has gone out of favour. They prefer original solutions. 
  • Counterpart—the person at a client company who the consultant works most closely with.
  • Go client side—work for a "regular" company that's not a consulting company.
  • Internal meeting—at your company. 
  • External meeting—with the client.
  • Pushback—the client(s) (or sometimes colleague) disagrees with something.
  • Quantitative data—numbers and quantities. This is generally measured on numeric scales and calculated from big, broad data sets. 

  • Qualitative data—stories, case studies, reasons and other things that are not easily quantifiable.

The flow of a project

  1. The first step is for the consulting company to win the project or sell the project. 
  2. Next, there is a hypothesis building phrase where the team decides what type of solution might be best for the specific problem they are dealing with. 
    • Side note: it's important to have a hypothesis before approaching data. A good idiom used in some English-speaking offices is "don't boil the ocean." As in, if you want a cup of hot water, then get only the water you need and then heat it up. Don't heat all the water in the world! Likewise, know what you are looking for before approaching the data. 
  3. Consultants gather data from a wide variety of places.
    • The client company will hand over a lot of internal data. 
    • The consulting company may use it's network to gather insider perspectives from key market players, perhaps by talking to an ex-colleague who has gone client side or from expert interviews.
    • Consultants may also interview all levels of staff at the client company. 
  4. During the project, there are a lot of update meetings, both internal and external. This keeps the project on track so the solution is the one that's most suitable for the client. 
  5. The final presentation is where the client hopefully accepts the plan.
  6. The implementation phase is where the solution begins to take effect. 
    • This is where a lot of firms differ. Cheaper consulting companies may not offer implementation at all. Apparently McKinsey puts less experienced consultants or associates on implementation, while BCG puts more experienced partners on implementation. 
  7. Finally, the client company hopefully buys another project from the consulting firm and the process repeats. 

Some good follow-up questions in lessons

Consultant: I have two meetings today.
Teacher: Internal or external? 

Consultant: I have a client meeting later today.
Teacher: Do you need to prepare a deck for it, or is it just an update meeting?

Consultant: ...I've been working at my consulting firm for about a year, but I used to work at IBM...
Teacher: Oh, IBM! So will you be specializing in the technology sector in the future? 

Consultant: My project is so tough!
Teacher: Why? Has your client been giving you some pushback?

Consultant: I'm gathering data.
Teacher: Oh, qualitative or quantitative? 

Good general questions

  • Do you prefer short term or long term projects? 
  • What stage of the project are you on? 
  • What stage of the project do you find the most challenging?
  • Have you thought about where you want to specialize? (And why?) 
  • Have you ever had a client give you pushback?
  • What would you do if you see a mistake in the deck during a client presentation?
  • What are the benefits of qualitative or quantitative data? Do you prefer dealing with one more than the other?

Bad questions

Asking, "Who is your client?" or anything similar will not go over well. We don't want to know because it's under a confidentiality agreement and almost certainly illegal to talk about. 

That said, some junior consultants are nervous about saying anything at all about their job. This is also a bad approach because we need to help them communicate in English, so they need to say something. Be gentle and be explicit that you don't want to hear about their client. You just want to hear about the day-to-day tasks and challenges of the job.  

External consulting info

Take a look at this glossary of consulting terms and idioms. You can even send that link to a high-level consultant and go through the terms with them. 

You can also try these math-heavy brainteasers.

To get a sense of the phases or stages of a project, check out these pages. Bear in mind the stages vary by project and by company: 

Case studies are imaginary projects that interviewees work though during the hiring process. Understanding how to approach them will give you a very deep understanding of a consulting case.

If you would like an in-depth view, you can do these courses:

Finally, take a look at this video series run by a very successful McKinsey consultant. It covers how to get hired at a consulting company. He gives an insider view on what makes a good consultant, and then he discusses in detail what kind of cases a consultant might have to face. (Videos 2 and 9 are probably the most interesting.)