A2i Consulting BootCamp (Mar. 2024)
This immersive bootcamp-style program will help graduate students and postdocs gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence needed to land a job not only in consulting but also within “industry” more broadly.
During this program, participants will learn a hypothesis-driven structured problem-solving approach used by many top strategy consulting firms and apply it to help improve their skills in case interviewing. Sessions will also cover topics on introduction to consulting, communicating like a consultant (the pyramid principle), tips for “telling your story” as a graduate student, and tips for networking to land an interview and a job.
Topics, Schedule, Format, and Location
March 8 (Friday) & 29 (Friday), 9:30 am - 3 pm, 3301 Thurgood Marshall Hall (School of Public Policy, 3rd Floor)
Registration deadline: March 5 (or when capacity is reached)
Day 1 (March 8)
9:30-11:45 am -- Session 1: Consulting 101 & Case Interview #1
12-1 pm -- Alumni Panel (by UMD Graduate Consulting Club)
1-3 pm --Session 2: Communicating Like a Consultant and Practice Case Interview #2
Day 2 (March 29)
9:30-11:45 am -- Session 3: Telling your “why consulting story” and Practice Case Interview #3
12-1 pm -- Info Session: Consulting Programs/Internships for Advanced-Degree Holders (by UMD Graduate Consulting Club)
1-3 pm --Session 4: Networking for Consulting and Practice Case Interview #4
Training Objectives
• Familiarize students with what consultants do in practice
• Demystify the networking and case interview process and help students gain confidence for both interview season and summer internships
• Help students better articulate their story and what value they bring
• Give students experience with hypothesis-driven problem-solving approaches
• Provide students with tactical skills necessary for consulting success
• Help students avoid the most common pitfalls of new consultants
• Give students a sense of the roles and responsibilities of members of a consulting team
• Have fun and take chances in a risk-free environment
Part I: Intro to Consulting- What is management consulting, and what skills are needed? How can PhD students add value? This session will provide an overview of the management consulting industry and different functional focuses (e.g., strategy, operations, human capital, etc.).
Part II: Intro to Case Interviewing and Practice Case #1- Case interviews are becoming an increasingly prevalent part of the interview process. Once strictly a practice of management consulting firms, in recent years, case interviews have been more broadly used at firms like 3M, Google, Chevron, Microsoft, T-Rowe Price, and Procter & Gamble. This session will provide an introduction to structured problem-solving and case interviewing using the FOCUS 1 analytical problem-solving framework leveraging interactive videos to model case interviewing best practices:
• Framing the Problem
• Organizing an Analysis
• Collecting Data
• Understanding the Data
• Synthesizing a Recommendation
This session will start with a lesson on communicating like a consultant using a technique known as the Pyramid Principle. This session will also build upon the intro to case interviewing session to reinforce the importance of clear communication. We will link some of the core concepts from the pyramid principle to case interviewing and demonstrate the importance of designing MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) structures.
In this session, we will see an example of a Bain-style “interviewee-led” case and delve deeper into case interview math and market sizing problems. This session will also discuss tips and strategies from the field of cognitive psychology for developing solid business judgment intuition. We’ll then discuss how PhD students and postdocs most effectively convey their compelling value proposition.
How can one effectively conduct primary research to learn more about consulting? Effective networking is a critical part of the job search process, and doing it well is particularly important to enter the field of management consulting. As part of this session, we will conduct a live exercise demonstrating some core elements of an effective networking phone call. Additionally, this session will include another practice case interview.
Instructor
Brendan Boler, Ph.D. - Director of Career Services, University of Virginia
Brendan Boler is a Director of Career Services at the UVA Career Center and an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. He previously spent seven years as an award-winning professor at UVa’s McIntire School of Commerce. Boler has extensive experience in management consulting and banking, having worked at Accenture, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. Throughout his career, Professor Boler has been heavily involved in recruiting and has leveraged his experience to research decision-making, talent assessment and selection, and high-performance coaching. For his doctoral dissertation, Boler and a colleague traveled to six top MBA programs where they recorded and analyzed over 230 case and behavioral mock interviews with candidates invited to interview at top consulting firms. More about the project can be found here. At McIntire, he taught courses in management consulting and strategic thinking. Given his teaching and research interests, he is also passionate about coaching students to achieve peak performance in high-stakes employment assessments, including behavioral interviews, case interviews, and case competitions.