Management Consulting: A Complete Guide to the Industry

I purchased this book to get a better feel for what it is like to be a Management Consultant, if I had what it takes to get in to a good firm, and what I needed to do over the next 2 years of grad school to prepare. None of these questions were satisfactory answered by this book. A large chunk of the book are short essays by Management Consultants written in the 90s. Some of them are OK, but the case studies they used were so vague that they were completely useless (don't use company names, don't give details of what changes were made, etc.). Also, they reference the rise of the internet and how great .com companies are (we all know how that ended).The rest of the book aims to explain the different industries and functions management consulting plays a role, goes over the steps for getting in to a target firm, and case interview Q/A. This is somewhat helpful, but it does not do a good job of any of this. For example, I read in several places on the internet that consulting firms consider your GMAT score important when you apply. This brings up many questions such as what are considered acceptable scores for most firms, how important are they, is it just important for getting the first interview, etc. This was not mentioned at all. A second example is that I am learning that a referral from a firm's manager is one of the best ways to get in to a target firm. This is also not covered at all in the book. In fact, about the only information in the book is mostly things you already know (or should know if you have spent even a small amount of time researching management consulting).Bottom Line: There are a lot of good books out there on Management Consulting and this is not one of them.

This book is dedicated to general job seeking and interviewing techniques applicable to any employment situation. The chapter on consulting models and case questions is decent, but the remaining 200+ pages are irrelevant drivel that sheds little light on the inside machinations of a consulting firm, consulting positions, duties, expectations, and daily life. After spending a couple of hours reading this book, I feel no more prepared to approach leading firms for interviews than before I picked this title up.

This book is boring and dated. I mean its ok if you have absolutely no idea about business or consulting. So I suppose if you wanted to know about it then maybe the book is ok. But then again, you probably shouldn't be looking into consulting if you have absolutely no idea what it is.

This book is very informative. It presents the past and present history of the profession and discusses what it takes to survive in the management consulting industry. It demystifies the interview and job application process. Its discussions on passing Case Interviews are particularly well done - potential consultants can now study up on those frameworks management consultants used to dissect, organize, and analyze a difficult case problem. It also provides 100's of case study questions so that the potential applicant can now be more prepared when applying for a position. This book is simply indispensible.

I'm coming from a medical/public health background, several years out of college and newly considering a health-business career in this amorphous industry called "consulting."As a result, I'm starting fresh and had no idea where to begin - learning about the companies, the lifestyle, the work, how to position myself to a possible employer, what subcategories to use when describing my skills set within the industry, and where to learn simple business vocabulary like "elevator pitch," "position myself," "leverage," "human capital," and a hundred other words.In those regards, this book has been GOLDEN. It does a fantastic job of explaining the management consulting industry (and by extension, all types of consulting companies focusing on assisting company management in various business areas). This book starts at ground level, defining consulting in a nuanced, understandable way to an outsider before giving a history of the profession and its subtypes (ie way companies think of themselves within the industry). This is useful information to understand the way you have to approach these companies and showcase your skills so that you'll seem valuable to them. It's not a straightforward thing to do, even if you have a stellar medical resume.The book goes on to give a lot of information/practice about the case interview, salary negotiation, and other invaluable information that I found helpful as I'm getting into the industry. It rolls several books worth of knowledge into one.BUT, I'd still recommend buying an additional pure case interview practice book to supplement this one when you get past the need for industry exploration, resume editing, and positioning, and on to pure interview prep.

I thought that this book provided a very good summary of the management consulting industry, and what kinds of things I needed to look for and questions that I needed to ask to make sure that I was targetting the right kind of firms for me. It also provided a pretty good summary of a number of different frameworks - great if you need a bit of a refresher. There were even some frameworks that I had not learned that the book taught me about. It does not go into an in depth description of the frameworks, but the summaries are pretty good, even if you have not learned about the frameworks before.The book provides a number of different examples of cases, but only provides possible solutions for a few. That is my only disappointment with the book - I wish it provided a few more possible solutions to some of the problems. Other than that I found it very informative.I would say that it is more targetted towards someone coming out of school or looking for a career change.

I bought this book while i was studying in college to help me gain an insight into the industry and to get some good models I could use in my assignments and exams.The book was a brilliant help when it came to exam time and even after that when I was applying for roles in the consulting industry it was my main reference book. The advice contained within the book is slightly dated but still has a lot of value.Overall I have to give this book 5 stars, as not only did it help me through college but it also helped me land the role I really wanted.

Very outdated.