Recruiting Again - One Year, Post-Graduation

Question

Hi all,

Happy New Year's (or almost!) I hope this message finds you all well!

Writing today to ask about if it's worth going through consulting recruiting again post-graduation. I am in my last year, will graduate with Second Honors in 2020, with no full time offers on the table.

To give you all context, I'm a Global Service Operations and Supply Chain student, in the top 8% of my class, non-target candidate, with a 3.8 GPA. By the time I graduate in 2020, I will have undertaken nine internships, 5 of which have been short-term consulting projects abroad and in the United States, and 1 in financial services. Biggest names on my resume is from one of those abroad projects; a startup I worked at that recently got acquired by Alibaba and a respected asset manager in the US market, Wellington Management.

I have been positioning myself for the industry during my third year of university and this year as well. During my third year, applied to BCG's Miami office for an internship (we have 1 school alum in Miami) and got rejected. Same happened for other consultancies. Had the grades but not as much consulting experience, so I built up on that. I spent the year interning at startups, in those international markets, and I spent the summer casing - and did 90 (still a bit slow on quant, but structuring and concluding has gotten better).

Networked with 100+ consultants, from MBB to Tier 2 to boutique. Leveraged my alumni at BCG, alumni at the other consultancies, and even got to talk to a senior partner and a partner at some point.

Everything was going well...and then it didn't. Pretty much couldn't get through MBB resume screenings, and then tier 2 resume screenings, and then boutiques...rejected first round (due to nerves, I found later). All my leads dried up, and for a period of time, I was just in a really dark, hopeless place, and recruiting had a taken a lot out of me.

So, I funneled that energy into that Shanghai consulting project for the Alibaba startup (I am on exchange during this last year of my bachelors) doing ecommerce/AI based consulting, and into securing a short-term contract for the second half of my last year in undergrad, where I'll be the Head of Digital Strategy for a food-and-beverage venture in Italy.

With all that being said, writing today because I wanted to ask if it is worth recruiting again for the industry (after failing epically in this way) and, if so, how to go about it.

Currently don't have any full time offers (both in the consulting and non-consulting space); still looking, and also occupying my time with applying to deferred MBA programs at the top schools as another means of job security in the future, but figured I would consider consulting again as I would have the entire summer to recruit this time.

Apologies for the wordiness; I hope this context helps anyone currently recruiting and provides all of you perspective.

Thank you!

My best,
SE

Answer 1

Hi Sabrina,
I think you should try again. It seems you have a good profile to be selected for interview and you already spent lots of effort in case preparation. You only need the last mile: to focus on application preparation and referrals. Let's write to every consultant you have met in this period in order to recover the relationship, show your drive, and gently ask for a referral.
About a quick CV screening, I could help with it :)

Best,
Antonello

Answer 2

Hello Sabrina,

Your profile seems to be completely aligned to the MBB standards. It's really weird that you did not pass the CV screenings: either you did something wrong with your cv/cover letter or you were really unlucky with the status of pipeline.

It's not mandatory to have a previous consulting experience. As suggested by Antonello, try to leverage on your network: a referral is an exceptional boost to access the interviews.

Feel free to forward me your cv and cover letter in order to receive a more detailed feedback, according to what you said your profile ahould be completely fine to access the interviews.

Hope it helps,

Luca

Answer 3

Hello!

When reading the story, seems that it´s been a matter of bad luck, since your profile would be indeed totally allinged with what they are looking for (+ you demostrate a lot of enthusiasm and passion about it)

Hence, I would totally try again. Do it not only directly to the HR portals, but also via referrals -leverage your wide network here- and via events (e.g., the New Generation of Women Leaders for McKinsey, etc.)

Futhermore, I see your profile is not only consulting-driven, but also very close to e-commerce. Have you considered Amazon? Many positions are very much consulting-like, and it´s full of ex-MBBs -sometimes we joke it´s only post MBA MBBs who got sick of bad lifestyle-.

Feel free to connect for more info about it.

Cheers,

Clara