Virtual Coffee rejection = respective office application rejection?

Question

UPD: for some reason, the full text of the question was not posted, sorry.

I have recently applied to a BCG Virtual Coffee event I found through a university job posting (I'm a fresh Masters Graduate, target uni in Italy/Europe, I have top grade too). Obviously, I plan to apply (for an Associate position) to the respective office.

Unfortunately, I was not selected due to "limited capacity". Indeed however, this office is small with only 20+ consultants currently - but planning to hire more, hence Virtual Coffee.

My understanding now is that my application for the Associate role is not likely to make it through even CV screening phase.

Is there a reason to think otherwise?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hey,

My answer is no, you still have a good chance of applying for this job and I have 2 reasons for your:

1. My personal experience: I never got invited to any coffee chat, company event (small scale ones which invite candidates to offices) when I applied to Bain and the reason given was exactly the same as yours i.e. limited capacity. However they still invited me for interview and eventually gave me an offer. This is same for McKinsey as well.

2. There are normally more spaces for interview than small scale events. For example if they are looking to hire 20 associates this year, they normally will invite 400 people for first round and around 100 people for second round. This is much more than the number of people they can invite for the company event. It might be the case that your CV is not ranked the very top of their list, but you still can be invited to interview. Also bear in mind, once you started interview, your CV doesn't really matter that much any more!

If you want to learn more about how companies select their candidates, please also PM me.

Answer 2

Hi there,

Events and standard applications are two separate channels, so it could well be you are rejected for events and invited for interviews when you apply.

Events sometimes have very limited capacity, so although it seems strange that may be even more selective than invitations for interviews.

Having said that, if you have some friends in consulting definitely ask their opinion on your CV to see if there are any improvements.

Best,

Francesco

Answer 3

Not at all! I promise you're fine!

I've actually done research in this space and found that, while there is a positive predictive co-efficient/correlation to being invited to an invite-only event, it is by no means a pre-requisite to being accepted to interviews.

I promise you, my data research showed that, even if you were not invited to a company event, you still had a reasonable chance of being invited to interview!

Answer 4

Hi, if you are talking about the ban to apply again for a full-time position the answer is no. Of course something can be improved in your CV before applying but you can do it

Best,
Antonello

Answer 5

This is very funny.

I was accepted to the BCG summer discovery program and then rejected from BCG.

I didn't apply or attend Bain / McKinsey programs but got interviews / offer there.

Virtual coffee chat correlation with application rejeciton? Dubious.

Answer 6

Can you please post your full question :)