Below is a success story from a CaseInterview.com student who received offers with Bain, Monitor Deloitte, Bridgespan and Accenture and recently accepted the offer from Accenture in the NYC office. In her success story she shares some case interview preparation tips and I am also including my response because I find this student’s background slightly unusual for management consulting and wanted to point out that even those with non-typical career and education backgrounds can succeed in management consulting.
Success Story:
I whole-heartedly appreciate what you do and how helpful your case interview content is. With your help, I passed interviews with a variety of top firms – eventually getting and taking an offer to start in strategy at Accenture out of their NYC office.
Given my Teach For America background (I am currently in my second and final year) as well as Accenture’s growing non-profit practice specifically in education reform – it feels like the right place to be (plus the NYC office is where the best strategy and also non-profit work comes out of, not to mention some of the most high profile clients in banking, etc.).
Additionally, you should know:
– I came out of a school that didn’t do a lot of consulting recruiting, so I knew very little about it.
– I interviewed with Monitor Deloitte for an internship but sort of walked in blind to the process, and although I did very well, I didn’t quite get over the hump.
– Determined to not falter during full-time recruiting, I stumbled across your website, engulfed the content, and became so much better.
– LOMS was/is the best case prep material in the world!!!
– I passed interviews and had offers from a couple top 10s (Bain, Deloitte, Bridgespan, etc.) but was honestly most impressed with Accenture (I also had a personal connection there) so that is why I chose it.
– I haven’t had a chance to work through any more of the HSMC stuff yet, but I trust that it will be great!
– Thank you so much again for all that you do! From one teacher to “another”, I truly appreciate everything you do, the way you do it, and am already directing as much traffic to your website as I can.
My Reply:
Congratulations on your multiple job offers. I’m glad my website and Look Over My Shoulder® program were helpful to you in getting offers from Bain, Accenture, Deloitte, and Bridgespan.
I wanted to highlight your story because of your unusual (by consulting standards anyway) background as a teacher in Teach for America.
I think it shows an interesting career crossover from the non-profit sector to a mostly for-profit role without an MBA in the middle. Sometimes it’s useful for others in the recruiting process to know such a transition is possible.
It is also useful to point out for others that your first case study interview experience was not successful — which is not at all uncommon amongst those who ended up succeeding.
Equally noteworthy was the specific decision you made following this negative experience to not let it happen again. You used the word “determined,” and it is a word I very much wish to point out to others.
Congratulations again on the offers and thank you for sharing your journey with others.