Customer Reviews

The Harvard Business School Guide to Careers in Management Consulting: 2000

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I don't think this book is helpful. The industry profile is minimal; the Harvard alumni's stories (a few) are a bit more interesting.

The main part of the book contains the profiles of 62 management consulting firms. However, 17 of these companies have only 60 or fewer professionals, and a lot of them have offices only in a couple of cities. Examples - John Barry & Associates: 10 professionals, offices in Newport Beach only; Alliance Consulting Group: 35 professionals, offices in Boston and Cupertino; Amherst Consulting Group: 20 professionals, offices in Boston; Corporate Directions: 40 professionals, offices in Tokyo only (! - this is the absolute record); Etc.

It puzzles me why on earth were such obscure companies profiled in a career guide. Besides, the companies' information is general, collected from internal sources and will not help you too much in your research.

If you are interested in management consulting go for the vault.com and wetfeet.com guides. Another excellent book is "Management consulting: a complete guide to the industry" by Sugata Biswas and Daryl Twitchell.

Provides a cursory look at a consultant's life and some of the companies one would normally consider, along with many smaller companies that many people wouldn't have access to. Better information is likely available elsewhere, including the Internet and other publications.

In my opinion there is more and better objective information on consulting careers in the Vault Career Guide to the Top 50 Consulting Firms and in the Vault Guide to Case Interviews, which have the added benefit of being able to be purchased on vault.com and downloaded immediately. Good luck.

The indispensable career guide to the management consulting industry. Updated and improved for 2001, this book contains a wealth of information about the top management consulting firms. This book is based on a questionaire sent to these fims about what their firm does, the recruiting policy. This is a usefull book for anyone applying for jobs at these firms. My only critism, is that the book is light on technology consulting. This is a shame, expecially given that this area is the largest part of the consulting market.

This book asks each of the top consulting firms to answer a set of questions about what their firm is like. As expected, the answers are biased, but still helpful. For a more unbiased insider's view of each firm also try the Vault Guide to the Top 50 Consulting Firms, which also ranks the leading consulting firms based on a national reputation survey.

Good guide, but the Vault guide to consulting firms is significantly superior in my opinion.

more useful and third party information in the vault guide

While many career guides are very sparse and rather dry because they are mere listings of companies and other boring facts. However, HBS Guide to Careers in Management Consulting (new and updated) once again provides very valuable information for anybody, particularly recent college and MBA grads, to help pick the right management consulting career.

In addition to company profiles, there are also occupational profiles that are very well written, in a manner that is consistent with the high quality that the HBS books are known for.

Furthermore, a great resource to accompany this book is the Vault.com Guide to Consulting (they also have one on Case Interviews). Both of these books, combined cover all of the major issues in finding the right consulting position if that's the field you are looking into. Happy hunting.