Customer Reviews

How to Get Into the Top Consulting Firms: A Surefire Case Interview Method

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I would not recommend this book, especially compared to Cosentino's "Case in Point" book. Let me give a few reasons why:

Considering the price paid ($30) I was a little bit taken aback by the thin content when the book arrived at my house. The book is about 90 pages long, if you're generous. Content starts on page 7, and between that and the end at page 89, there are 12 blank or essentially blank pages (of which several are fill in the box pages for you to do work on the example problems -- do we really need this?), followed by 3 tables/charts for use with the problems, and a few supplemental pages and index. On first opening, I'm sorry to say it gave me the feeling of an elementary school workbook.

The page count of course, in itself, need not be a signal of whether the book is good, but the content on the remaining pages is also rather thin. In the introduction and first chapter, there are a few pages on the lifestyle of a consultant, resume format tips (which you have already gotten past if you're getting this book), networking techniques, all of which are covered better in other books, and not the primary reason for buying this one.

In the 55-60 remaining pages after taking away the above extraneous elements, the example problems are standard fare, and present some interesting, but not mindblowing ways to attack them with a framework. I don't think the single framework proposed is really *that* amazing, the way people have commented here.

Most of all, what struck me when comparing with the Cosentino book, is that in the example problems, aside from the 3 with supplemental charts (which is also odd -- why do relevant charts have to appear at the back, separate from the problems?), they are just lacking the fleshed out problem data for you to practice with. I don't mean they're not specific, but the Cosentino book regularly provides tables of sales figures, market data, example charts and tables, etc with almost every problem. The problems in this book seem a bit vague in comparison, with brief answer outlines and occasionally supplemental data provided. Combined with the 3 charts placed almost as an afterthought at the end, it makes it seem like the problems in this book were just not really compiled from careful examples. You can just see the difference in detail if you compare.

The most amazing thing I discovered after reading the book, which I must point out as a warning to others who rely on Amazon product reviews, is that to begin with, I was wondering how everyone seemed to provide amazing comments on the book here, making it sound like the 2nd coming of Christ, like a lifechanging read. It's ok at best, but consistently 5 stars from everyone?? Well, if you look at some of the Amazon commenters who have given 5 stars to this book, they magically also appear in the back of the book's acknowledgments! Surprised? J.Wu, Sachin Kotwani, Joshua Swartz, among those who've commented here, these are all names found in the book listed as contributors! And who knows about all the other similar glowingly positive reviews all submitted on or around April 8, 2008? The book only came out at the end of March. Did the author stoop to asking his friends to shill for him here? A bit ridiculous, don't you think?

I will be sending this book back for a refund, and keeping the Cosentino book, which costs only $20 for much more content.

Unfortunately, I had high hopes for this book from all the descriptions, but was disappointed on receiving the real thing.

The obvious comparison to this book is Marc Cosentino's Case In Point, which has been a best-seller in case interview preparation for many years. So perhaps the most obvious place to start a review is to say how this book differs from that.

The focus of Darling's book is on problem solving and how to get your hands dirty with a problem for 15 minutes, then to come up again for air and communicate a coherent, polished recommendation based on it. The problem-solving tips he suggest are simplified - but still surprisingly effective - variations of the problem-solving techniques used by strategic management consultants. Key topics include defining the problem/objective, building a MECE tree to disaggregate the key drivers of the problem, and understanding how to analyze that tree to solve the problem.

Most interesting to me (as someone with an MBA and 2 previous years' experience in a strategic consulting firm) was his explanation of how to use the various industry standard frameworks (such as the 3 C's, Porter's 5 Forces, the Value Chain, the 4 P's ...). In my previous experience, as with Cosentino's book, these frameworks were just thrown into a general toolkit with little guidance offered on how to use them. Do you know how and when to use the 3 C's or 5 Forces while solving a generic business problem? Darling offers his thoughts and they are very lucid and insightful. I don't know that they are the "right" or only answers, but his vision is well worth reading and considering for anyone in business - not just consultants, and certainly not just consultant firm candidates.

This brings me to the contrast with Cosentino's book. Cosentino offers more tools for your toolkit; Darling offers fewer tools with more detailed explanations. Cosentino falls on the side of learning the "answers" to a set of problems ahead of time and demonstrating your poise and polish in presenting them; Darling falls on the side of learning a general problem-solving technique and showing you can be a force in the team room with polish and poise saved for the end of the interview.

Which book or approach is better? Again, I don't know -- but as a pair, they make an interesting enough contrast that any serious candidate should most certainly read both.

This book looks interesting, but is written from a perspective of someone who has only recently started working at consulting and has never interviewed. The author claims: "I don't have any experience acting as an interviewer for a consulting firm, so I don't have any insight into exactly what the firms look for in their prospective hires".
The book looks nice and would be interesting background reading for someone interested in consulting (especially non-MBAs who don't have as much resources), but in my opinion does not necessarily add value to the other resources which are available for free.

When I got this book, I was shocked by how short it was, but don't think that all the information you need to get through cases isn't in there!

The best things about this book:
1) it synthesizes the key approaches to solving cases in a way that is understandable and therefore memorable (rather than just giving you acronyms for a multitude of frameworks that you won't recall in a nerve-wracking interview situation), 2) it gives a lot of different practice cases, and divides them into easy, medium, and hard.

The worst thing about this book: I can't think of anything.

Suggestions: use a friend to go through the cases, since they're structured in such a way you can't do them alone - this is good and more realistic. If you're still nervous after looking at this book, you could supplement it with another case book, but it may not be necessary.

Disclaimer: I know T. Darling and was given a copy of the book to review prior to its publishing. When there are hundreds of book on "How to get a consulting job at a Top firm", why another one? That is precisely the point. One can get easily lost in the hundreds of books and references. What one wants is a quick, easy to read and yet comprehensive guide. T. Darling's book, filled with lots and lots of nuggets does the job.

Getting a consulting job is not just about acing the case interview. The enormous amount of preparation that goes into the process prior to the interview (resumes, networking and mixers, office hours, the behavioral interview stories etc), make the difference. This book does an excellent job going into just enough and relevant detail about the entire process.

Let me share a few reasons as to why I recommend this this book to a 1st year MBA student.

You enter a top B-school. Everything is so different. People always ask, so what is your bottom line contribution? Can you quantify and can you make it appealing to the CEO? You have great stories, but you are in need examples of how to succinctly structure our thoughts and make it appealing as well. The book is full of how-tos.

I also found the book particularly helpful with case interview preparation. I am sure, during your preparation, you were inundated with hundreds of frameworks. However, you might often wonder, is there a big picture that ties everything together?

T. does just this in his simplistic framework covering 80% of the real life cases interview questions. You will be surprised as to how the thousands of cases you may see/do fit nicely into the structure that T. uses. After conceptualizing the framework, regardless of the type of case you are given (market entry, M&A, P&L, Growth Strategies), you will be armed with a comprehensive starting point.

So what should you do about the rest of the 20% of the time when curve balls are thrown at you? T. provides excellent tricks to help guide your thinking so you arrive at that answer which awes the interviewer.

The book has several other nuggets that pretty much guide you through the entire process from soup to nuts.

Finally, the consulting club of Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University was looking to develop a handbook that pretty much hand holds a member from start to when he/she lands into a consulting job. T.'s book covers bulk of what we were looking to incorporate into the handbook.

This book dispenses with the variety of frameworks that other books offer and instead focuses on a single overarching framework built to handle a majority of case interviews. I personally preferred this approach as it provides a single logical and coherent framework that handled both strategic and tactical questions well. Of course, the best advice is only beneficial if put into practice. Practicing case interviews with others will help internalize the method in this book. There are some cases provided in the book but practicing with a larger variety of cases will show how effective the framework can be.

Although this book could be a good starting point for whoever never read such a guide, it's of pretty low value when you've already read other reference consulting interview preparation guides : I purchased it particularly for the cases inside but not only were there only 10 of them, I also found them very easy comapred to what you get in real-world interviews. Remember also that the author is just a recent interviewee like us and has never sat on the other side of the desk which may explain why I thought this book was not insightful.

From the moment you open this treasure, the experience is pure joy. Goodbye Porter, hello Mr. Darling. This book simply heralds in a new beginning in the world of case preparation. Dare I say case mastery? I do.

The best purchase of my life so far. Thank you Mr. Darling, my life is forever changed for the better.

Great for candidates who need a more science/logic-based framework to structure their case approaches around. Cosentino's book covers more of the art / dialogue of the interview. This book makes the logic of them easy to understand and remember.

This is by far the best book I have come across. While other books I have read purely concentrate on the different case types, this book presents a very logical flow of thought and helps you come up with ways to structure just about any problem. I found the "How to Invent your own structure" very interesting. In my consulting interviews, I came across several cases to which we could not apply standard structures and developing this ability to structure any problem is invaluable.

The best aspect of this book is its simplicity. You will learn not only how to crack cases for the consulting interviews, but how to think in a structured manner.

I find this book invaluable.