Customer Reviews

Management Consulting: A Complete Guide to the Industry

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've read them all - Wet Feet, Vault, HBS, Naficy - and this book is the one that helped me the most. Naficy is anecdotal and dated at this point; HBS is written for Harvard students and contains recruiter info that pertains only to them; Wet Feet is just superficial; and although Vault has some useful content, Management Consulting has all of the same info plus much much more. Don't bother with the others - just get this book.

This book is fabulous! Twitchell and Biswas have produced a book that will accelerate your consulting job search.

In a single volume, they have provided everything you will need to land a job in consulting. Just glance at the Table of Contents and you will quickly realize how comprehensive the book is: 1) The Management Consulting Industry; 2) The Consultant's Work and Lifestyle; 3) Insider Perspectives on Consulting; 4) Planning Your Consulting Career; 5) Mastering the Case Interview; 6) Negotiating Your Offer; and finally 15 Essential Frameworks, 100 Case Questions and 10 Sample Answers, and a Directory of 50 Firms. Unlike Wet Feet Press and The Vault Reports, which require you to buy multiple books to get a complete picture, this book provides everything you need to learn about the consulting industry and master the case interview in ONE VOLUME.

And if you're looking for a personal, insider's perspective, you can't beat this book. Not only do Biswas and Twitchell provide insight into their own experience as consultants, they have also devoted close to 100 of the 300 pages to original essays written by the founding partners and managing directors of the world's top consulting firms: McKinsey, Booz-Allen, Bain, BCG, Monitor, Mercer, Mitchell Madison, Arthur D Little, Andersen, Watson Wyatt Worldwide, The Wilkerson Group, Vertex, and many more... It is truly an impressive list - and surely, if you're planning to interview with any of these firms, you had better read up on what they've written!

I know there are a lot of books out there on consulting, but this is by far the best I've seen yet. As the Worldwide Managing Director of Bain said about the book, "Management Consulting is a must-read!"

That is all I can say to the authors of this book!

Five months ago, I wanted to make a career switch. Since I like troubleshooting and problem solving, and, to be frank, I needed a higher salary if I was to continue living in San Francisco, I thought consulting might be a good avenue to pursue.

My first interview was with Deloitte and Touche, and ... I BOMBED IT. Although I had talked to several of my friends who were in or had been in consulting, and even a business professor at UC Berkeley (where I went to college), I was ill-prepared for the CASE INTERVIEW.

I agree with another reviewer (Carlsbad, CA) that case interviews may not be the best tool for recruiting consulants. Afterall, how many consultants (outside veterinary consultants) really need to know how many kittens there are in the USA? HOWEVER, until the PREMIERE consulting firms stop using them to gage how one thinks under pressure about an unfamiliar problem, then you cannot beat Biswas and Twitchell's "Management Consulting: A Complete Guide to the Indusrty" and Wet Feet Press' "So You Want to be a Management Consultant" for preparation.

{I guess where I disagree with Carlsbad, CA's review is that this book (or any book) written as a guide to a recruiting process and the industry as a whole, should not and cannot be faulted for the problems in the recruitment process or in the industry. I am thankful that this book covered the case interview so well -- since that is exactly what I faced when I was looking for consulting jobs. Moreover, unlike the reviewer from Carlsbad, CA who is a business professor and a part-time consultant, I now do consulting full-time. While there are times I don't enjoy working long hours, I cannot fault this book for telling me about the often grueling lifestyle -- although I can certainly fault the industry for it.}

Now, if you have the money, I suggest that you buy both this book, and the Wet Feet Press book. But if you don't have money to burn, I would definitely buy Biswas' and Twitchell's Guide first for two reasons: 1) it offers realistic qualifications about the grueling consulting lifestlye, and 2) it has great essays by reknowned consultants.

These two parts will help you to answer questions from recruiters about your personal lifestyle requirements (are you willing to travel, are you willing to be away from home, are you willing to work 60-80 hours a week consistently), and it always helps to know the names and histories of renkowned consultants (like John Wilkerson, who has an essay in this book) when discussing your future as a consultant.

More importantly, you have to decide whether Management Consulting is the right career for you (The sections about lifestyle (work requirements) and by renowned consultants will help you answer that question).

When I was done interviewing, I had four offers to consider from some great firms! While I can't say that all of it was due to reading this book or Wet Feet Press' book, a large part of my success came from being better prepared for case interviews, and knowing what to expect from a consulting career.

Thank you Mr. Biswas and Mr. Twitchell!

Jason Chu (Email: bc154@scn.org)

I'm just about to complete my Ph.D. in Computer Science and have previously spent a number of years working for Andersen Consulting (Technology practice). Lately, as I see my Ph.D. time finishing, I've been contemplating a career move into Managment Consulting and thought I'd have a look at this book. I cannot tell you how completely accurate I find their view of consulting, it completely fits in with my experience of the industry.

So you may ask, that given I already have experience in consulting in the big 5, why would I be attracted to this book, well I'm interested in moving out of purely technical roles and into more business design and strategy consulting and thought this book would help inspire questions within myself as to whether this *type* of consulting suited me.

The book achieves that and also gives you an excellent and *truthful* account of what consulting is really like.

Read this book!!

Biswas and Twitchell serve as your personal career coaches, guiding you through the various steps required to secure a consulting job with carefully conceived strategies and refreshing objectivity.

The book serves as a useful map to the industry, but in an unusual approach, the authors begin first by encouraging readers to think hard about what exactly they are committing to and why. They outline the various issues to be considerd incuding types of consulting, travel time, work hours, and industry complaints, all in an effort to make sure that individuals are approaching their search with an accurate set of expectations. I found this kind of impartiality greatly enhances the credibility of their insights. In addition, the chapter entitled Perspectives on Consulting written by leading consultants, is particularly helpful because it helps shed light on "consulting personalities" and highlights the type of thinking that is valued across various firms.

But most impressive is the the meat and potatoes chapter on the The Case Question. This section offers the most succinct explanation of the traditional consulting interview I have read - it manages to reduce this dreaded process to its essential components and arms the reader with a list of critical tools to organize and attack the questions in only 20 pages. The book also inlcudes 15 frameworks and 100 case questions to practice with.

Management Consulting: A Complete Guide is an info-packed game plan and I strongly recommend the book to anyone who not only needs to get up to speed quickly but hopes to land the job!

This book is very informative. It presents the past and present history of the profession and discusses what it takes to survive in the management consulting industry. It demystifies the interview and job application process. Its discussions on passing Case Interviews are particularly well done - potential consultants can now study up on those frameworks management consultants used to dissect, organize, and analyze a difficult case problem. It also provides 100's of case study questions so that the potential applicant can now be more prepared when applying for a position. This book is simply indispensible.

I thought that this book provided a very good summary of the management consulting industry, and what kinds of things I needed to look for and questions that I needed to ask to make sure that I was targetting the right kind of firms for me. It also provided a pretty good summary of a number of different frameworks - great if you need a bit of a refresher. There were even some frameworks that I had not learned that the book taught me about. It does not go into an in depth description of the frameworks, but the summaries are pretty good, even if you have not learned about the frameworks before.

The book provides a number of different examples of cases, but only provides possible solutions for a few. That is my only disappointment with the book - I wish it provided a few more possible solutions to some of the problems. Other than that I found it very informative.

I would say that it is more targetted towards someone coming out of school or looking for a career change.

If you are getting ready to apply for management consulting jobs, then this book is worth the investment. It is expecially good for its advice on the application process and the case interview discussion. It summarizes nicely the most common case frameworks and it gives 100 example cases (out of which 10 are discussed) - these are more than sufficient for the interview preparation.

I love this book. It is full of useful information that is highly relevant to the needs of someone looking to enter consulting and preparing for case interviews. Why would anyone buy Vault or Wetfeet, when they require you to buy multiple books to get the same information that this ONE book has? Also, the people who gave this book bad reviews obviously can't read. The guy from Scandinavia implies that these authors invented case interviews and are selling them as a good way to pick consultants - Wrong! Case interviews have been around forever, and these authors are trying to teach you how to deal with them (they didn't invent them!). The guy from Carlsbad, CA also mis-read this book by saying that these authors invented case questions. IGNORE their bad reviews - they obviously don't read properly. Buy this book for it's meaty content and easy-to-read style.

This book is an instrumental tool for the case-study interviewing process, as well as a useful exploratory overview of management consulting.