All right. Hi everyone. My name is Elaine Lu. I am one of the career readiness coaches at Cornell Career Services. Thank you for joining me today for consulting 101 - Breaking down the what in consulting for today's session, we're just going to go over an overall umbrella of what is consulting, how to prepare for the field, and what to expect in the role. If you have any questions throughout this presentation, feel free to drop a question in the Q and A feature throughout the slides. To start off, I want to plug in the career development tool kit. You may or may not have seen this on your canvas. Essentially, this is a course available to you as a student or alumni. Anyone with a net ID has access to a career development tool kit. Within this toolkit, there are interactive modules related to career preparation and career development. From career readiness, assessment, exploration, networking, resume cover letters, and so on. These modules have step by step guides to help you prepare and what to expect. There's also a session for further education if you're interested in pre grad, pre law, pre vet, or pre health. There's also some industry specific modules like consulting, data, science, entrepreneurship, and so on. I highly recommend checking out the consulting module if you're interested in consulting fields. It goes more in depth about the details of preparing for consulting fields in addition to the information that I'll be going over today, If you don't see the career development on your canvas or have not seen it, you can self enroll by utilizing this QR code. Or you can utilize the link which is Careers.Cornell.edu/ToolKit This is the career development cycle and we'd like to introduce this cycle within all - most of our presentation. Within the career development cycle, there are three stages from understanding yourself. What are your interests Values, strengths and goals? Explore options. Utilizing and navigating different resources, Networking activities, internships. And taking action, which is applications, letters, resume, and interviews. Throughout these three stages. Career services is here to support you, to help you understand yourself, explore different opportunities, and taking action in applying. If you ever want to meet with an advisor, you can always schedule an appointment with the central office or with an advisor from your home college. Today's learning outcome is going to be a consulting overview, transferable skills, networking tip, interview types, industry timelines, and additional resources to help you prepare for consulting roles. What is consulting? Consulting is the business of providing expert advice to a specific group of people. They are professionals who provide expertise to organizations to help them maximize their profitability or effectiveness and keep them running smoothly. They also act as advisors, providing knowledge, solving business problems, and suggesting solutions and recommendations. When you're preparing for consulting roles, one key thing that I want to highlight is that consulting recruiters generally don't look for specific majors. However, they do look for candidates with specific skill sets. The first skill set is analytical. What is your ability to look at data, Logical reasoning, analyzing information. The next one is problem solve. What is your ability to solve problems or Provide solutions? Communication. What is verbal, written, and your listening skills? Teamwork, being able to collaborate and work with others. Customer service, being able to work with clients. Being in a consulting role, it's very client facing. What was your experience working with clients and client facing? Ability to drive impact. Some additional skills include presentation, excel languages, leadership, and client readiness. This is NACE's career readiness competencies NACE is the National Association of College and Employers, and they identify eight career readiness competencies that employers look for and their candidates. The first one is career and self development, communication, critical thinking, equity and inclusion, leadership, professionalism, teamwork and technology. You may have already developed these competencies throughout your coursework, extracurricular activities, internships, volunteer experiences, and so on. These are all good skills that you have developed and there are transferable skills that you can highlight during your interview and application process for these consulting roles or any roles that you plan on applying for. When it comes to any role that you're applying for or any industry you're interested in, it's important to network. Networking is cultivating professional relationships by seeking out and connecting with individuals who support your career endeavors. There's two forms of networking. The first one is informal interview. This is when you're meeting someone one on one. Whether it's going to be in person meeting, virtual or phone call. You're learning from others. And this can be an alumni employer, friends, family, and more. Essentially throughout these one on one conversations, you're preparing for the position that they are in and you're planning to apply for, the industry or company that you want to get involved in. And by doing this, you're understanding the specific organization, you're getting insider tips and knowledge when you're applying. And talking to the recruiters or employers can also help you develop your professional network and show your interests and goals to those in that field. Within the career development tool kit networking module, there's more information on how to conduct informal interviews. When it comes to fairs and info sessions and other meetings. Meeting with employers- this is a really good way to connect with potential employers and recruiters. This is when you're learning about the job and the company to help you find the right fit with employers. This is a great way to get insight of the recruitment process and application requirement by speaking one on one with the recruiter or attending their information session. If you go to the Fairs module on the career development toolkit, it provides more information on how to prepare for career fairs or information sessions, or networking sessions. When you're applying for consulting roles- There are two common interview types. The first one is behavior/fit and the next one is case interview. The behavior fit interview is your opportunity to showcase your skills, personality, and experiences. This is the opportunity for the employer to define their job responsibilities and general expectation. It's a two way conversation. You're showing the employer who you are and the employer is also showing who they are to you. During this interview, they are evaluating your abilities, your accomplishments, your personal qualities, enthusiasm and short and long term goals. During a case interview, an employer will pose a business problem relevant to its organization and ask the candidate to propose logical steps to resolve it. These case interviews normally take about 40 minutes, and it's to mimic a real life consulting project, which will take about a couple of months. They condense it into a 40 minute interview, just to condense it and see how you are proposing your creativity, poise, analytics. There's a huge focus on your problem solving skills as well. So they want to see your structuring, numeracy, judgment and insight, creativity, synthesis, and case leadership. For more information about the behavior, fit and case interview process, you can check out CaseCoach.com/Cornell which is a free resource for any Cornell student to prepare for consulting roles. I want to note that recruiter suggests preparing for behavior interviews at least one to six months before the interview and for case interviews about two to six months in advance. It does take time to practice for these interviews and you can always schedule an appointment with Cornell Career Services, or you can check the interview module on the career development tool kit. Now I'm going to talk about the recruiting timeline. Within the recruitment timeline, I just want to note that most consulting firms hire a year in advance. This timeline is general and some application interviews and offers will go off cycle. What I mean that most consulting firms hire a year in advance. Let's just say you're seeking out an internship for summer 2025. That application is going to be released summer 2024. That application is one year in advance to the start date. This timeline is very general and some companies will go off cycle, meaning they don't follow this one year in advance rule. Knowing that most consulting firms hire one year advance, this is some information to note down. Early summer, full time and internship positions to start the following summer will be posted and open for application. Midsummer is when some companies begin their first round interviews. Late summer to late September, Final round interviews and offers extend to students. I create this chart diagram for more of a visual. If the application starts in summer, you want to start preparing your networking and research on those companies right now before the application opens. By networking and research, you have a better understanding of what the organization is looking for in a candidate and how to prepare. And also letting the recruiters and employers know who you are and your interests, While you're networking and researching, as I mentioned the previous slide, it's important to start preparing for the interview process- whether it's case or behavioral. And the application materials. Starting early is key so you're prepared right before the application starts. Once you submit your application materials, that's when interviews happen and offers will be extended to students. If you're curious about some of the consulting application deadline managementconsultant.com/consulting-application-deadlines/ have a list of deadlines of companies and when they start having their applications open and when they are closed. The best way to learn more about different companies and organization is going to information sessions, connecting with the employers or recruiters. This is a list of consulting firms that Cornell recruits with. We have the MBB, which is also known as the Big Three. There's McKinsey, Bain, and BCG. And there's the Big Four- Deloitte, EY, PWC, KPMG. And Accenture, Booz Allen, Wavestone. There's some boutique strategy players and function focus players. This is the consulting path and exit opportunities. Consulting path is, once you start the consulting role, you start as entry level. And as you progress, you move up to a senior analyst, consultant and a manager. And as you can see, there's the Director, Associate Partner, Partner, and Execs. Exit opportunities are if you enter consulting fields and you plan to transition out of consulting. There's the strategy and operations, marketing, start ups, private equity and venture capital. And these are some organizations. The first resource that I want to plug in if you're interested in pursuing a career in consulting is Case Coach. This is a tool that provides comprehensive support to students throughout their consulting internship and full time job application process. From resume, cover letter, to fit and case Interview. To access Case Coach, you can scan this QR code or you can go to CaseCoach.com/Cornell Essentially, there's two parts. The first part is courses and the second part is practice. Within the course section, there's the interview prep course. It prepares you for case and behavior interviews with slides and videos on step by step guidance on what to expect and how to master those skills. There's a case math course which is introducing basic concepts and pro tips to exceed and math questions that might be asked during a case interview. The resume course goes over resumes. There's templates and they also go over cover letters. Within the practice session, there's the case library, which includes 100 plus cases where you can practice and they vary across different types and sectors. And you can download these practice materials and study by yourself or work with a friend or work with any, a peer or anyone. There's also a virtual practice room where you can connect with another student from Cornell or another student from a partner institution and do a video call to practice casing together and provide live feedback. As you're practicing, there might be areas that you feel like you want to improve on, so you can enter the drill section and this is where you can practice certain areas of the case that you want to improve. Let's just say you want to practice the listening component to it. They have gameifications. They also time you to practice in those drills. Another tool that can help you within the consulting case interview prep or application process is management consultant. Management consultant provides support to students throughout their consulting application process by including case interview prep, articles of trends, application deadlines, formula sheets, firm directory and more. It's very similar to casecoach, however, a management consultant has a lot of information for you to keep up to date of upcoming trends. Earlier before I talked about the application deadlines. So they do keep a list of employers and some of their application deadlines of when they start their application and when they close the application. There's a lot of practice materials and drills as well, and formula sheets to prepare for those consulting roles. To access management consultant, you can scan the QR code or you can go to Weblink on the bottom, which is managementconsultant.com/cornell-university-student-registration/  The next resource is Vault. It was formerly known as Firsthand. There are resources for researching industries and future careers. After creating a login, check out firsthand vault  guides by clicking Library then guides. With Vault, there's a lot of guides on different industries and different fields. You can even learn more about consulting fields and also different companies that provide consulting services. To access, you can scan the QR code and or go on Cornell.firsthand.co The next one is the Forage, and this is a resource for students who want to gain project based experience. You can learn directly from leading companies and gain valuable career readiness skills by completing virtual work experience on forage. There opportunities to explore by career interests and companies. As you can see, there's a lot of companies with different projects and there's a hour timeframe. Some of them range from 1 hour to 6 hours, two to three. It's really up to you which one you want to complete. And after you complete, you can share this experience with employers of what you've learned or what you have accomplished. And as you can see there, these projects are mimicking some top companies. You see JP Morgan Chase, Accenture, Deloitte For these projects, you can start and continue later on. You don't really have to complete everything in one sitting. To access this, you can scan this QR Code. To connect with Career Services in Barnes Hall. Our office is open Monday through Friday, 08:00 A.M. to 04:30 P.M. You can always schedule appointment with Careers.Cornell.edu/schedule. Our services include resume, cover letter, linkedin reviews, practice interviews. We do behavior and case interviews. And we do advising and exploration topics, assessment, job and internship search help and many more. You can also scan QR code to follow our Instagram and if you're interested, you can also check out your college career offices, At career services in Barnes Hall, we also offer daily drop ins with our peer career coaches, and that's available Monday to Friday from 01:00 to 04:00 P.M. And our team can provide resume and cover letter services and has first come first serve.