BCG Southeast Asia Offer

I can't thank you enough for providing these invaluable resources. Your videos are by far the clearest and the most helpful in aceing the case interviews.

If most other resources are like giving a fishing rod to a hungry man (or giving frameworks to a desperate consultant-to-be), yours is like teaching someone how to make his own fishing rod. It was that useful.

I especially enjoy the section about "consultant's mindset". Thanks to you, I managed to secure an offer at BCG South East Asia as a Junior Consultant (I have a PhD) as well as 2 other offers from smaller firms.

Some of the things that I found useful are:

1. Networking. I was a skeptic about this, but I couldn't have gone this far without networking with people at prospective firms.

2. Do not give up. In total I had 5 final round rejections before getting my first offer.

3. (This is especially true at BCG) Ask the minimum number of questions to get to the answer.

PS: Ironically, I noticed that your are getting more BCG success stories than any other firms. I definitely think it is a personality/cultural fit with the firm as I wasn't even called for the first round at McKinsey.

My Reply:

Congratulations! Yes, networking does help. I got a slight edge in the McKinsey recruiting process by accident. I was networking with a McKinsey person to learn more about her experiences post-Mckinsey in investment management.

The person never returned my call and passed along my consulting resume to the McKinsey recruiting coordinator instead. Because the recruiting coordinator was in the off season (August), she had lots of time on her hands, called me back personally, and we talked 1:1 for a fair amount of time.

When McKinsey came on campus several months later, I met her in person, she remembered who I was, and I said hi to her on 3 or 4 other occasions. This kind of stuff helps. A resume attached to an in person conversation or a face is more meaningful than an anonymous resume or CV. It's just human nature.

I agree with being persistent. You never know really know how these decisions are made. There was only one interview I didn't pass, and that was BCG 1st round – I ended up passing every other interview with every other firm and had 7 consulting offers.

And to this day I still can't figure out why I didn't get past that BCG 1st round!

This stuff happens. Like you said, move on and keep going. Again, congratulations.