Case Interview Preparation & Management Consulting | Strategy | Critical Thinking

Welcome to an interview with the author of Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing, Laura Mae Martin. In her book, Laura shows how to thrive no matter where you’re working, giving concrete steps that help you focus on your priorities and keep good systems, routines, and tactics in place. Uptime explains how to make technology work for you and make “feeling on top of it” your new normal. It’s a blueprint for operating at the highest levels of productivity while enhancing your own personal well-being.   Laura Mae Martin is the Executive Productivity Advisor in the Office of the CEO at Google. She coaches Google’s top executives on the best ways to manage their time and energy and sends out a weekly productivity newsletter that reaches tens of thousands of employees. During her 13-year tenure at Google, she has worked in sales, product operations, event planning, and now executive coaching. Laura holds a Bachelor of Science in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lives in Charlotte, NC, with her husband and three children.   Get Laura's book here: https://rb.gy/nu5qr6 Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing   Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach   McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf   Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

Welcome to an interview with Claire Milligan, a Stanford graduate turned startup founder. Claire helps businesses grow by spending smarter and reducing their cloud costs. Her target market is PE firms. In this episode, we discuss what PE firms care about, how to approach them, the biggest challenges and potential solutions they encounter, as well as the sales process and lead time.    Whether she’s helping businesses transform their cloud spending or hitting the slopes as a ski patroller, Claire Milligan thrives on distilling complex problems down to their core issues — and turning these pragmatic findings into groundbreaking solutions. Through a journey spanning marketing, UX, and leadership roles at tech companies like Tallie and SpringAhead, she’s meticulously constructed a diverse skill set built upon hands-on expertise and an unrelenting thirst for knowledge. Now, as the CEO of startup Aimably, she’s applying her unique superpowers to help businesses grow by spending smarter and dramatically reducing their cloud costs.   Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach   McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf   Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

99% of clients misunderstand learning and practicing. At its essence, you cannot practice McKinsey cases until you learn McKinsey cases. Most candidates start of their case interview preparation by reaching out to colleagues and consultants to practice cases, not having gone through the learning steps. Without a good strategy of separating learning from practicing you will simply absorb what you hear in the practice sessions and none of that is designed to teach you how to do cases. You must separate the learning from the practicing.   Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach   McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf   Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

Welcome to an interview with the co-author of the inspiring new Generative AI study, Jeremy Utley. This episode highlights the common mistakes and missed opportunities many corporate teams and individuals make when using AI. Too often, individuals treat AI as a mere search engine, leading to answers that fall short of actual solutions.    Jeremy Utley is an adjunct professor specializing in creativity and entrepreneurship at Stanford University, where he has taught design thinking and creativity to nearly one million students of innovation worldwide. In 2023, he was named a top ten global innovation leader by Thinkers50 for his recent book Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters.   Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach   McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf   Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

In this podcast we have listed some of the most common and most significant networking mistakes made by candidates. Since many of these have been made by clients, we have had an opportunity to discuss the mistakes, their motivations, the fall out and their response. Therefore, we can provide a comprehensive discussion on the implications of these mistakes. In general, no matter how badly a McKinsey partner networking call may go, you have little to fear.    Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach   McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf   Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

The podcast discusses the importance of interpreting harsh feedback in management consulting. It explores strategies for navigating interactions with junior team members and emphasizes efficiency and clarity in analysis. The episode also delves into leadership challenges in consulting and highlights the value of handling stressful situations and difficult discussions in the corporate world.

Storytelling is a very powerful technique to ensure someone remembers you after an interview. In fact, even when we screen people at Firmsconsulting today, we use this technique I applied as a partner. The rule is simple: if I can remember your key messages from the interview the next day, I would make you an offer. That, of course, assumes you had passed all the other hurdles well enough. One way to be remembered is to be your answers around compelling stories using the New York Times rule of facts, facts and facts with a beginning and end.   Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach   McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf   Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

Welcome to an interview with the coauthor of Fusion Strategy: How Real-Time Data and AI Will Power the Industrial Future, Venkat Venkatraman. In Fusion Strategy, digital strategy expert Venkat Venkatraman and world-renowned innovation guru Vijay Govindarajan offer a first-of-its-kind playbook that will help industrial companies combine what they do best—create physical products—with what digitals do best—use algorithms and AI to parse expansive, interconnected datasets—to make strategic connections that would otherwise be impossible.   Venkat Venkatraman is the David J. McGrath Jr. Professor of Management at the Questrom School of Business, Boston University. He has previously taught at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at the London Business School. He is considered one of the foremost authorities on how companies develop strategies to win with digital technologies. He has lectured and conducted digital strategy workshops all over the world with companies such as IBM, Merck, Ericsson, BP, Canal+, and others.   Get Venkat’s book here: https://rb.gy/2vq6rx Fusion Strategy: How Real-Time Data and AI Will Power the Industrial Future.   Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach   McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf   Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

Discussion on harmful phrases to avoid in case interviews, importance of communication strategies, independent thinking, and analyzing superficial judgments in management consulting.

Welcome to an interview with the coauthor of Fusion Strategy: How Real-Time Data and AI Will Power the Industrial Future. In Fusion Strategy, world-renowned innovation guru Vijay Govindarajan and digital strategy expert Venkat Venkatraman offer a first-of-its-kind playbook that will help industrial companies combine what they do best—create physical products—with what digitals do best—use algorithms and AI to parse expansive, interconnected datasets—to make strategic connections that would otherwise be impossible.   Vijay “VG” Govindarajan is widely regarded as one of the world's leading experts on strategy and innovation. He is the Coxe Distinguished Professor, a Dartmouth-wide chair, at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a former Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School. Govindarajan is the author of the bestselling books Reverse Innovation and Three-Box Solution.   Get Vijay’s book here: https://rb.gy/2vq6rx Fusion Strategy: How Real-Time Data and AI Will Power the Industrial Future.   Here are some free gifts for you: Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/OverallApproach   McKinsey & BCG winning resume free download: www.firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf   Enjoying this episode? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo