<p>I'm currently a junior at a top-40 but little known college. I'm getting a MBA and a bachelors in Biochemistry at the same time (came in with a boatload of credits!). Obviously since I'm still a teenager, I don't have any real work experience that companies such as Deloitte, Bain, BCG or other consulting companies highly prize.</p>
<p>I have a 3.79 GPA on my biochem bachelors, and I haven't got my grades for the MBA classes yet (so far 4.0 though). I'm the head of two clubs and I do research (biology research), tutoring, volunteering and yada yada...nothing special. What exactly can I do now to have a greater chance of getting an internship (be it undergraduate or MBA) at a consulting company?</p>
<p>You know a lot more than I do, so please help! :)</p>
<p>Go to your college’s job fairs (they should be held in January or february). Make a list of Fortune 500 Companies where you might like to someday work. Go to their websites and check out the Careers section. Apply for internships that are listed and match your interestes and training. Do this in January. If the company hasn’t posted the positions yet for summer of 2011, then call the HR department and ask when the site will be updated. Apply for evrything you can and follow-up with phone calls.</p>
<p>Network! Send out emails to friends and family and let them know that you are looking.</p>
<p>^ Good suggestions. I would actually start in early December. We’ve been moving toward getting our interns for the summer hired before the winter break.</p>
<p>Intern hiring must vary by city and field of study - I know that at D’s university, all intern hiring in the business school is done before Dec 1. She’s been interviewing since September 20th (not for consulting jobs, though).</p>
<p>If you possibly can, make an appt to talk with a professor in your MBA program about your career interests. Do NOT ask about specific internships. Give them your resume, and discuss your career interests in general, and ask for advice. At some point indicate your interest in management consulting, and ask if they have advice about that. If they do not suggest a name of someone to talk to, ask for the name of someone else who might have advice for you about consulting. Then follow up with that person, using the same approach. </p>
<p>Consultants network to get business, they are very aware of and look kindly on folks who network. They also often know lots of people, so after networking for a while, your odds of getting to see someone are not that bad. Its a much easier sector to network into than many others. </p>
<p>Also an internship at a bank or other company, or even a science internship could help you towards consulting down the road.</p>
<p>Actually I’ve applied to science, banking and other internships…but I haven’t heard back and it’s been about three weeks (all done online, the career fair at my school is useless)…am I worrying too much? I mean will I hear back around December?</p>
<p>Brooklynborndad: I will definitely do that! Thanks for the advice.</p>
<p>The timing is good, many companies are just now getting their internships posted and their intern recruiting fairs scheduled. The majority of the actual sorting and hiring will occur in the winter after the New Year. Don’t worry that you haven’t heard anything. Company HR and recruiting departments are cut to the bone just the rest of business so things happen just not very fast. I called a friend of mine who recruits college interns to see what she was going to have next summer because we have so many friends with college kids right now and it took her 3 days to call me back. And she’s a very good friend and had no idea why I was even calling. She’s doing about 5 jobs these days. Give it awhile then follow up (maybe early DecemberP with an e-mail to any that are of special interest. If you don’t hear back before the holidays try in mid-January.</p>
<p>If you are at a larger college there may be a person, a prof or a specialist who works on business relationships and intern recruiting. Make a few phone calls or search your college website and find that person if your school has one and get connected.</p>
<p>I am curious, do the large consulting firms actually hire interns? I ask because I worked for one of the biggest for about 10 years in the 90s, and we never had an intern that I know of (and I worked in an office that grew from a few hundred people to almost 2000 in the10 years I was there, so I wasn’t in a complete backwater…). I have been off on my own for about 10 years, although am currently contracting back to that same consulting firm (with no interns in sight, but I only have a view of this one client now).</p>
<p>So does the OP or anyone else actually know that the major consulting companies (McKinsey, Accenture, Deloitte, etc.) are hiring interns? I’m definitely not saying that they aren’t these days, am just curious. It could be a mixed bag (some do, some don’t), too.</p>
<p>^^ They do. Check the websites. They may not be posted but if you search most websites using the word “intern” you will generally find activity.</p>
<p>KPMG internship interviews for Summer 2011 were held at the end of September. Huge number of applicants (in DC, 200 for 3 guaranteed places - my d got one of 'em! <a href=“http://www.kpmgcampus.com/kpmggo/gip.shtml[/url]”>http://www.kpmgcampus.com/kpmggo/gip.shtml</a> ) She has another second interview for a job next week, and had applications for 12 jobs/internships in by the end of the third week of September. My sense is that things are mostly wound down.</p>
<p>wait a minute! really mini?! I had no idea…because their website says that they are still hiring for the summer…</p>
<p>momofthreeboys thank you so much for the great advice! I feel so relieved now knowing that I do have some chance…I read somewhere that BCG starts hiring for the summer around January. I didn’t know how true that was so I asked here. Thanks so much!!!</p>
<p>intparent yes they do hire interns</p>
<p>my college’s career fair was really useless - none of the companies accepted resumes, everyone told us to “apply online” so that’s what I’ve been doing for the past month. :(</p>
<p>I have a linkedin - I only have 50 connections so far so there’s nothing much I can do yet.</p>
<p>Basically (or so my d. says), they hire three from each of their interview series in each of their cities (that’s already done: my d. signed the contract yesterday), and then they will decide how many more they will need out of the pool they already have. So it’s essentially closed at this point. The Global internships are given out among those who apply for them in spring, out of those who have already been signed. </p>
<p>Her school did an absolutely amazing job prepping her, with practice interviews, pre-reading applications, making sure folks knew how to dress (she didn’t need any of that), tailoring resumes for each individual job. The second interviews for KPMG (there were 60 folks for the initial 3 places) took almost two whole days.</p>
<p>mini, perhaps, but while summer is the largest internship cycles many companies run cycles all year round or run two staggered summer cycles to catch the kids that attend quarter cycle colleges and aren’t out until June and don’t go back until September. If someone is interested they should still inquire. I only have knowledge of a couple companies, but the internship programs at those did not “shrink” primarily because FTEs (full time employees) are not able to be added.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t know. What I do know is that interviewees came from schools both on quarters and on semesters, and that all my d’s applications had to be finished by the end of the third week of September (and that was for jobs, too, not just internships.) At KPMG (or so she was told), most of the interns are then offered jobs either at the end of the summer or, if they don’t have their masters and are going for one, for the following year. (I found that surprising, but then it wouldn’t make sense to spend such a small fortune in weeding out intern applications, and then sending such a larger proportion of them abroad unless they planned to invest in them further.)</p>
<p>Do the firms that you want to work for actually recruit at your school for full-time positions (much less internships)? I will say that my DH and I have both worked at and/or had offers from many of the top firms (BCG, McK, Bain, Booze, Deloitte, Accenture, Monitor, etc.) and neither one of us ever worked with interns at the undergrad level. I know they sometimes had them, but the programs weren’t large (particularly at the strategy firms). All of those firms hire interns from full time MBA programs, but typically only from Top 10-20 MBA programs. Honestly, if your ultimate goal is to work in consulting at a big firm, I wouldn’t be getting my MBA concurrently with my BS and I wouldn’t get it from a school outside of the top 10. Which means I’d finish up my undergrad…maybe add a double-major…and get top notch post-BS work experience and then try to get a consulting job. </p>
<p>I used to sit on the hiring committee for our analyst program at my consulting firm (large firm with huge Los Angeles office where I worked) and in the 3 years I was there, we only interviewed five people who weren’t at one of our target undergrad schools and only one of them was hired (and coincidentally she didn’t make it to the Associate or 3rd year level). It sucks, but we would get 1000+ resumes each year from people not at our target schools and we rarely interviewed anyone b/c we had enough good candidates to fill the 3-5 positions we had every year for our analysts (post BS level). As far as the post MBA level, I didn’t participate in those interviews, but I rarely saw any new hires that weren’t from top 10 programs.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to be a downer, but I often read people’s posts on here about consulting and wanting to work in the field and I just want to shout out that it’s a tough thing to get in to and particularly tough if you’re not at one of the schools they recruit at. I had a super high GPA (Biology and Math) and ECs from a top 15 liberal arts school that’s known as a feeder to I-Banks and consulting and spent 3 years at a great firm and then went on to a Top 3 business school for my MBA and had a bunch of consulting offers post-Bschool (including an offer at my old firm that would have paid for my MBA) and there are a lot of misconceptions about being able to get consulting positions. My DH actually has a PhD in physics from Caltech and ended up doing strategy consulting for a number of years (and had offers from 4-5 firms post PhD) and while we both loved the field and loved the training it gave us, we know we were lucky in that we both happened to attend schools where the firms recruited. It’s a super tough putt to get a position if you don’t. For the firms, they know they miss some great talent by not widening the net, but it’s more efficient to focus their recruiting efforts on known sources.</p>
<p>oldcmcalum - unfortunately it is too late for me to drop out of the mba program and honestly I would not trade it for the world. If getting an mba from a not top 10 - 20 b school puts me at a disadvantage - so be it. If things don’t work out, medical school is another great option for me (thankfully), but if consulting companies really are only looking for the top 10 - 20 business school graduates then I guess I’m out of luck :(</p>
<p>thank you very much for the info though, I knew it was certainly competitive, but I did not know that they were only really selecting from about 20 schools (which is very saddening to hear for a 19 year old), but I’ll get over it :)</p>