The grace under pressure one MBA graduate cultivated during her executive MBA program helped her get ahead as a management consultant.
Karrie Prehm, a 2011 MBA graduate from Florida Atlantic University, says her graduate business school courses challenged her to be both creative and collaborative – a requirement for consultants. The experience also taught her, she says, how to handle criticism.
For instance, during a group project that involved assessing the financial health of the publicly traded satellite service company DIRECTV and proposing ways the company could boost its profitability, Prehm and her teammates were cross-examined by their professor about the wisdom of their growth strategy.
Prehm says that stressful moment helped her understand how to calmly and directly answer difficult questions, an ability she now uses regularly as CEO of Global Regulation Advisers, a compliance consulting firm that caters to the investment industry.
“It’s very similar to a lot of the interactions and discussions you end up having in consulting when you’re brought in to solve a problem and make a proposal, and either they’re going to love your proposal or they’re going to hate it," she says. "But either way, you’re going to be in that hot seat, and you have to be prepared to answer those questions.”
Prehm says one sign a business school provides solid preparation for a consulting career is if the school offers courses that require students to deliver presentations to their professors and classmates which simulate consultants' pitches to current and potential clients.
Here are three other factors that experts say aspiring management consultants should consider when choosing an MBA program.
1. Course topics: Experts say future consultants should consider business schools with a varied curriculum that combines strategy courses with technical ones that focus on marketable skills like business analytics and supply chain management.
Prehm says MBA courses on business communications and organizational structure are particularly useful for future consultants, since they will only transform companies if they can simultaneously convince executives of their business ideas, and motivate lower-level employees to implement those ideas.
Future consultants can also benefit from MBA courses on technology and change management, since those specialties are in high demand, Prehm says. Companies are willing to pay significant fees to consultants who can help them increase automation, consolidate their operations or shift their corporate culture, she says.
Experts say it's also beneficial for future consultants to take electives that focus on the growth opportunities in expanding business sectors, such as the health care industry, which offers an abundance of consulting work opportunities.
Lesley Kromer, director of consulting and strategy recruiting with the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, suggests aspiring consultants take courses on business operations to learn how to maximize a company's productivity.
2. Project-based learning opportunities: Experts say prospective MBAs with an interest in consulting should attend a business school where they can participate in a wide variety of consulting projects, including school-supported pro bono projects for nonprofit organizations and extracurricular projects at student consulting clubs.
Many business schools incorporate consulting projects into core classes, and those projects are something future consultants can tout on their resumes, since they help cultivate vital skills such as data analysis and implementation planning, says Kathryn Bingham, CEO and owner of the LEADistics LLC executive coaching company.
3. High placement rates at consulting firms: Experts say the most telling sign that a business school is ideal for a consulting career is when a large proportion of its recent graduates have been hired into MBA-level consulting jobs.
Experts say some top business schools report how many of their students in each graduating class were hired by various major consulting firms, such as McKinsey & Co., Bain & Co. and the Boston Consulting Group.
Scott Edinburgh, an MBA admissions consultant who previously worked for Bain & Co., says schools with a high concentration of aspiring management consultants are more likely to offer programs that cater to these students' career interests.
"For instance," he says, "a school that has a larger percentage of students going into consulting will probably have a larger consulting club."
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