Ananya Singh, the coordinator of the Consulting Committee (CC), provided a brief overview of the team’s goals and responsibilities to the English Press Club. At present, the CC, which is a division of the Placement Unit (PU), has 5 core members from the second and third-year batches, and two volunteers from the first-year batch. It aims to increase awareness about what consulting actually entails and provide a framework for interested students to prepare accordingly.
Consulting as a career option is usually a second or third preference for a BITSian, leading to an average preparation time of only about a month before the internship or placement season. According to Ananya, BITS Pilani lacks a concrete consulting culture, and many students remain uninformed about the exact requirements for a consulting job. This is one of the reasons for the decrease in the number of consulting companies coming to campus. Some companies have raised issues with the relatively mediocre effort that students had put in to construct a consulting profile. Although no consulting companies came down in the previous internship season, Ananya is working towards changing this for subsequent semesters.
Giving an example of “consulting culture”, Ananya said, “Institutes like IIT Kharagpur host inter-hostel case study competitions every weekend. They are in constant touch with their alumni in consulting companies for ‘buddy’ sessions. These alums provide more context on how to make a good resume, which PoRs to consider, and what exactly is needed to get into those companies.”
When asked about the CU’s initiatives, Ananya mentioned that the team is working on connecting with alums placed in companies like BCG & McKinsey, and sending them questionnaires with queries regarding consulting. They aim to publish the responses in the form of a periodic newsletter. They also organize talks on consulting through these connections. The Facebook page of the Placement Unit, which had been posting links of case study competitions, internship opportunities, and various guidelines for this career path, has been discontinued. They plan on releasing a newsletter which will contain guidelines for students to develop their consulting profile. Also in the pipeline is an intra-BITS case study competition in collaboration with a renowned company. The stumbling block in this plan has been the companies’ criticism of the lacklustre consulting culture on campus.
Interview preparation is one of the most important components for landing a consulting job. In consulting interviews, candidates are bombarded with several case study questions and are evaluated on their ability to attack the problems from various angles. Consulting firms also look for candidates who are analytical in their thought process, have experience with case study competitions and guesstimates, and contain ‘spikes’ in their resume. These spikes may include scholarships, PoRs involving impactful decisions, excellent internships, or a good academic record. They focus on quality over quantity, and candidates are grilled extensively on their resume points. Consequently, the importance of building a good resume cannot be understated. The CU is planning to organize resume building workshops to give students adequate practice. Tabir Mishra, the Senior Placement Manager at PU, has already spearheaded a number of initiatives towards the same.
Ananya asserted that the lack of a CGPA cutoff for consulting companies does not indicate their unimportance in the placement process. “They are not going to kick you out if you have a low CG, but they are going to ask you why.” Interviewers try to gauge the candidate’s exact interests, skill levels, and passion for the non-academic aspects in their resume. Certain companies, like BCG, are also known to prefer candidates with a high CGPA.
When asked about the shift of focus in engineering institutes towards consulting, a job stream traditionally reserved for business schools, Ananya was of the opinion that the scarcity of core placements in India was a major factor. “People veer towards consulting because engineers, in general, are considered to be ‘all-rounders’ with calculative thinking skills. Companies come down for placements to take in people who haven’t even done an MBA because of the exposure and opportunities offered here,” she said.