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How to get a Consultancy job after you finish an MBA

January 12, 2012 by Huntswood

We have just entered 2012 and as an MBA student you are probably thinking it’s time to start the job hunt and if not, you should be! Competition is always fierce for the best jobs on the market and there are a few things to do before you start applying for them to give yourself the best change of success.

The first task is the most obvious but also the most critical: write a good CV. This is particulary important as this is a company’s first impression of you! You will find it easier to write everything you have done down first, then go through and add dates, company names and job titles. Be specific; include the countries in which you gained your experience and make sure there are no unexplained gaps in your history, detailing the month as well as the year is recommended.

Next add in your education. Include the date you started and graduated for every qualification including qualifications you received before you went to university (equivalent to UK A-Levels). You must include grades! All too often we receive CVs with no grades – some of these candidates had excellent results but had neglected to write it down. Employers always immediately assume the worst if you fail to include your grade.

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Psychometric testing at my level, are you joking?!

January 10, 2012 by Huntswood

With the requirements for consultants becoming ever more stringent, many consultancies are incorporating tests into their interview process. There are four main types of test: personality, logical, numerical and verbal.

Personality:these tests use a variety of situations and assess how you would react, how you work with others, what frustrates you and how you cope with pressure. Typically, a question is formed of a statement and you are required to select the most appropriate from options ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree.

Logical reasoning:the aim of this test is to assess your problem solving ability. The tests revolve around recognising patterns and working out what is next in the sequence. You will normally be given a row of 4 pictures and 5 possible answers. An example is below:

Numerical reasoning:in this test you are provided with data normally presented as tables, charts andgraphs: the aim is for you to perform calculations to answer a set of questions given.All the information you need can be obtained by manipulating this data. Some erroneous data is also usually provided to assess who can sort the relevant from irrelevant information.

Verbal reasoning:in this test you will be required to quickly read a sample of text and answer questions which are most commonly ‘true’, ‘false’ or ‘cannot say’ based ONLY on the text you have just read.This test not only shows your ability to quickly assimilate information and understand its meaning, but also the competency with which you speak English, should you be non-native, as the test commonly contains business terminology.

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The Mortgage Market Review

December 20, 2011 by Huntswood

One unexpected outcome of the long awaited Mortgage Market Review is what looks like a squeeze on mortgage brokers. The heart of the paper is enhanced affordability checks and the Review says the FSA is not proposing to prevent income and expenses checks being done by intermediaries, “but the lender will be responsible for ensuring that verification of income happens in every case and will be held to account if it does not.”

The likelihood is that some lenders will therefore move advice ‘in house’ as they will carry the can in any event.

Overall the MMR has turned out to have reached a somewhat more comfortable place than the previous document, with most stakeholders viewing the outcome as acceptable although some people will ask, “Aren’t lenders doing this already?”

The Review requires lenders to only grant mortgages where there is a reasonable chance of repayment out of income and without relying on future house price rises.

Lenders will also be required to take account of market expectations of future increases in interest rates. They can’t just take a guess at it either but must use published material such as the forward sterling rate published on the Bank of England’s website.

Self certification mortgages and fast tracked mortgages will be banned, which is a significant move because at the height of the property market almost half of all mortgages were done on this basis.

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Holistic implementation of effective TCF

December 9, 2011 by Huntswood

Companies need to deliver revenue that increases profitability; however, this should be linked to the way a company treats their customers with the aim not only to fulfil the standards demanded by the FSA, but also to build credibility in long term relationships with their customers.

Every company should be asking themselves, “are we looking at TCF implementation holistically in our work streams? Are our current TCF activities a part of our strategic planning? Are we achieving the six TCF outcomes in the right way?”

Many would answer, “we are creating satisfied customers but we’re not embodying TCF outcomes in all our interactions with our customers.” This was the case for our client, the retail division of a UK bank, who needed to apply a different TCF strategy to truly engage with their customers.

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An effective way to reduce complaints

November 17, 2011 by Huntswood

A lack of complaint handling capability will always result in poor service, but imagine the impact for a company facing a huge backlog of complaints.

Huntswood was approached by a company which handled information requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI), but due to a public awareness campaign, they were overwhelmed by a rising number of requests which lead to delays, complaints and huge backlogs.

With this in mind, Huntswood implemented a new triage approach to clearing the backlog as well as bringing in expert case handlers and a project manager to fix the immediate crisis. This was suplimented by a bespoke training program to achieve a long-term solution to the authorities’ challenges.

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Four Ways to Benchmark Customer Experience

November 15, 2011 by Huntswood

How is your company tracking customer experience? Are you just looking at sales data? If your answer is ‘yes’, that might show you how you are doing in a general way, but it will not show you how you can improve your customer experience throughout the process. The thing is, if a customer has an okay (read meets low expectations) customer experience, then she’ll stay a customer. But she won’t tell her friends that you are fantastic and they should come to you, too.

How do you measure how you are doing compared to your competitors in the market place? How do you know if you can exploit a weakness in the landscape or if you have to play catch-up? You have to benchmark, of course, but that’s easier said than done. How do you go about benchmarking customer service, something infinitely less tangible than sales data or other industry statistics?

Paul Scott, Huntswood’s Director of Consulting, remarks that, “Often companies do not know how to benchmark their customer service and so do not. However, there are plenty of techniques and strategies they can use to advance their customer service strategy.”

1. Get your consultant to compare you against their other clients. This is one of the most common “traditional” methods. It is also one of the least effective. Consultants can take the information they’ve gathered from their various other clients and figure out how you rank against them. They’ll anonymise this data, of course.

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Publishing FOS Decisions – Clarification or Punishment?

November 14, 2011 by Huntswood

The Financial Ombudsman Service has just released its discussion paper on the publication of its decisions. This a major concern for the industry at the moment and divides opinion.

Certainly, firms want greater clarity over FOS decision making, but how will publishing decisions achieve this? It will require an easily searchable database which firms and consumers can use to flush out a point or a case that is similar to theirs.

FOS prefers that only Ombudsman decisions are published and not those of its adjudicators, which is just as well as there are around 3,600 adjudications each week at present.  Imagine trying to search that database in a few years’ time; even if just the Ombudsman decisions are published, there will be around 400 every week to add to the list. Is this still too many cases to create a valuable resource?

I suppose it depends on what you see as the purpose of publication in the first place. The unique aspect of the Ombudsman’s role is to take into account relevant FSA regulations but always to decide cases on what is fair and reasonable in the circumstances of each case. This is very much a matter of judgement, so in my mind the main reason for publishing decisions is to demonstrate what the Ombudsman regards as ‘fair’ and ‘reasonable’.

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The Retail Distribution Review

November 9, 2011 by Huntswood

The Retail Distribution Review’s (RDR) new definition of advice will have certainly unnerved financial advisors, but is the regulator’s definition sufficient for today’s market and does it reflect what customers think is advice?

Under the RDR there will only be two types of advisor for investment products: there will be fully independent advisors that must be fee based and able to make recommendations on a comprehensive and fair analysis of the relevant market with the ability to provide unbiased, unrestricted advice and there will be advisors that will be providing ‘limited advice’ and, therefore, must say so.

But does this match what the customer anticipates when they see an advisor? I think the nature of the relationship can be quite complex. When a customer first meets an advisor they can have a wide variety of expectations which might make up the basis of the contract between the advisor and the client.

At one extreme the customer can say, “I already understand everything there is to know about this product and I am prepared to buy it without any input from you.” The regulator and the industry define this as ‘execution only’ and responsibility for the purchase rests almost entirely on the customer.

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The UK Consulting industry – buying trends update

October 25, 2011 by Huntswood

Recently we took part in the Source for Consulting market update presented by Fiona Czerniawska, Director and Co-Founder of Source for Consulting, and Edward Haigh, Director. The results were from their quarterly buying trends survey.

The results were very varied depending on the type of consulting work done and the type of company. As has always been the case in a recession, the market share of the Big 4 increases and in boom times it decreases. This recession has been no exception; as a group they have seen a market rise of 5% since March of this year. One of the main reasons for their market share increasing is that clients buying consulting services were far more careful about where their money went. It was considered safer to pay a well known company to do the work rather than a smaller boutique firm, even though the latter might do a better job. The risk in that decision is the word ‘might’; as someone said to me earlier this week “no one was ever fired for hiring KPMG”.

Pressure on prices across the whole market seems to have increased; with some firms discounting heavily, the most resilience for rates is at the Partner level. The individual service lines strategy, long considered the ‘sexiest’ area of consulting, has seen a significant decrease with average rates dropping from around £1,700 to closer to £1,200. Since December 2010 rates for HR consulting have been on a continual increase and now averages £1,000.

The service line with the highest percentage of increased business is outsourcing, which has seen a rise of just over 7% since December 2010;  conversely to this, improving operation performance has seen a decrease of just over 8%. These figures represent the percentage of total money spent on consulting in the UK that each service line currently has.

Operational firms now have the smallest market share of any major firm type with the Big 4 over 23% ahead. Strategy firms have seen a decrease of 5% which now puts them second from bottom in terms of market share. Specialist firms, having seen a drop of 15% between October 2008 and January 2009 now command the third largest market share at around 17%.

In the future, the survey suggests there will be a 38% increase in the use of specialist firms compared to a 44% decrease in the use of the Big 4. Outsourcing is the largest predicted growing service line with an increase of 35% with improving operation performance, strategy and marketing and selling being the biggest decreases at 35%, 31% and 30% respectively.

If there is one thing we all know about consultancy it’s the speed at which things can change, in reality will these figures be accurate? We will have to wait and see.

Posted in Huntswood, Huntswood Consulting, Huntswood Mangement Consultancy, Huntswood Recruitment | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

Who wants to be a Management Consultant? Young MCA report.

October 20, 2011 by Huntswood

A management consultancy firm, like any business, is only as good as its employees and their reputations rely heavily on the quality of consultants who manage their projects and clients. Therefore, these firms invest a substantial amount of time, money, and resources into recruiting, training, and retaining individual consultants. It is of utmost importance that firms are able to understand and manage their employees’ expectations and job satisfaction on a day-to-day basis in terms of a ‘day in the life of a consultant’.

As a specialist recruiter in this field, working with both bigger and boutique consultancies, it is clear that from an early stage in their careers that younger and newer consultants are being given more responsibility on projects and more face time with clients, creating a busy and demanding work atmosphere and work ethic.

The Young MCA has provided a comprehensive report outlining the views and opinions of young consultants (with experience of less than 5 years), and what their thoughts are of the industry so far and, more importantly, if it has lived up to their expectations.

From a total of 319 consultants surveyed, all employed within management consultancy firms that are members of the MCA, job satisfaction was one of the highest factors on their work environment priority lists. Interestingly though, a third of the participants felt that the time they spent away from home should decrease over the next 3 years, while two thirds remarked that their qualifications were not being utilised within their current role. No surprise as to the main motive for first entering into consultancy, a high salary is among the main reasons for consultants staying on for the next three years, while an unbalanced work/life ratio would deter them from furthering their careers within the industry.

For the first time, the consultancy industry now has an in-depth report on the views and experiences of their younger members, their various backgrounds, qualifications, and plans for future development. The results highlight areas that many firms and individuals would have to address in order to retain their younger employees, and to deter an imminent ‘Brain-Drain’.

To grab your copy of the report please visit Young MCA

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