The Consulting Focus

The Consulting Focus was developed by Johnson School faculty in conjunction with administration and students as a comprehensive program to help fellow students gain the following:
• Understanding of the consulting industry
• Understanding of the types of jobs available and what those jobs entail, as well as tools to research firms in the industry
• Case interview preparation including seminars by outside experts, case workshops, case competitions, mock interviews facilitated by 2nd year students and real consultants currently working at various firms
• Develop the analytical skills, technical expertise and knowledge necessary to make an immediate impact during your internship and early in your career

The Consulting Focus consists of coursework, a collection of club activities and workshops dubbed the Consulting Passport, and opportunities to lead real projects to solve real business problems for real companies. The Consulting Focus complements the core coursework that you’ll complete as a Johnson School student and provides ‘the edge’ necessary to begin a successful consulting career. Consultants require inquisitive minds, analytical and problem solving skills, the ability to draw conclusions from ambiguous information, as well as the poise to interact with clients and drive change. The Consulting Focus recognizes this and develops all these traits through its comprehensive approach— integrating theory with practice. So from the near term needs of preparing you to ace your case interviews, to the long term needs of developing the analytical and leadership skills that you’ll use throughout your career the Consulting Focus covers all the bases.

There are three main components that make up the Consulting Focus:
• Targeted coursework
• The Consulting Passport
• Real World Applications

You are free to take advantage of all or any combination of these three aspects of the Consulting Focus depending on your interests and goals
 

Targeted Coursework 
Coursework includes the basic functional topics like finance, marketing and strategy plus additional electives that provide the opportunity to take consulting specific classes and complete real world projects. For a suggested course map for those interested in consulting click here.

The Consulting Passport consists of a carefully planned and structured series of lectures, presentations, case interview preparation events and mock interviews that has been created to help club members first determine if they are interested in pursuing a career in consulting and after that to provide them with the case interview tips and practice they’ll need to impress perspective employers.

The Consulting Passport
The Passport begins with an overview of the industry and the types of jobs available, and culminates with a capstone case interview event where industry practitioners travel to Johnson and a spend a day with students staging 1 on 1 ‘mock’ case interviews to ready 1st year students for their upcoming internship interviews.

Some of the Consulting Passport events include:
• Consulting Treks to NYC and Boston
• Leadership Skills Programs (LSPs) designed to target structured and quantitative case analysis
• Weekly interview practice sessions
• Case analysis workshops with industry experts (Marc Cosentino, David Ohrvall)
• ‘Friday Visits’ – Weekly case practice events at various consulting firms
• ‘Consulting Case Bootcamp’ – A weekend of case interview practice with industry practitioners right before summer internship interviews

Real World Applications
The final component of the Consulting Focus is learning by doing – leading projects to solve real business problems for real companies.

This segment allows you to apply the tools and skills developed through academic studies while also enabling you to exercise leadership and project management skills– building on the abilities you had before coming to Johnson and readying you to excel in consulting after you graduate. Projects can be sourced from multiple resources, whether it be the Consulting Projects class or through other student organizations like the Big Red Incubator Consulting or Community Consulting Group, the consulting arm of Community Impact. There are multiple avenues to gain this critical experience.

The diversity of project sources provides variety in types of projects and ensures you are able to find a project in an area of interest to further your development.