About me
Hey there! I am Gautam Khona, a 4th year Mechanical Engineering student and Insight Editor. Popularly deemed the foosball GOAT of H3 (by myself), I enjoy debating, swimming and watching tennis – Djokovic fans assemble.
The decision to pursue Consulting
There are two clear reasons I wanted to pursue a career in consulting. The first being my elimination of the careers I did not want and the second being my close association with IITB Debsoc.
Initially, I spent a good amount of time exploring tech and core concepts. In my first year, I taught myself Python and dabbled in basic ML. Applied for tech teams, talked to seniors about their work, and participated in events like XLR8. While these activities were intellectually stimulating, these problems never piqued my interest so could never imagine pursuing this in my career. In my second year, I took CS213 and DS203 and tried learning React for web dev, but none of this grabbed my passion. My experience with Mech core was much worse because my exposure to courses, labs and people who religiously pursued Prof projects in core was nothing short of boring so any form of research was out of the question. All of this said, the career options that I felt could be given a shot were consulting, supply chain and finance.
My close association with Debsoc right from first year exposed me to debating and a bunch of amazing seniors most of whom were in consulting companies like Bain and BCG. Debating had a massive impact on me right from Day 1 even if my improvement at it was slow. It was dazzling to listen to seniors like Harsith and Shubhneet with the ability to speak for 7 minutes straight on any topic in such a rigorous structure with clear logic and rhetoric. But furthermore, my exposure to, as we would call it, “machau Debsoc seniors” having high CPI, great PoRs and amazing debating credentials all being in consulting made me place a lot of aspirational value to consulting early on. I tried to emulate them by going for several PoRs and mitigating damage to my decent CPI after first year. Even apart from all this, my own findings about the skillset needed really appealed to me. Great communication skills, general problem-solving ability and some business sense were all soft skills I really wanted to build upon, given that I had no clear preference towards a particular sector and consulting promises a wide roster of exit options into product management, finance, strategy roles at almost any firm and startups.
Selection process and preparation
The selection process consists of resume screening, buddy process and final interviews. For resume screening, recruiters look for a set of peaks that differentiate you as a candidate; a high CPI, good PoRs, projects, 2nd internships and great extracurriculars count. Not all of the above are necessary. Once you get shortlisted for the firm, the buddy process commences. In this, firms allot 1 or 2 current employees, usually IITB alumni, to help you get a better idea of consulting and the firm’s work and, most importantly, help you prepare for the case interviews. They do a set of 2 or 3 example cases with you over a span of a week or so. It is important to take these cases seriously and ask for detailed feedback regarding your approach to solve them. On the day of the interview, you will get your slots and will have 2 to 4 interviews with each firm, the last interview being the deciding partner round. There is a chance not all these interviews are cases and can be just a conversation on your resume. I ensured I had a very trusted senior as a runner to be a PoC for slots across firms especially because I happened to have multiple shortlists. After I got the offer, the Bain recruiting team took all of us for lunch at Sassy Spoon!
Touching very briefly on prep, I started early July with case prep by watching the 5 Case Interviews Cracked videos on YT and solving the CIC and IIM A casebooks with my friends and people whom I knew to be very interested in consulting. You do one case with them and they do one for you and then you give each other feedback. This was the way we practised and you must try to do cases with as many people as possible to get exposed to different approaches to problem solving. It also helps make the internship season seem more collaborative and less toxic. Overall, solving cases is intriguing, so enjoy the preparation stage!
Prioritisation between companies:
Note that this was my solely my opinion at the time based on my limited information on each company, you can differ on this and possibly have greater metrics to your interest. I was fortunate to have multiple shortlists across McKinsey, Bain, BCG and LEK. Given this my metrics for prioritisation were learning curve, work-life balance, company culture, experience in internship program, buddy program experience, seniors I knew and prestige. I felt learning curve would be higher in MBB firms because of their prestige and the diversity of cases they tend to get. Additionally, on work-life balance and company culture from a perspective of working full-time, I did know through PPTs and interaction with buddies that Bain really values mentorship irrespective of your position in your company and values guidance and giving breaks to prepare for MBA applications and have initiatives like Friday parties and weekends always off. Consulting is usually a 65-70 hour week job and a slightly better work culture in that sense made me attracted to Bain. Additionally, Bain and BCG did seem to have a decent amount of experience in the internship program for UGs which made me feel that standardisation in process might be better. Finally, my buddies at Bain felt very supportive and I really valued interacting with them in addition to seniors like Jaymal I knew through Debsoc to have chosen Bain in their placements. Finally, on prestige we knew McKinsey to be the biggest consulting firm at the time so my ordering was Bain > McKinsey > BCG > LEK in that order.
Internship experience:
TLDR of my internship experience would be a mix of hectic, stressful and fun. Most of the IITB interns chose Gurgaon as their location so it was great to be in company of each other during that time. It was an 8 week internship with the 1st week of training in Bangalore common for all 5 IITs’ interns after which we were shifted to our respective locations. In terms of skills, you mainly require Excel, PowerPoint and basic research skills (basically Googling and using Bain’s tools). These are all skills that will be taught to you during your training so you need not be an expert on it. For my case we did not need to work from the client location so I worked from the Bain office only.
Office culture in Gurgaon was a bit dead at the time because the actual office was in renovation so we were sharing the office with another division of Bain called GBS. My supervisor also mostly worked from home so we used to communicate on MS Teams. I got an automotive components case earlier, was initially pissed about it for the first 3-4 days because I’m such a big fan of Mechanical Engineering labs and motors, driveshafts and CV axles. But eventually, you learn to like it because though you need to research and understand a bit about the products, my case was a lot about growing the company so I had to learn a lot more about the business side of things. Overall, I’d say my team was very supportive and genuinely helped me understand context though the case had started 2 months before I joined. As an intern they do not have a lot of initial expectations from you, they do expect you however, to get work done faster and become better at the tasks you are allotted.
There were a lot of times when I used to close at 7 or 8 pm and there were also times when we did not stop working till 1 am so the work can be very uneven through time but that is honestly out of your control. One thing I found notable about my case was that my interaction with Partners was negligible which I did expect happening a lot more because they are people who’ve stayed in the firm for 10+ years and directly interact with clients. My work was particularly research heavy and at times it did feel like I was doing a bit of grunt work just Googling, adding data to slides, beautifying them and searching LinkedIn. However, this was because my case had entered more of the execution phase and the strategy was already aligned with the client so you might get lucky but also, at times we had to think of certain new ways of approximations in Excel so it was a balance that I was okay with. So when I did not have a lot of work, I did enjoy talking to my supervisor because she is a G and she used to give me useful case context on why they thought up the strategy that sounded quite smart. Apart from work, our intern cohort was really fun so we always planned something interesting for the weekends like visiting places in Old Delhi or going go-karting or ice-skating or something like that. We also did have our fair share of perks of course, staying in a 5 star hotel on a single sharing basis for 2 months, having a 127329 course buffet for breakfast and not having to spend a dime on travel or food during the weekdays so much so that we’ve ordered food from every restaurant in Gurgaon. So overall, a consulting experience is a life of extremes and that “work hard, party hard” notion is indeed true!My final advice to people wanting to do such an internship is just make the most of the people you meet at the company. Talk to them about things apart from work like their hobbies, plans for career later on in life, their experiences doing an MBA, etc. Also, make an effort to meet people outside your case team on your own and use this opportunity to create a network with such people. Furthermore, regarding the work, take constant weekly feedback from your supervisor on improving your efficiency and ensure you understand the full context of your case including the pieces you haven’t worked on. Lastly, even though a PPO is at stake, do not take too much stress during these 8 weeks, you will learn when you’re on the job that there really is a lot to life apart from corporate slavery and making and towards the end you’ll really miss your campus and friends at college more than ever and won’t wait to have a blast of a 4th year.
