What does BC look for in applicants?

When Berkeley Consulting was founded over 20 years ago, it was with the goal of bringing together some of the brightest minds at Berkeley to solve some of the toughest challenges in industry. ‘Brightest’ did not then and does not now mean ‘business experience’ or ‘marketing jargon’ – it means being passionate about learning and bringing that excitement to breaking down our client’s problems. On that note our process also tries to screen for candidates who will be successful on our rigorous client engagements and while there is no universal predictor, we’ve found the following traits to correlate well with project success:

• Analytical thinking: Our engagements involve synthesizing huge amounts of qualitative and quantitative data to make actionable recommendations to our clients. This means not only an ability to pick out the important insights from a sea of information but figuring out how to frame those for maximum client utility.
• Commitment: The way in which we’ve built an organization that has thrived for over two decades is by having a membership wholly devoted to building something that will last. From ensuring healthy client relationships to creating internal infrastructures that set up our members to succeed, there are few opportunities on campus where one member, with the right dedication, can drive such a powerful and enduring positive impact.
• Communication skills: As undergraduates, we are able to provide advice to eminent business leaders by not only basing our recommendations in empirical findings but by focusing on the most compelling and persuasive ways to articulate our ideas. This is why an ability to present cogent thoughts, to clients and to team members, is just as important as being a diligent researcher or creative thinker.

BC has built a reputation–both on campus and in industry–for delivering the highest quality solutions to a diversity of clients. The durability of this pursuit is concomitant with finding the highest quality applicants. Applicants who want to immerse themselves in an environment where everyday is learning something new and maybe teaching us something, too! At the end of the day, if this sounds like a mission you can get behind and the type of people you want to be surrounded by, BC could be a great fit and we would love to have you join us.

How should I approach the BC application–Part 1: Transcript and Resume?

The first part of our application is the background section: transcript and resume. We only ask for the former to see what kind of academic interests you have pursued so an unofficial copy from CalCentral is fine. We ask for a resume to see how you spend your time outside of school. Putting together a resume can be daunting especially if it’s your first time. For those who may not already have one, you can find a template here. Below are some quick tips:

• Proofread: A typo-free resume shows diligence and deliberation, takes five minutes, and makes a huge difference. Get someone else to look it over if you can.
• Format: As per professional standards, most undergrad resumes should be a single page. Use a readable font and use bolding to emphasize the most important points.
• Content: When explaining different experiences, make sure to be concise but effective and quantify as much as possible (it’s okay to ballpark!). In general, a structure we find that works well is: Education (major, school), Experience (extracurricular involvement and/or any jobs you’ve held), Skills & Interests (maybe you’ll share something in common with us!). If you’re a freshman or sophomore, feel free to include high school experience.
• Impact: As you can tell BCers are a dedicated group so we love to see applicants who have chosen a couple things and really made an impact. Focus on experiences that were meaningful to you.

How should I approach the BC application–Part 2: Essays?

The second part is the essay section. The first prompt asks you to pick a company and discuss some changes you would make. The idea here is not to find candidates who have a business background or can look up buzzwords. We want to see how you would go about identifying problems and thinking about potential solutions. While it is important to have feasible suggestions, explaining your thought process and rationale is more important than the exact economic viability of your recommendations. Some common pitfalls to avoid:

• Company: Feel free to pick a company that is a little obscure, we promise we will look it up to learn more! Some of our best essays are about unknown companies because they are the ones our candidates often care the most about. It is also pretty hard to write novel analysis about Apple, Tesla, et cetera so maybe stay away from ubiquity.
• Precision: We would much rather see applicants take a stance behind one or two (maybe bold) clear ideas instead of prevaricating with ambiguous ones. Be specific about the change(s) you are proposing and their anticipated impact

The next prompt asks you to discuss something you are passionate about. "Passion" is a word that gets used a lot, even in this FAQ, but it is still an idea that is central to our organization and each of its members. At the risk of sounding like a college counselor, be authentic! We read a lot of these and it is pretty clear when a candidate actually cares about their topic and when they are just rewriting their resume. Some of our favorite essays have been about rock collecting, fonts, and water sports!

A quick note for our returning applicants: while it is fine to use a similar theme for your passion essay, we recommend that you pick a new company for the first prompt.

How do I prepare for a case interview?

We’ve found the best way to gauge which candidates will be successful on BC engagements is to put them in our shoes. The case interviews are a close reflection of the actual consulting work we do for our clients, just condensed down to an hour. We want to stress that while this may seem like the most foreign part of the process very few BCers have case experience prior to these interviews. To help you prepare, here are some tips and thoughts that we’ve found useful:

• Structure: While each case is different, there are three major groups of questions you’ll see. First, critical to most engagements is a lay of the land–how many toys are sold per year, how many burritos do Berkeley students eat in August - which is called market sizing. The important detail about these questions is we care a lot more about your methodology and approach than nailing the exact number. Second, a lot of our work is being to analyze massive and diverse data–parsing graphs, drawing insights from tables and connecting it back to the case, which is called qualitative analysis. Third and lastly, our value as consultants goes beyond crunching numbers and reaches into the realm of creativity–marketing campaigns, expansion strategies, corporate restructuring–which we call qualitative analysis. Don’t worry if you have questions, we have tons of resources that go into more detail about all three of these.
• Case workshop: While practice is good, our cases are pretty unique and written bespoke every semester so online cases aren’t always great proxies. Consequently, we hold a case workshop, before apps are due, where two BCers (usually going into professional consulting) will walk through a sample case and talk about some useful approaches and frameworks for tackling our cases. Then we break out into smaller groups and a BCer will walk 5-6 candidates through a case and answer any questions you may have about the process or BC in general. We highly recommend attending this event - it's the only preparation most of our members did.
• Online resources: One of the best ways to prepare for case interviews is do some case interviews. We’ve consolidated some practice cases and put together some more case tips, which can be found below.
  • BC practice case interview
  • BC guide to strengthening your application
  • PassTheCase.com: This site has many resources to help students with case interview preparation.
    • Case interview examples
    • Strengthening your application
    • Consulting resume

What does integration into BC, professionally and socially, look like?

We talk a lot about how we want applicants with interests from a broad spectrum, not just ones focused on business and consulting. This raises a fair question about transitioning from knowing nothing about a case to presenting in front of C-suite executives. Part of what BC prides itself on is new member ("newbie") integration.

Your first week in BC will be taken up by a bootcamp where senior members teach you the consultant’s toolkit–using Excel, making slide decks in PowerPoint, synthesizing market research, conducting interviews. More important than this first week is the network of mentorship that becomes available to you in the form of Senior Advisors–veteran BCers whose main job is to help you navigate the new world of your first consulting engagement. At the end of the day every engagement is a challenge–even for older members since no two clients are the same–so while you will be figuring things out and learning on the job, you will be doing it with the rest of your team!

On top of this, BC has given a lot of thought to creating formal, fair, and approachable channels by which even the newest members can talk about how they’re doing and voice any concerns they may have. We have appointed senior members who act as anonymous hotlines and a robust series of internal feedback forms that continually gauge how all members are integrating into BC.

At the end of the day, BC cares about making sure every member is getting the best possible version of their experience, starting from day one!

I’m not professionally interested in consulting, is BC still a good fit for me?

Our value proposition for applicants interested in pursuing consulting careers is clear–targeted preparation for future work and incredible relationships with alumni at these top firms. The appeal for non-consultants is a little less obvious but in our opinion even more powerful.

Talking to our alumni across industries from Google to The New York Times to even grad school reveals that the most successful employees (even for deeply technical positions) are seldom the most intelligent or hardest working. The ones who succeed take initiative and identify the pain points in a project; moreover they are ones who can quickly get up to speed and present potential solutions to senior managers. These are not skills you learn from CS or MCB classes, but rather from having experience breaking down actual industry issues and becoming an expert in a subject in 10 weeks. These are skills you learn from BC. Maybe you will never have to build a pitch deck as an engineer or policy advisor, but the career agnostic skills you gain from BC will translate to success in any career you go on to pursue.