Overview
The route from your MBA to a consulting role is a popular one – consulting firms hire MBAs from many different industry and function backgrounds.
Consultancy firms look for people who can thrive in being part of a high-performance team and understand the importance of team goals and objectives.
There are also some desirable skills and traits that all consultancy firms look for, and this is how we advise Cambridge MBAs to present themselves as they network, apply and interview for their target consulting roles.
While it is a popular choice for many MBA students, recruiting experience at Cambridge has shown it’s a highly achievable target for people with a range of different backgrounds, with the right preparation and work, and with engagement with our Business School Career team and resources.
of recent graduates transitioned into consulting
Statistics shown are from the most recent Cambridge MBA employment report.
From the Cambridge MBA to a consulting career
As we publish the Cambridge MBA employment report 2024, we explore the career outcomes for some of our most recent graduates.
From Bain to BCG, we meet three consultants who found their passion and achieved a global consulting role during their MBA year in Cambridge.
Hear from Ananya Velamakanni
I started as a junior consultant in the finance technology team at Deloitte, and I worked for companies in the financial services and chemical industries. I just chose to come to Cambridge to pursue my MBA as I thought it would be the right career move for me since I wanted to pivot from finance technology consulting to more strategy consulting. I just thought it would equip me with the right critical thinking and the problem-solving mindset with the various courses that I’m taking, like various business disciplines, from marketing to operations to finance. I feel it’ll equip me with the transferable skills in whichever role I wish to take after my MBA.
Besides that, I was really attracted to the practical learning experiences that are part of the programme, right from the Global Consulting Project to the Cambridge Venture Project, to the individual project that we undertake in the third term.
The practical learning element turned out to be very useful for me as I got to work directly in a client-facing role. I did my GCP with Porsche Consulting. Cambridge also offers a high amount of flexibility and you can tailor the course according to your preferences.
I always had my mindset on strategy and a slight inclination towards finance. Hence, I had the opportunity of taking a lot of courses, especially in these two areas.
During the year. I was involved in the Consulting Special Interest group. I was part of some of the consulting case prep that they conducted, and it was a very nice experience as I was also preparing for interviews at the MBB firms.
So the MBA has, I truly believe, has equipped me with the right strategic thinking skills and the critical thinking mindset. One of my favourite courses that I’ve taken, it’s called Negotiations Lab. It was delivered exceptionally by Professor Mark de Rond. I think this course really taught me self-awareness and also gave me confidence, and I believe that the learnings from this particular course, how I was able to negotiate, will give me a lasting impact in my professional and my personal career as well.
Ananya Velamakanni, the Netherlands, was looking to pivot from finance into strategy consulting. She particularly enjoyed and has found useful in her career, the practical learning on the MBA, such as the client interface during her Global Consulting Project at Porsche Consulting.
Hear from Jordan Kho
I was fortunate enough to work in a variety of organisations of different sizes, from a startup in Southeast Asia. I’ve worked in a big 20,000 strong airlines doing org restructuring during COVID-19. I was carrying out a digital transformation programme for this SME, and it made me think about a career in consulting. And I thought an MBA was a great way to pivot myself in a variety of ways. I wanted to move in terms of region as well, in terms of function, and I knew that the MBA was the way to go.
Why Cambridge? I actually did my undergraduate studies in UK. I really wanted that kind of intellectual environment, the collegiate lifestyle. I wanted that authentic student-campus life, and Cambridge could deliver on that, all within the span of one year. Even though it’s a smaller city than London, there’s always something to do, whether it’s in the business school within the Cambridge University itself, or even in the city. The city experience is amazing. There’s a lot to do. The campus has been amazing because it views on the foundational business knowledge that I actually lack.
When it comes to long term, I think having that elective sessions to build upon your interests is really amazing. Personally for me, I really enjoyed some of these electives such as cost control. That gave me a lot of new basic business principles that I didn’t even think of. So, for example, how do you carry out a budgeting or profit plan, or how do you even analyse the different customers in terms of profitability through activity-based costing? I think the programme is definitely very intensive. It does cover a lot of breadth, especially in the beginning of the term, but at the end, it allows you to cater to your own personal preferences as well in terms of what you want to get out of it.
For this term, I really wanted to look at the hard skills kind of electives. I think at the beginning I chose a lot of leadership-y kind of electives. I did something called big data because I was interested in AI as well, and I think having that foundational knowledge in big data would be helpful. What I tried to do was to tailor in such a way that when I go into business in the future, I’ll be able to understand the drivers of a business in terms of the costs, for example, and the electives I’ve chosen helped me to analyse and provided a framework for me to analyse these different businesses in the future.
I think the careers team has been very helpful amidst the challenging market environment in helping me secure a senior consultant role with a consulting firm in London. So that’s where I’ll be ending up after my MBA. I came into the MBA knowing that I wanted to get into consulting, so it was very good that I got the triple jump I wanted.
Hear from Jordan Kho, Malaysia, who was looking to pivot into consulting through an MBA. He tailored his curriculum choices through his electives and a concentration in Marketing to give him the well-rounded business fundamentals that he would need in his career.
This year’s employment report
Our MBA employment report captures employment data for the Cambridge MBA class of 2022/23 – our most recently graduated class.
These results confirm the variety of options available to Cambridge MBAs after their studies, and also the established appeal of the versatile Cambridge Master of Business Administration (MBA) graduates to a wide range of international employers.
We have provided pre-employment data to illustrate the transformative career pathways our students often take.
Next steps
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