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
Careers in Consulting
From Bain to BCG, we meet three consultants who found their passion and achieved a global consulting role during their MBA year in Cambridge.
Consulting career outcomes
From engineering to BCG, from HR to Bain, from retail to McKinsey, discover how our MBA alumni transitioned into top global consultancy firms.
So you want to work in consulting? – events focus
We will be holding a new series of career focused events this Summer. In the meantime, please view the recording from the event series – So you want to work in consulting? – pivot, perform, progress.
Hear from Kevin Park, Consultant at Bain
Kyung Bae (Kevin) Park, Consultant at Bain, South Korea, talks about why he chose the Cambridge MBA to develop his leadership skills as he focuses on a career in strategy consulting.
Before coming to Cambridge, I used to work at Samsung Electronics in South Korea for about six years. And mostly I worked as a Software Service Product Manager in the Mobile Business Unit. I worked in the same company for the same job about like four or five years. At that time, I really wanted to explore more kind of new things.
Why I chose the Cambridge MBA
The reason why I specifically chose MBA, I was involved in more on the product side. I wanted to learn more about business, so that I can combine those two for my future career path. I also need to learn leadership skills. So that’s why I actually came to Cambridge to learn leadership skills as well as like a more practical business skill sets. My first goal is to expand my horizons, so in terms of that, Cambridge was the best choice for me, because I felt like unlike other business schools, Cambridge Judge Business School, is not about business school, but it’s about like a whole Cambridge community.
And I also expected to have a lot of interaction with startups or entrepreneurs within Cambridge, because when I looked into the Cambridge, it was pretty well-known for the Silicon Fen community. So it was also a key factor for me to choose Cambridge.
I am kind of more of a big tech guy, but still I want to explore more about entrepreneurship, how they work and how to build their idea and how they actually change their technology into a business idea. So I want to explore more about that, because I came from this, like a big tech industry.
I can learn not only in the classroom, but also in the actual business setting. So for example, I worked with a machine learning startup for the last term to build their long-term business strategy. And after this term, I go to some more like a multinational company to work with. So that kind of actual business setting really helped me to explore more about the new things and learn about business skills set and how I actually can apply those skills into the real business setting.
Now I’m interested in like more on consulting style and strategy, so I chose my concentration and the strategy and I chose my elective in that strategy or those topics, subjects that are related to strategy, my career path right after the MBA with more on the business side or strategy or business development. And then I’ll probably go back to more tech side after three to four years.
MBA helping to make a societal impact
So eventually my goal is to help more on society, which is like people talk a lot about like a social impact. So I became more interested about social impact when I came to Cambridge. So after maybe five years after, I want to contribute building more technology or new technology to help society.
I think it was the Cambridge provided me with the once in a lifetime opportunity to meet a lot of bright people here. Throughout the year, I could have a lot of opportunity to work with people from various backgrounds, so that I could improve my communication skills and how to co-ordinate with other people to achieve the same goal.
So it was pretty helpful for me to lead other people and work in a team, in my next career. Not only the business school is for MBA programme, for me it’s a Cambridge community is a huge opportunity for me to explore new things every day in everyday life.
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