Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / Episode 359: Your Post-MBA Consulting Career – Expert Advice from Bain & Co.’s Recruiting VP

Transcript

Episode 359: Your Post-MBA Consulting Career – Expert Advice from Bain & Co.’s Recruiting VP · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:15
  Speaker A: Welcome to the clear admit MBA admissions podcast. I'm Graham Richmond, and for this special episode of the show, we're going to hear from Noble Stafford, the vice president for recruiting at Bain and company Chicago office, will learn all about the recruiting process for consulting, from case interviews and internship recruiting to pre MBA programming and even full time roles. I had a lot of fun talking to Noble because I felt like I could ask all the questions that I had about strategy consulting recruiting that I wasn't really able to ask when I myself was an MBA student. I should mention that Noble is a graduate of Wharton's MBA program and he has a fascinating background that includes work as a consultant for Bain, as a recruiter for Bain, and also a role in executive search with Russell Reynolds. So I moderated the session. It actually is a recording that we did out in Chicago during the clear admit MBA fair. So for those of you who are unable to come to that event or who want to relive the experience, let's give it a listen. Welcome everybody. Some of you were here at the last session, but for those of you who just came downstairs, thanks for doing so. This session is going to be all about strategy consulting, which is a pretty common landing place for MBAs in the research that clear admit has done with our site users. It's like the number one most kind of listed job destination for people who come onto our website and are thinking about getting an MBA. I'm really excited today because we have Noble Stafford, who is heads up recruiting for Bain and company in Chicago here. Raise your hand if you guys have heard of Bain and company. Yeah, I thought so. So Bain is one of the kind of most prestigious consulting firms and they hire a lot of MBAs. Nova, I want to kind of get right into it and I'm actually really excited because I recruited for consulting jobs when I graduated from business school. And you know, there were questions that I kind of wanted to ask when I was interviewing for jobs, but you're always kind of afraid to ask. So I'm going to ask all those questions today. But let's start, let's start, noble, just tell us about your background because I think it's important for people to have context.
• 2:20
  Speaker B: Sure. Can you hear me? Good. So, hi everybody. Welcome. Thanks for showing up. I'm a noble staffer, like he said, I'm the vp of recruiting for Bay in Chicago. Been in this role for about two years, almost two years now. But to have a bit of a unique Bain story way back when I was a federal employee, worked for the government for almost five years, needed to develop some business skills. Decided that business school was the right approach. Applied to a number of schools, was accepted to I think Sloan and Wharton. Was rejected from some schools that are upstairs that I will not go talk to, but I'm also a little upset that my school's not here, but went to Wharton. Loved my time there. I was president of the consulting club when I was there, also on our admitted students welcome committee and also did a lot of work in our pro bono consulting group. Enjoyed that a lot. And that kind of was the primer for consulting for my summer. In between first and second year, I worked for a local nonprofit in Philadelphia, essentially on a consulting case. Still didn't know that I wanted to go the consulting route, but then second year, applied full time, got a job at a couple of firms, decided on Bain in Chicago, moved here. I was a consultant for two years and then actually fell in love with recruiting. I did a lot of work with recruiting in our LGBTQ group at Bain in Chicago and then back at Wharton. Did a lot of Wharton recruiting when I was at Wharton and just really enjoyed developing relationships. So I actually left after a couple years and joined an executive search firm. So executive search is essentially finding C suite execs for Fortune 500 companies. I did a bunch of client facing work there as well as some internal team leadership, global management, change management. But Bain came calling back in 2022, offered me basically what's my dream job. I love working with undergrads as well as graduate students and hopefully helping you all figure out what you want to do with. With your next steps in your career. Gives me a ton of energy. And, yeah, I've been doing this for two years and have a team of ten folks. Sarah here is on my team. We manage pretty much everything from the associate consultant intern program all the way up through what we call industry hiring. So pretty much anything from the manager level at Bain and below for the Chicago office.
• 4:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, and I should have mentioned at the outset that Noble and Sarah are going to stick around after this panel. We actually don't have a panel for another. I think it's like half an hour or so. So they're going to stay at the end to talk with you if you have questions, questions about the recruiting process or life as a consultant. But let's get into that. I wanted to ask you, like, what is strategy consulting and what do strategy consultants actually do?
• 5:01
  Speaker B: Good question. I asked the same question back when I was in your seats. Strategy consulting is a broader management consulting, but it's really focused on advising big clients and big companies on their highest level strategic issues. When I thought about consulting, I thought about the movie portrayals of it, people walking in, doing layoffs and cost cutting. It's a lot more than that. You can work on anything from mergers and acquisitions to private equity strategy to marketing strategy, doing design transformation, performance improvements across a wide variety of industries. So the options are kind of endless. There are some firms that do specialize in specific areas like healthcare or performance improvement. But the big firms that will likely be recruiting at your schools will kind of COVID everything from the capabilities standpoint as well as the industry standpoint. And then to answer your second question more like what does a consultant really do? You dive into a lot of data. You figure out what's going right and wrong with the company. You talk to a lot of clients. I think the one of the big benefits of consulting is you develop relationships with clients pretty quickly and early on in your career, understand what's going well at their firm, understand how you can help them. You will end up learning how to solve problems and figure out how to apply various strategies across a wide variety of industries. And you'll be able to lead teams and give back and coach and manage folks. So you spend a lot of your day doing the analysis piece, but a big part about consulting in general, a big part about Bain is that team side, too.
• 6:40
  Speaker A: So while we're on that subject, I'd love to know, like, what is the typical day? Or maybe, maybe it's like a typical week. Like, what does that look like when you're a strategy consultant at Bain? I mean, are you, are you traveling? Are you on site with a client, or are you back at the home base talking with your colleagues about what's next? Or how does that work?
• 6:58
  Speaker B: I mean, the travel situation depends on the firm you're at and the case you're on. At Bain, we have a home office staffing model. So that means you are staffed to cases with people from your office. So when I was in Chicago as a consultant, I was staffed with other individuals from Chicago, and then we traveled to client sites as needed. So the model that we have, you could be on a Monday through Thursday case where you were at the client sites. Given ESG goals and overall sustainability, a lot of that travel has decreased. There are also cases where you may only go to the client as needed. So three to four times a month or one day a week. There was one case I was on where in three months I went from Canada to the Caribbean, multiple sites around the US. And then the next case I was on, I went to Denver twice in three months. So it varies by the case that you're on in terms of what was the first question?
• 7:51
  Speaker A: Just like what is the typical, how does the typical week or day?
• 7:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it varies. You'll hear me say it varies a lot because it just depends on the case you're on, the type of case you're on, the length of the case, like our private equity group does. Shorter stint diligences that are local to Chicago. They can be pretty intense, but you learn a lot very quickly, run through the consulting model very quickly and get those reps in. So you kind of learn the toolbox on a more traditional case. Let's say you've done the training, you've come in, you're staffed to your first case, you've been on it for a couple of weeks, and you're traveling to the client site. Your day could consist of diving into the data, figuring out what's missing, what you need to ask the client for, trying to find holes in the story that they're telling to help them improve. You'll do client interviews, conversations with clients. Again, you have the opportunity to develop these relationships pretty early on. That's one thing that I was happy and surprised about, but it's like you actually get to have a client map. If you're working with a client, you may do expert interviews, talking to experts in the field. I actually got to call my dad on an expert call once, which was pretty cool, but you really start to learn a lot about pretty niche topics very, very quickly. And that is part of the value prop of consulting. But then you also have big steering committee meetings you have to deliver for the clients. And so you might be in a boardroom with pretty senior level folks, the C suites of big companies, talking about the work that you've done and working with your senior manager on kind of how to frame the problem, how to get to the answer, how to change the hypothesis if we need to. So it just, it varies by day, but that's kind of like the typical type of stuff you'd work on.
• 9:33
  Speaker A: Okay, I think this might be related, actually, but why is it that strategy consulting is such a destination for MBAs? Like, why are so many MBAs wanting to do strategy consulting when they graduate?
• 9:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Question. I've already highlighted a couple of these things, but I think it boils down to three things. And you'll hear consultants bucket things and put things in groups of four and three and two. And I do the same. But I think the first is really around that exposure that I was talking about to big companies leaders, questions that most people would never even think to look into. You're exposed to the decision making process in big companies and how leaders make decisions at a pretty early stage, and you develop relationships with those clients pretty early on. And I think that's unique to a lot of industries. And so you have that opportunity by going into managed consulting to do that. The second piece is around the professional development side. You're around a lot of really frickin smart people. There are a lot of geniuses that you're working with and learning from. And what I really appreciated in Bayne was the team atmosphere that they're there to help you in your professional developments. It's very much a yes. We're all type a. We're all driven and successful, but everybody is there to help you out. There's a quote phrase we say, and a Baney never lets another bainie fail. And that comes along with the professional development quite a bit. So you're able to really learn a lot. And I think the third piece is around impact, the impact that you can have on a company, big or small, local, international, and being able to actually work with the client to make them better and hopefully improve the lives of all their employees.
• 11:18
  Speaker A: And I guess, if you'll permit me, like, one of the things that I think about too, is strategy consulting feels like a great way to put into use the stuff that you've just learned in business school and all these different disciplines, because cases are always complicated and have all these different dimensions, whether it's finance or marketing or operations. And so I also feel like it's a great, it's almost like business school gives you this toolkit, and consulting is a really great way to try out all those tools when you graduate and take that first job. Let's talk a little bit about what you need to get a job at Bain or any kind of top strategy consulting firm. Are there? I think some people worry that they need to have a certain type of background, pre MBA, in order to be kind of eligible to go work at a place like Bain. So I know I had that doubt. Cause I actually was like a liberal arts undergraduate. I studied art history, which is always the degree that they list when they say most useless degrees. Right? And so I was really worried when I was interviewing for places like Bain and McKinsey that they would say, oh, this guy doesn't have the right sort of profile. But are there any, like, how do you figure that out and does it matter?
• 12:26
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think at the MBA level, it doesn't necessarily matter that much. Like, we have people from all backgrounds, all schools, all majors, all work experiences who have been successful consultants, a little bit different on the undergraduate level. You do need to have a bit more of an analytical background, I think, to, to get up the curve quickly. But I came from a non traditional background. I worked for the federal government for five years in contracts and negotiations, so I felt very similar. I was one of the only people in my Wharton class who came from that background and had to really explain what I did to get the job. But I know partners and senior leaders who are former teachers, doctors, nonprofit gurus. And then we had the more traditional folks who come from finance marketing. And that's intentional. We want to have a diverse set of mindsets and thinking because our clients expect that the client has a very diverse set of customers themselves. And we need to be able to bring that perspective to the table to help guide them in the best way. So we look for the non traditional backgrounds. They add quite a bit to to the table when we're having these discussions. But I will say, like, if you come from a non traditional background, take advantage of business school. Take the hard classes, take that really tough finance class, that hard accounting class, because it's going to help you get up the learning curve. And one of the things I wish I'd done more of was take advantage of the free advanced Excel and PowerPoint classes and opportunities that the schools offer, because those will really help just kind of soften that steep learning curve curve when you start.
• 14:01
  Speaker A: Got it. So while we're talking about who might be qualified and backgrounds, can you just tell me a little bit about the recruiting process? So let's imagine I've gotten into business school. I arrive, and one of the early things that I guess I'm thinking about is my summer internship. And so, yeah, just take us through how do you get a summer job at Bain, and then how do you convert that to a full time offer?
• 14:21
  Speaker B: Sure. And I may rely on Sarah to fill in some of the gaps that I may miss. It's quite a process, and I never knew there was quite a process until I was behind the scenes. But there are two main ways for an MBA to, quote, unquote, get into Bain. The first being the summer internship program between your first and second year. And then the second would be a full time role after you graduate. There is industry recruiting, which is if you take a job at a different consulting firm, decide to transfer over. There is that option later on, but I won't talk about that today. Starting with the internship program program. The recruiting for that starts before you even matriculate. Often there are pre programs that many of the firms have that provide an opportunity for you to get to know what consulting is, get to know the firms, the people who work there, the culture. I'll ask Sarah to talk a little bit about some of ours in a little bit, but that all happens in the months before you even start your MBA journey. Fast forward to when you do matriculate. There's often a blackout period or a no contact period that restricts recruiters from being on campus. It was fun as a student, not fun for me as a recruiter, but that's by design, so that you actually can re acclimate yourself into the academic lifestyle and focus on networking, getting to know your class, and really starting to get into the business school mindset, which is incredibly important. Then once that period ends, it is a zoo. There's a lot of opportunities to meet with a lot of different companies. You'll be reached out by a number of different recruiters and actual peers that would be your peers to talk over the course of the fall. There are big company presentations with breakouts for various offices. There's small group dinners. You'll hear the term coffee chats, if you haven't already, becomes quite an annoying term, honestly. But you'll have hundreds of coffee chats over the course of your time in business school. Just getting to know individuals who are doing the job. And it's a good opportunity to not only understand the job, but to start to sell yourself a little bit and kind of how you might be a good fit for those companies later on down in the process. Like once the funnel starts to narrow, I guess I'll back up a little bit. For the bigger schools that we recruit at, we have what we call an on campus representative, OCR. That's a consultant who is staffed to that actual school, and their job is to have as many conversations as possible with those folks who are interested in consulting to start to develop the funnel that we will recruit from. So take advantage of that OCR if there is one at your campus later on down the road. Once the funnel starts to narrow, we do a lot of more like leadership team conversations. So talking with some of the partners as well as case prep opportunities, we'll talk, I'm sure, about the case interview, but we offer opportunities for you to go to case demonstrations as well as workshops, and then also do cases live one on one with members of our team. Applications are due in November, late November, and then we have a pretty quick turnaround, usually right after Thanksgiving, let you know you got an interview or not. And then we do power round interviews, which I believe most of the firms do now in early January. So the first two weeks of January and those are, consist of two case interviews and then one experience based interview. And we make decisions pretty quickly after that. And then we have a huge welcome weekend party, but also an opportunity for you to get to meet your class of offerees, celebrate, but also get to know ban a little bit more on the full time side. It's a much more truncated process. So say, like, you're kind of a near miss, which I actually was when I initially applied to Bain, as well as those folks who may have come to consulting late and trying to decide what they wanted to do. There's a full time process. It's in August, September application deadline, and then interviews take place in late September, early October.
• 18:14
  Speaker A: Okay, so you mentioned case interviews, and in the last session, we were talking about the case method in business school as a method of instruction, but it's not exactly the same thing. Right. So tell us a little bit. Like, what is a case interview? And. Yeah, like, how do I prepare for that?
• 18:31
  Speaker B: How many of you know what a case interview is?
• 18:33
  Speaker A: That's a good point. That's, like, better.
• 18:35
  Speaker B: Yeah. Well, in a nutshell, a case interview is a great way to test a candidate's logical thinking, how they structure a problem, how they communicate, how resilient they are coming back from a setback in the case, how coachable they are. So a case interview starts with a business prompt. The interviewer will give you a prompt about a situation that a business is facing with an overarching question that they're asking you to solve. It is a conversation. It's designed to be a conversation with the interviewer. You are supposed to be bantering back and forth asking for information. They'll give you information. There's an analytical portion of it where you will have to do math and you will not have a calculator. Then you'll have to explain that math process, that analysis process to the interviewer. But that gives the interviewer an opportunity to step in and coach you and see how you react to that coaching. Then they have a qualitative portion after that to kind of help you reframe after the analysis you've done, followed by a recommendation to a proverbial CEO that's in the room. And then you're wrapped up. How to prepare for those is a fun process. You're going to want to prepare. I'll say that you don't want to over prepare, but as soon as you get to campus, join the consulting club. If this is a route you want to take, they have probably the best access to the case buddies that you would be paired with, usually second years who will help give you cases and coach you through a little bit. Also, that OCR that I mentioned earlier about case prep opportunities that are offered by the company themselves. There'll be numerous opportunities to work with our affinity groups or other groups within bain to do some case prep. Take advantage of the case books that are offered by those consulting clubs. There's a million and one cases out there that you can do. That leads me to my word of advice is don't, I guess, relax little bit when you get to that process. It can be exhausting, intimidating. There's FOMO on campus who's doing more cases and should I be doing cases once it stops being at least a little bit fun or interesting? You need to take a break and take a step back and say, hey, I need to relax. I need to be fresh. You don't want to be so grounded in these very simple frameworks that you don't come across as thoughtful and insightful. So in a year and a half from now or whenever that is for y'all, just like take a break.
• 21:03
  Speaker A: So to what extent? Like, I'm just thinking, and this could be totally wrong, but I guess for me, one of the nice things about a case interview is that if I'm bain and I'm giving someone a business problem, I'm kind of imagining putting them in front of a client who comes to bain with a problem and sort of trying to figure out how good would this person be at sort of helping that client think through the problem. Is that why you guys are doing this? Is that sort of related?
• 21:26
  Speaker B: And it's a big reason, I think, that the case itself, it's not really solving a massive problem. It really is designed to test how you think. Are you actually able to structure a problem? Take it from point a to point b to point c. So it's designed to really push you to talk through that process and see how would you actually manage that type of a question if you are in a room with the clients, because you will be put in a room with a client pretty early on in your career. And then it's also part of our DNA is our professional development and how you react to coaching and feedback. And so when you're getting feedback from an interviewer, it says a lot about you, how you react. Some people will just ignore the interviewer. That's not a good thing. Some folks will get even more flustered. Also not a great thing. But if you're able to take in the feedback, collect yourself, and then use that feedback to then answer the problem, that's what we're looking for. Like, you could totally mess up that part of the case. But as long as you're open to feedback and coaching, that's a big sign of a good future consultant.
• 22:27
  Speaker A: Okay, excellent. I feel like these are some really good tips if you guys are ever going to be interviewing for consulting jobs. So you heard it here. Okay. There are also non case interviews that are part of the process. You talked about experience, so tell me a little bit about that part.
• 22:43
  Speaker B: Yeah, our experience interview is same length. They're about 40 minutes. You do one of those on top of the two cases you'll do. They're really designed to give you an opportunity to talk about your professional experience, your journey, your growth in your job, and really tends to showcase to the interviewer why you're a good fit for consulting. So with that, you want to take your experiences and think about them like a case, almost like kind of clinical, while also being genuine. But structure your stories in a logical fashion. So that point a leads to point c. And it's not like a roundabout way. There is like a kind of a curveball question that some firms may do, and Bain might be one of them. I don't know. But it's to take one of your experiences at a high level and ask you to kind of think through a business problem based on that company or that particular problem you were working on. So really putting you in, hopefully a comfort area, but then asking you to think through, how do you analyze a specific problem related to that business? So you may be put on your feet and these, it's not just going to be the tell me about a time where you faced a challenge and you overcame it. That's still a valid question, but you may be throwing a curveball.
• 23:54
  Speaker A: Okay, good to know. Well, I have to ask. This is like, totally, like, sometimes there's this rumor that some consulting firms will ask, like, really weird questions, like, how many golf balls could I fit into the hull of a Boeing 777? And then they want you to kind of think on your feet and do the math to sort of figure that out. Are those kinds of questions still happening? Or.
• 24:15
  Speaker B: That's kind of not at the MBA level. I've seen some. Some funky questions on the associate consultant junior level.
• 24:20
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 24:20
  Speaker B: But the market sizing questions are pretty common for our associate consultant interviews. When we get to the MBA level, we want to be. Want to test people on how they think about bigger strategic issues. Market sizing may be part of a much broader question that you're being asked to solve, but then you're supposed to take that information and then be able to apply it to maybe something qualitative and then make an overall assessment of what the solution should be.
• 24:43
  Speaker A: Okay, got it. This is a question that folks on my team were dying to have me ask, and that is, do you look at grades and do you look at test scores? So we know that a lot of these schools upstairs require the GMAT or the green, and there's this rumor that the consulting firms will look at those scores, too. And I know it varies from firm to firm, but are you looking at, like, how I did in business school and what I did on these tests?
• 25:07
  Speaker B: The short answer is a little bit, but not a ton. Like, sure, if you did really well on the g match or the gre. Like, put that on your resume. If you've got like a 730 whatever, put it on there. That's something to be proud about. But when it comes to undergraduate grades, we were more focused on your work experience and how you developed post undergrad. How have you progressed in your job? Have you gotten promotions? Like, what were the reasons for those promotions? Have you been active in your community? What work have you done there? So we're less concerned about the undergraduate grades. And then in terms of your grades and your MBA, most schools have grade nondisclosure. So my GPA was not on my resume. Maybe for a good reason, but no, I've never asked somebody what it was. I mean, if you've gotten, like, dean's list or whatever it is, you should sure put it on there. But that doesn't mean you can shirk your work and not work hard. Because as a word of caution, like, we do find out about people who leave their team in the lurch or are not productive in a class environment. And that's not a good thing and a good impression that you want to be floating around consulting firms. Like, do your hard work. Like, be part of a team and be active.
• 26:20
  Speaker A: Okay, good advice. I have to ask candidates on our website, they always say they want to do strategy consulting, and they always list Bain, BCG, and McKinsey. Those are, like, the three firms that come up over and over again. And so I just wondered, like, how is Bain differentiated from the other two or just generally, like some of the cultural things about Bain that you would see stand out.
• 26:41
  Speaker B: Somebody says MBB. It stands for McKinsey Bain BcG. That didn't exist like three years ago. I'm a Weird acronym. I'll talk more about the Bain value prop, but then more personally, why I chose Bain. There are four pillars that Bain anchors on when it comes to our value prop and how we differentiate ourselves. Sarah made an acronym for me so I can remember them all. It's prowl. So P is purpose and intention, and then rewards, recognition, opportunities for growth, and then the work experience. So for me, I'll highlight three experiences. But like how Bain looks at culture and how we look at how we want to project ourselves to the public, they can all fit in those four buckets. For me, on the purpose and intention side, impact was a big piece of why I wanted to choose Bay and why I chose consulting. I didn't exactly know why when I was an MBA, but I'll highlight a couple of different vignettes in this answer. So, for impact, my second case, I had a client map who I was instructing on how to get through a procurement process that she'd never done before, was very unfamiliar with. Did six or seven months with her, kind of teaching her, coaching her through the RFP process, getting her through to negotiations. She did brilliantly in negotiations and that actually got her a promotion. And then finally following her career, after I was off the case, she continued to get promoted. Her team was getting promoted. I, as a first year consultant, had a client map who was exceeding my expectations, but really succeeding on her own rights in her company on account of the work that Bain had done with them. So that was very impactful for me. I changed my definition of what consulting is. I think Bain does a really good job of providing you that opportunity pretty early on to have that kind of impact. The second is around the opportunity for growth and around our professional development. So my first manager, who I was on a case for for three months, did a great job of staying in touch after the case ended because of our home office model. I saw him in the hall all the time. We were able to grab coffee pretty regularly. He was interested in what I was learning, what were my development gaps like? How was I addressing them? Could he connect me with anybody that could help further my career to the point where I actually went to him when I wanted to consider leaving and said, hey, I'm thinking about this and he immediately gave me five people to call and talk to. And I was thinking like, wow, a firm's actually helping me leave. This is so weird. And fast forward a couple years. He stayed in touch. We met for coffee pretty regularly, caught up about family and then my work itself. And he was just very interested in seeing me grow and develop to the point where when my current job became available, he went to HR and said, you gotta call Noble. He's perfect for this job. So to me, that just showed that Bain was very committed to me, the person, as opposed to me, the employee. And I've worked at a number of companies now, like, I've not seen that in other places. And I've heard from my peers at other firms and they don't have that same level of connection. So that's really special for me. And then the third piece is around the work experience and what I already mentioned, a Bainey never lets another Bainie fail. And again, we're all driven, we're all super successful, but we are all very team oriented, and we want to see the team succeed. When I had already announced that I was leaving Bain, back when I decided to switch into recruiting, my manager was like, he could have just written me off. I got a month left on the case, but he actually said, hey, what do you want to learn in the next month that is going to equip you for success in your next role? Like, what are the things that you want to learn? And I was just like, this is weird. He should write me off. He should focus on other members of the team. But he was so committed to not letting me fail in that case itself. But then beyond that, and I think those are just three vignettes that I think summarize how I feel about Bain's culture, and I think what differentiates us?
• 30:39
  Speaker A: And now I know why you went back. I mean, it was a very easy decision. Yeah. So I just have one more question for you. And then, as I said earlier, Noble and his colleague Sarah, who's here in the front row, are going to stick around in case you want to just talk one on one with them a little bit about consulting at Bain. So the last question I have is, let's fast forward a year and imagine that everyone in the audience has applied to business school and they've gotten into their dream programs and that they all want to do strategy consulting. What should they be doing this time next year to get their ducks in a row and make that happen?
• 31:13
  Speaker B: Yeah, I've already commented on it. Happens pretty early in your MBA journey. So say you get in 1st, 2nd, 3rd round. There are a lot of pre programs that exist across firms that you can jump into. I'm happy to let Sarah come up and talk about one of ours, but these are again, opportunities to get to know the firms pretty early on. You'll also be reached out to, I think by a handful of companies before you even matriculate. It's up to you on whether you want to talk to them that early, but it can give you a leg up just in terms of getting to know the companies, having connections and making that segue from non academic life to academic life and recruiting a little bit easier. But we have two primary programs for pre MBAs. The first is experience Bain, which what Sarah helps run in Chicago. And that is kind of an exploratory program. We have webinars, various panels that you can be part of so you can get to know Bain as a company as well as consulting the applications for that. It's on a rolling basis between April and August and the bulk of the activity and the bulk of the meetings and webinars will happen in the summer before you would matriculate. We also have a program called base, which is building, and I always forget the acronym, Building and Supporting Excellence, which is a program that was designed to provide access to what consulting is, to what Bain is, to populations that have been historically underrepresented by professional services. So it's designed for black, Latinx, hispanic and indigenous individuals who are pursuing a two year MBA. It's a pretty highly selective group for each of the offices that host it. But that application process starts in March, April, interviews are in May and then the program takes place in the end of July, early August. Those are our two primary opportunities. But in general, just start networking. Get to know people who or working at the firms that you are potentially targeting. Don't feel like you have to go to an event for every firm, for every office that they have. A lot of information is going to be the same. So if you have two offices, your focus on, develop contacts there, but don't feel the need to like do more than that. But as a personal word of advice, like relax, take time off before you start your MBA because it's a very fun two years. But it is an example, exhausting two years. And you're going to want to walk into that, that environment with a fresh and keen mind and with some energy.
• 33:53
  Speaker A: Got it. Super helpful. Noble, I really appreciate you coming down. I'm sure you probably had other things you could be doing on this beautiful evening, so I appreciate it.
• 34:01
  Speaker B: I have a toddler at home who's probably screaming at my husband right now.
• 34:04
  Speaker A: This is.
• 34:05
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 34:05
  Speaker A: So. Yeah. Anyway, so noble is going to stick around with sarah, and you guys can just, you, we'll just hang out down here because the next panel doesn't start for another 30 minutes or so, so feel free to approach them and ask your questions. But thanks again, noble.
• 34:18
  Speaker B: Really, thank you all. Good luck.