| Topic Name: |
On The Beach at KPMG |
| Message Name: |
Thanks for advice, more questions |
| Date Posted: |
03/04/2001 |
| In Reply To: |
What's up?
I like the ambition, most AMS'ers don't have it. You'd be shocked at how many of my managers had never heard of BCG. It was hysterical, they would tell me things like, be careful joining a startup and shit like that. I think that's a result of a lot of people from 3rd rate local schools at the top, and a huge pool of highly intelligent people at the bottom as a result of an increasingly competitive job-search process in consulting.
The simple answer would probably be no, it's pretty hard to get into a place like BCG for anyone, probably more so for AMS'ers (my opinion). But to give you some hope, I heard from a friend of mine that BCG has been hiring a lot of people from AMS -- though I find this hard to believe. I searched BCG's staff database and found 2 or 3 instances of AMS (out of 1000's of records).
People here don't know AMS very well and that's a good thing. You can bluff your way through the interviews and make it sound like you really have worked with clients developing high level tech strategy -- even though the reality was basically that you are either a code-monkey, a testing-monkey, or a documentation-monkey. I did a lot of testing, documentation, and training -- so I hyped up my people skills. Throw buzz-words like e-commerce and B2B exchange at 'em. The sad thing is on this side of the fence, these clowns don't have a clue about how these things actually work. They read and write lots of nice articles and predict market sizes and develop strategies and whatnot, but at the end of the day, they don't know squat technically. In other words, they can't really ask you what you've been doing for the last 2 years.
Just my 2 cents. Give it a shot. If you package yourself right, anything is possible. I also had a friend-of a friend refer my resume. I'm sure that gave me the extra nudge I needed.
Good luck. |
| Message: |
Hey man,
Thanks for the response. I realize that the AMS to BCG jump was extreme, thats why I was very surprized to hear that your were able to pull it off. I am wondering, are less extreme jumps possible? For example, going to AT Kearney, Arthur D. Little, Booz-Allen, Accenture Strat, and any other strat outside the top tier. Did you have interviews or offers with them? One other thing I have is that I went to a top-12 undergrad school, and had an awesome summer internship. Does any of that stuff matter?
Also, did you do this jump during the boom times of the late 90s, or after the recession that started in the last 4 or 5 months. The job market is pretty fucked up right now, so the competition is 10 times worse than in the last 5 years. Any advice would be appreciated. Also, what are ways to get ahead at AMS? Kiss a lot of ass? Thanks!
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