Booz & Co hiring summer interns from LBS's MBA class

Another in the series of recent Corporate Partner recruiting presentations at London Business School, Booz & Co presented last Friday.

In the past 2-3 years, Booz has made a huge effort to build their brand with students on campus at LBS, putting in many hours of essentially voluntary time and effort into various activities, with Career Services, student clubs, and even in the classroom. Recent Booz events have included: a half day of workshops to over 150 students as they kindly provide the introductory session to our course ‘Creative problem solving for case interviews’; the evening ‘MBA Poker Challenge’; and sponsorship of MBAT and Sundowners.

I say this every year, but I still struggle to get a good handle on what Booz is – a fourth top tier firm where people specialise earlier and more strongly into practice areas, and with a staffing model that drives much greater travel than most of the competitors, are the things that stand out for me.

With nearly 150 students at Friday’s presentation, the Booz folks present (and there were nearly 30 of them) were pretty ecstatic at the levels of interest they have generated.

Recent hiring stats from LBS
Year          Permanent MBA Hires      Summer Internships        Permanent MiF Hires
2006                    8 (BAH)                            11 (BAH)                               0
2007                  15 (BAH)                            11 (BAH)                               0
2008                    8                                       7                                         0
2009                    7                                       2                                         0
2010                    9                                       7                                         0
2011                    7                                       6                                       TBA

Recruiting details

• Application deadline Tuesday 10 January (midnight)
• First round interviews Friday 27 January
• Apply online using link in the Career Central job posting
• Website http://www.booz.com/

Presentation
The presentation got off to a jazzy start with a snappy (if somewhat message-free – J-P) corporate video: key slogans on prominent display were:

• Building something great
• Power of community
• Game changing impact 

(these reminded me strongly of our own LBS values - devised by marketers, general enough to appeal to everyone, but not specific enough to be distinctive from the competition.  Maybe I'm just getting old...J-P)

Then Richard Verity, LBS alumnus, strong friend of the School, and senior partner in Booz's London office and the energy practice, kicked things off with a slide-free, video-free speech, followed by a panel-led discussion and Q&A session.  The panel seemed highly choreographed, but not scripted, and the Q&A was quite stimulating and definitely spontaneous. A brave format, but I think it worked! J-P

Richard Verity

RV acknowledged how difficult it is to distinguish between opportunities, and so the point of the session was to try to give students insight into the experience of working with Booz. 

Why Booz?
Interesting moment in history – just 3 years after an MBO split Booz & Co from the US Government consulting business (Booz Allen Hamilton – still going J-P), Booz has been refounded as a strategy consulting firm – so effectively a 98 year old startup!

Booz Allen Hamilton

Enviable client list:  Booz works for every major oil company, every major car company, most major financial institutions.  Shell, Boeing, GE, Philips. Many governments… (I’m not sure this is all that distinctive, except for two things: 1. Obviously, like many but not all other firms, Booz has no problem working for multiple companies in the same space; and 2. Booz has particular strength in a few key sectors, including automotive and energy – J-P)

Working for these companies on their most pressing challenges

Ranked #1 in a recent independent ranking on intellectual consulting thought leadership, with examples of Booz IP including ‘Product Life Cycle’, ‘Supply Chain’, and ‘Capabilities Driven Strategy’

RV then gave some examples of projects he is personally involved including:

• Pricing strategy for a paint manufacturer
• Growth strategy for a Scandinavian chemicals company
• New MIS and organisation structure for a Middle Eastern company

So what are Booz people like? Clients say…

Intelligence but never arrogance 

Pragmatic strategists

Will you fit at Booz?

• Do you like working in non-hierarchical teams? The hierarchy in our teams is based on insight!
• Do you enjoy learning? Each consulting project is a very exciting, high stakes, business school case study
• Do you like working internationally, in international teams? (not the last time Booz’s expertise-based staffing model is alluded to – Booz consultants as a result must spend significantly more time travelling and living/working away from home than their top tier counterparts elsewhere – J-P)

Phil Coghlan 

PC, an LBS alumnus (MBA2008) and Senior Associate at Booz, described his experience and the general career progression for MBA level hires.  Phil's will be a very familiar face to many LBS students, as he leads the delivery of the Creative Problem Solving for Case Interviews workshop and actively participates in many of our crack a case activities.  He joined as a strategy generalist Associate in 2008, and has since been promoted through Lead Associate to Senior Associate (that’s a lot of titles for a ‘non-hierarchical’ firm! J-P) and has worked on:

• Cost reduction in a UK mobile phone operator UAE armed forces logistics transformation
• Product development process improvement for a European satellite manufacturer

The senior associate role, essentially a ‘job manager’, is a promotion around 2.5 years post MBA. (This compares to project leader/case team leader/engagement manager in other firms J-P)

After 3-4 years, consultants start to specialise in industry or function

After 5-6 years, promotion is to the Principal role, where they start to develop the client base (sell work, to you and me – J-P) 

Annabel Treon
AT is another LBSer – an MBA2011 who interned in summer 2010.  She described her internship training and the two, very different, projects she worked on

• 1 week introductory training for all global interns in NY
• Global pharmaceutical project, with a very clear-cut workstream in a very big and complex project
• A small banking M&A project

As a new starter, was amazed by the amount and quality of IP, and acces to it, at Booz – great support

AT also spoke about work-life balance – which undoubtedly can be challenging towards the end of a project, but overall is manageable.  How much you work is very much down to the individual, and very much about results, and not face-time.  (I wish I could have $100 for every time I heard that in my consulting career, and with hindsight I wish I hadn’t believed it but spent a lot more 'down' time in the office schmoozing and getting known by partners…J-P)

Jorge Camarate
JC is another LBS alumnus, and MBA2005, and principal at Booz.  He spoke about the variety of work you do:

• Restructuring ABN Amro for the Dutch government 
• Back office optimisation for a South African bank (did I mention the travel and staffing model? J-P) 

Mike Harley
MH – another recent hire and LBS alumnus (MBA2011, Associate) talked about what Boozers (my term, not their! J-P) do when not ‘working’ – the charitable stuff (this is an important part of the activity at all top tier firms, with a spread of pro bono consulting, donation, and volunteering typical across all of them J-P)

Q&A

Q.  What’s not so good about life at Booz?

1. The work is intense, very busy, with lots of travel – it’s a tough lifestyle at times 
2. The uncertainty – you can’t book holidays etc ahead – projects and locations change at a moments notice (this, more than the hours, are what I found hardest to get used to as a new consultant – never being able to make a mid-week dinner or drinks appointment with friends for instance J-P) 
3. You are always out of your comfort zone. You are never left alone just doing what you’re good at – the bar always rises…but you get great support form your team 

Q.  What sectors are growing in London, and what’s declining?

1. Government work is definitely declining – the UK government was at one point the largest Booz client in Europe 
2. Consumer goods is growing strongly 
3. Financial services too
4. Energy, especially utilities 
5. The fastest growing sector overall by far is healthcare, both in the UK and global, across all elements: pharma; delivery; and financing 

Q.  What’s the turnover of staff and where do alumni go?

A. Turnover is never less than 10% and can go as high as 20%.  We are a pyramid organisation, and operate an up or out model where people are told they need to leave and supported into the outside market.  The majority leave of their own volition though (I never believed that as a consultant, and still don’t, in the absence of data…J-P). Especially around three years into your consulting career, you are very, very attractive to the labour market, but not yet that expensive.  People leave to go to a lot of places, including PE firms, clients (often into strategy roles on the way to taking up senior line management positions)

Q.  Tell us about the training opportunities at Booz

A. We have webinars; global peer group training every 2 years or so; and regular practice area training.  We sometimes support people to go away and do courses, for instance to strengthen technical knowledge of a particular sector.  The most important training we do is on the job – this is an apprenticeship business (very similar to the offerings at te other top tier firms then – J-P)

Q.  What are the key challenges facing Booz in terms of its value proposition to clients and growth in future years?

1. Global Business:  We need to maintain our global coverage and integration, continue: being 1 firm around the world; staffing teams from across different geographies (did I mention that? J-P); working the same way everywhere we work; being unusually well able to connect internationally.
2. General Management Firm:  Remaining committed to addressing the field of general management
3. Concentration:  In our field, the trend over recent years has been for concetration into large firms, and we are the right side of the line, one of the four biggest (or are they just outside the three biggest?  They certainly seemed pretty keen to merge with AT Kearney two years ago - J-P)

Historically, consulting has been solving clients' problems.  But we, over time, are moving to building clients' capabilities - eg digitial marketing transformation (I must say, BCG and Bain had moved to this in the mid-'90s, and at Rio Tinto I worked with both McKinsey and BCG on small and large capability transformation projects respectively, so I'm not sure why this is so novel or distinctive...J-P).

How we work: we work jointly with client teams, at the client, building clients' capabilities as we go, and magnifying the impact (again - a description of the status quo in top tier strategy conasulting from the early '90s onwards - Booz seem to think this is cutting edge, or else I am missing something...J-P)

Q.  How does Booz stay relevant in thought leadership in a fast-changing world?

A.  By continually working on the largest clients' most pressing issues.  We take time to think about the problem and codify our learnings.  We also work not just on clients' problems, but on internal intellectual capital generation projects.  And global practice networks develop their own IP.  We hold regular CEO industry forums, at which leaders get together to discuss key issues in their sector.  And we reallythink hard about the future with those leaders that are doing the same, all the time...

Q.  So what's your 'pitch' to clients?

A.  If I find in my email an RFP from a company I haven't visited, I usually won't submit.  Others will have earned the right to that busniess (I thought this one of the most insightful comments of the day! J-P).  Where we do have a right to win, the client will evaluate:

• The depth of expertise
• Whether our methodolgy strikes a chord (eg our capbilities-driven strategy approach)
• Their own view of the likel experience of working with us

If the 'chemistry' is right, we will be hard to beat

Q.  Could you describe the firm's presence in technology?

A.  We have a distinctive presence in a number of hi-tech industries - eg we are probably the only firm with a space practice.  We have a group that addresses innovation across all industries.  And in IT we have a distinct role, working as a 100% client-side advisor, with no stake in outsourcing, hardware or software (similar to what I experienced in Bain and BCG - Booz is able to truly impartially advise on IT strategy and presumably assist with vendor selection and programme oversight - J-P)