Hiring Process

Hiring Process
In keeping with the firm’s anti-hierarchy bent, new hires at Monitor go by the
title “consultant” whether they are straight out of undergrad or seasoned
MBAs (naturally, salaries and responsibilities vary). In a normal year the
firm will hire about 30 MBAs and even more undergrads, but the economy
has put the pinch on recruiting recently. Always difficult, getting in is “now
pretty much impossible.” Monitor recruits at top-tier universities and leading
liberal arts colleges, a network of 12 undergraduate institutions and seven
business schools; while the firm accepts applications from non-MBA
graduate-degree holders, it doesn’t actively recruit them. Students should
submit their applications online.
To get in, candidates need more than good grades and a knack for business –
Monitor goes the distance to make sure candidates fit the culture. As one
source says: “It doesn’t take much to get denied an offer. Monitorites who
attended your college or university are often consulted as to your character
even before you get an interview.”
Monitor’s interview process typically consists of two rounds. The first round
is a short meeting (though outside the United States it can be two) and a
written case, which candidates have 15 minutes to analyze – a divergence
from the normal oral case. In the resume briefing, candidates should expect
off-center questions such as “I see on your resume that you like to play
soccer. What do you dislike about soccer?” What Monitor is looking for,
we’re told, is “a high degree of honesty and self-awareness.” The ability to
learn from one’s past mistakes is particularly important to the firm, which
advertises itself as a place where continual learning and personal growth are
paramount. “People have be able to take criticism,” proclaims one insider,
“and even to look for it.”
In the case portion, candidates are given a scenario, which is typically three
to five pages in length, full of graphs and tables (in order to exercise one’s
analytical and numerical skills). The case is usually a barely-veiled take on
one of Monitor’s own clients. Most of the details are already provided, and
the candidate’s work will consist of distillation rather than detective work. (In
verbal case interviews, interviewees must ask their interviewers questions to
learn information.) The case contains all the information necessary to “solve”
the case. The interviewer will leave the room, and the candidate will have to
analyze the case and prepare recommendations. When the interviewer
returns, he or she will ask for the candidate’s recommendations and spend
approximately half an hour discussing the case.
One insider reports that “The first paragraph of the case will describe the
relevant business issues; the company, what it does, and how it’s changing;
and the industry where the company is situated.” The following paragraphs
allegedly offer “more details about what the case is about.” There are often
“two to four exhibits – these are graphs and tables containing numerical data”
and must be “thoroughly evaluated,” including presenting questions about the
data itself. The discussion portion is similar to that in an oral case interview,
though the data and its interpretation are very important. Monitor believes
this is closer to a traditional test of a candidate’s consulting capacity.
Both undergraduates and MBAs receive the same written cases, though of
course interviewers hold MBAs to a much higher bar than undergrads.
Because of the complicated and elaborate nature of these written cases,
Monitor is understandably quite guarded about them; the firm discourages the
transferring of case content from candidate to candidate. The case interview
sometimes “throws people for a loop,” one source tells us. “It can be
intimidating if you don’t process information quickly or if you don’t manage
the time you have well.”
The second round is a half-day affair, usually held at the nearest Monitor
office. Eschewing the industry-standard of high-level interviews and one-onone
case problems, Monitor groups candidates into teams of three to six, who
work together on a case presentation with two or three Monitor consultants
who are trained to look for certain qualities in the participants. The group
cases are meant to test a variety of skills, though the most important, Monitor
asserts, is the ability to both lead and participate – they “don’t want people
who follow the group like sheep, but they don’t want overly aggressive alpha
types, either.”
At the start of the case, the group receives a general problem, and each
member receives a specific, additional aspect of the case; the challenge is for
the group to work together on solving the central problem while integrating
each member’s additional information. The group has 30 minutes to develop
a solution, after which they present the case to the interviewers.
During the next phase of the second round, candidates are shown a videotape
of a hypothetical client/consultant interaction. (This year the videotape may
be replaced with a written scenario of a client/consultant interaction.) What
follows is a half-hour discussion in which the interviewer asks the candidate
about important aspects of the scenario, such as the consultant’s shortcomings
and strong points. Insiders warn that successful candidates “need to pick up
applied concerns, what approaches future consultants should take, and the
client’s perspective” based upon this video. “Since Monitor gives all of its
consultants – even the very young ones – quite a bit of responsibility,”
declares one insider, “you’ll need to display a responsible and mature reaction
in your assessment of the videotaped interaction.” Another consultant
concurs: “Competence and an understanding of subtleties are crucial to
Monitor culture.” (Speaking of Monitor culture, the firm is reputed to test
candidate “fit” throughout all stages of the interviewing process. The bottom
line: be on your best behavior, but be natural.)
The third portion of the second round is a sort of debriefing interview.
Candidates discuss their performance in the process, but insiders report that
by this stage, Monitor often performs “a reverse selling job.” Monitor may try
to win over the candidate with tales (some tall, others true) of triumphant
casework, excessively grateful clients, bales of money, extravagant perks, and
a satisfying culture. The firm’s intentions aside, candidates who are given
offers after the final round generally accept them. As one consultant explains
it, “There is a very particular satisfying cultural fit here. Those who find
Monitor and make the cut never want to leave.”
Decision Architects, which does its own hiring, has a slightly different
process. It hires mainly engineering and computer science majors, mostly
undergraduates (“we make only a few experienced and MBA hires”). The
process follows the same course as the regular Monitor interviews, though
we’re told that interviewers “try to probe a little bit more.” There are also
usually additional, technical-focused interviews.
Monitor relies heavily on its summer internship program, using it as its
primary source of new hires during lean years. Interns are staffed on firm
projects as if they were full-time employees. “I did what a normal first-year
consultant would do,” says one former summer staffer. “I learned a lot about
what consulting really means and got paid exceptionally well. There were a
lot of nice social activities, including dinners, tickets to baseball games, a
whitewater rafting trip and other field trips.”