The consultant's suitcase

I am looking for a new suitcase for next year. Being a management consultant living 5 days out of 7 in a hotel will certainly be a new routine for me. And, since it will be quite a tough routine, I am doing some research to get the basics right.
But it is not that easy to find out what I'll need, consultants don't seem to blog too much (with the exception of Paul Dunay, maybe, but social media is his speciality). And, surprisingly, luggage manufacturers don't seem to have models aimed at the 4+1 management consultants, which indicates that, just maybe, this is a niche which could be filled. At least it gives food for thought for the future of this blog.
I decided that, for a 5 day stay away from home, I would need the following:

• an extra suit (jacket and pair of trousers)
• 4 or 5 shirts
• at least one t-shirt, if not more (have to figure out if I should wear undershirts)
• 3 or 4 ties
• a pair of jeans for the evenings
• an extra pair of shoes, just in case
• underwear and socks
• one pullover, possibly
• a pair of shorts for sports. If the hotel has a pool, speedos
• toiletries

I used the tip to start with half of the suit jacket, fill the case with the rest and then flap the other half of the jacket over the other clothes. This should avoid getting the jacket creased across the middle, it makes sense.

Surprisingly enough, I found out that all of the items above fit in my carry-on (inflight) trolley. I wasn't very confident it would, but suspected it. That's why I did this small experiment. It worked.

Next week I'll take this trolley with me and look for a substitute. After all, althought it is still in good condition, its looks aren't what they once were. But it has served me well since 2004: China - Brazil - Germany - Brazil - Germany - Moscow - Germany - Brazil - Germany - England - US - Canada - Germany - Belgium. Not too bad for a case that cost me around 15 dollars, if I am not mistaken.
I am also talking to some of my consulting colleagues to see what their experiences are. What has worked for you?

400 mini Delloitians

I am staying at a hotel near the Delloite building in Diegem, Brussels. To get to the train or bus stops I pass their parking lot, which is packed with blue Cooper Minis, often with Delloite green side-view mirrors. I then asked one of the Mini drivers about the cars and she told me that Delloite had hired 400 new people and they all got Minis to start with.

GSC article I wrote published on the BearingPoint blog

Some of you know that I use to twitter (that is, when its servers are up). And I do comment on the MBA course. And it was exactly one twit on the global supply chain course that got the attention of BearingPoint's Interactive Marketing team in the US. They twittered me back and asked if I was interested in writing an article on GSC. And so I did and you can see the result at the New Thinking BearingPoint blog:

http://newthinking.bearingpoint.com/2008/06/04/global-supply-chain-the-next-frontier/

I guess you will recognize the picture there.

BearingPoint is a company I want to apply for, so I am happy for the contact that I have had with them so far. During the GSC course we had a one day workshop with Sven Martin, a manager working in Switzerland, I have had the chance to talk to other consultants during career fairs and now this online collaboration. Way to go.

Capgemini Workshop

Capgemini came to Mannheim Business School to deliver a Consulting Skills workshop this Friday. It was an invitation event, you had to submit a letter of motivation and your CV to be chosen. I am glad I was one of the 16 participants.
The Capgemini team consisted of 4 people, from all levels, from consultant to principal. They were all very open and friendly and conducted the workshop in a very professional manner, as was to be expected.
The group was divided in 4 teams and each team had one Capgemini consultant as observer and moderator. The feedback they gave us was on spot, but, as a colleague of mine said in the last portion of the event, they were too kind to us.
For example, one of the exercises consisted in proving or disproving a set of assumptions or hypotheses. I did very well in explaining the assumption with relevant data, but didn't really check if the assumption was true to begin with. I talked to one of the consultants later and he confirmed that he had noticed that, but they didn't comment on it when we presented. I guess they don't want to scare any of us away with negative feedback. After all, this was a recruiting event.
I liked the people at Capgemini and am certainly going to apply. I received some encouraging feedback in the end, let's see how it goes.
All in all, the whole day event was well planned, with a good mix of theory and practical exercises, which were well chosen. I certainly learned some, got to know the company a bit better and had fun doing it.

Uni Mannheim Career Fair

So today was the first day of the Mannheim Career Fair. Comparing to similar events at the engineering school of the University of São Paulo, it was quite small.

In Brazil the event was organized by the junior consultancy company run by students and I helped organize its 8th edition.
The selection of companies was good, though, I must admit. At least for me, interested in Management Consulting and it was really good to do the rounds with my Russian speaking colleagues Viktoria and Tatjana, who were with me in Canada. I found it easier and nicer to talk to the companies' representatives in couples. And the good news is that they really seem interested to hire this year.
In the evening we had a Capgemini employee presenting the company to our class and I liked this activity too. I will take part in a consulting workshop with them on Friday, the whole day.

IBM's webcast

Last week I took part in a recruiting webcast done by UK's consulting arm of the company, IBM Global Business Services.
I thought, from the beginning, that it was a cool idea, as I would be able to take part in the same event as my colleagues from Warwick Business School, even being an Ocean apart.
But the webcast was set up in a surprising way: the slides were served through a password protected website, while you had to call a special number to be able to listen to the speakers. Why not have both online, I don't know, but, in the age of Youtube and Skype, it surely is strange. Since I don't have a good phone plan for daytime calls, I used Skype out, which worked just fine, bringing all back to the internet.
The presentation was fine, the slides being showed on the screen and the audio through the headphones. One glitch or two due to feedback, but that was really minor.
I would have one or two suggestions to make this type of event more effective.
First of all, it should be all online. I don't know the reasons to separate the audio from the video, but I am sure the folks at IBM know why they do that. But it certainly would make our lives easier. And taking part in the event would be more convenient for the participants. It certainly is technologically possible.
Then I would suggest doing it in two parts. The first part, the one way presentation, when the audience doesn't interact with the talkers, could be presented as a pre-recorded podcast. Not only would the overall production quality be better, it would give participants the chance to get the presentation at their own time.
The second part would naturally be the questions and answers part, which is two way. For this section, people would then all connect at the same time and use the teleconference possibilities.
Furthermore, there were only 3 questions allowed and I thought this was very little. After all, people had been listening for about 40 minutes, they could have reserved a little bit more of time for the more interactive part of the presentation.
All in all, it was an interesting event. But, more interesting, was the opportunity to talk to a more senior consultant from IBM Global Business Services Canada, who gave a guest lecture for the marketing course here at Queen's. The cohort went to the pub after the class, with the aim of having the possibility of talking to Todd. And this was certainly constructive, as I could discuss several higher level issues related to the consultancy profession in general.

An unexpectedly busy week

This week we had the practice of management presentation and in a few minutes are going to have the marketing presentation. This has made this week extremely busy, unexpectedly. And the fact that we had to review our CV for the Mannheim CV book added to the strain.

It has also been quite cold during the night and, for the first time, we had beautiful frosty mornings.

Yesterday we had also the A. D. Little management consulting firm visiting, which was interesting. It is important to compare company styles to see with which corporate culture you identified yourself more. Management consulting really seems interesting, but there will not be a way of getting around the 60 hours week, it seems.

And, to finish off, I arrived late for the Jan Garbarek Group concert yesterday. This wasn't really a problem and the concert was magnificent! I didn't know Jan's work before, only his fame, which is good enough to ensure that I wouldn't miss this concert. The hall was pretty full, (almost) everybody pretty respectful (I wanted to shout to a pair of female undergrads: "Be pretty and shut up!"), the lighting wonderful and the music phenomenal. The band is exceptional, and I especially enjoyed the piano player, who filled the room with his sound in a way I had never heard before and the drummer, who was really impressive. I had to think of my friend Mathias Rempel, now in Munich.

and now is time to dash to the market analysis class

Best consulting firms to work for

Well, Indian Blogger, from Queen's MBA published again a really interesting link and earned his space in the MBA blog links section of this site at the right.
Bain & Company is considered the best consulting company to work for by this magazin.
Good to know, as we are having our first company event this afternoon. And it will be about consulting.