Advancy Recruiting Process Overview

We recently sat down with Keith Fogerty, a Manager at Advancy New York. Advancy is a global strategy consulting firm serving clients in a select number of B2B and B2C sectors. Keith shared more about the firm, Advancy’s recruiting process, and how you can pursue a consulting role at the firm (hint: they’re hiring!). Interested in learning more about the firm? Write to the recruiting team!

Table of Contents (click to jump to section):

1. Keith’s journey into consulting
2. Who is Advancy?
3. Promotion pathway at Advancy
4. Types of candidates Advancy looks for
5. Advancy’s approach to consulting
6. Recruiting process
7. Culture at Advancy
8. Networking and how to break into the firm

Advancy Recruiting Process – Transcription

MC: Namaan Mian

Keith, I’m really excited to connect today and learn more about Advancy! As we get started, can you share your own personal background and what led you to the firm?

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Sure. I went to school at Boston College and got sucked into the finance side of things out of undergrad, originally.

MC: Namaan Mian

Surprise, surprise, coming out of Boston College!

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Yeah, exactly. I originally went into investment banking, as most people I knew did. Investment banks are very smart in that they come in and recruit very early, and it’s hard to say no. So, I went into investment banking, and to be honest, I almost immediately knew I did not want an entire career in investment banking. I looked around and saw some of the more senior employees, and I just didn’t see myself being them.

I wasn’t using my brain much – I was getting very good at very specific things, but not doing a lot of thinking. But I stayed there long enough that it wasn’t weird that I left. I sort of did the analyst program thing and left without a job on purpose and just traveled for the better part of the year.

I came back and said, ‘Okay, Keith, it’s time to be an adult again.’ When I graduated, people were interested in basically three things: one, investment banking, or finance in general, but primarily investment banking. Two, tech; and three, consulting. And I figured, ‘I’ve tried investment banking, that didn’t work. I’m not terribly interested in tech – I don’t know how to code. I guess the other option I can go after is consulting.’ So, I recruited for consulting and joined another firm before Advancy.

I quickly realized it was a decision I should have taken from the beginning because I loved it. I loved the work, I loved the projects, I loved the company I worked for. It was a company of great people. I stayed there for a little over three years. Towards the end, I started to realize there were certain types of projects I was doing that I really enjoyed the most. The firm was more of a generalist consulting firm. We did strategy work, but we also did operational stuff, organizational stuff, and I found myself always trying to get staffed on the strategy projects. So, I figured, ‘Why don’t I try and get a job where I won’t have to fight for strategy projects, where that’s the only thing the company does?’

I reached out to a former colleague who had left and come to Advancy and explained my situation. He said, ‘Yeah, you know what, Sylvestre, who’s the partner here in the New York office, is opening the office now. Why don’t you go talk to him?’ So, I did, and went through the whole recruiting process, and joined Advancy about three years ago.

I was the second employee in the New York office. So, it was just Sylvestre, who’s the partner, and me. It’s been a fun three years – it’s been quite the experience and quite the ride, partly because we’ve been successful in growing the business and the New York office in particular.

MC: Namaan Mian

Okay, so the first follow up I have for you is this: When you traveled for a year, where did you go?

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

I went all over! It was very much the classic ‘I’m lost and I’m going to find myself’ kind of thing. And so, I flew first to China, made my way south and did the whole Southeast Asia thing. I got to Thailand, and that’s really where I stopped planning my trip, which was about three months in. I checked flights and saw that I could get a flight to Egypt, so I went over to Egypt and Africa for a little bit. Then I flew up north, went through Greece and Croatia, and kept making my way north up through Russia, and then down through the Baltics. And then about a year had passed and I was fat, out of money, and needed to go home.

MC: Namaan Mian

Time to come home. Okay, amazing. I’ve spent some time in quite a few of those countries – sounds like an incredible trip. I may have to ask you later about where your next trip is going to be, but let’s get back on topic here for a minute.

Can you just tee up for us who Advancy is? What type of consulting do you all do, how would you classify the firm, the types of clients that you support, etc.?

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Sure. Advancy is a French firm founded in 1999. And it’s since grown into about a dozen offices around the world. So, we’ve sort of lost some of the French-founded blood and expanded more into an international organization. There are about 230 consultants at Advancy.

Globally, we focus on two verticals. On the one hand, you have the B2B practice that focuses on industries like specialty chemicals, food ingredients, pharma, and biotech – anything non-consumer-facing.

And then on the other side of the house, you have a practice that focuses more on B2C type industries like retail, luxury goods, hospitality, etc. Globally, business is split about 50/50. Obviously, it depends on the year because there’s different underlying macroeconomic stuff going on, but it’s generally about 50/50.

That said, in the New York office, we tend to skew more towards the B2B side of things. And that’s just a product of what Sylvestre, the partner here, specializes in.

Now, about 75-80% of our projects are staffed cross-office. So just because a project is being led from the Paris office doesn’t mean a junior consultant wouldn’t work on it, it just wouldn’t be sold by the New York office. And then, in general, within those two broader verticals, all we do is strategy work, both from a corporate strategy point of view, but also from a due diligence point of view for private equity clients or corporates doing an acquisition.

MC: Namaan Mian

I love that. I would want to work with and for a partner that knew how to limit scope and a firm that knows how to stay in its lane. I think that’s unique in this space. Just to clarify here, so I could be a junior consultant in the New York office, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m not going to get that exposure to the B2C side of the house, right? Because I could be staffed on international projects, or projects that are housed out of the other offices. That’s accurate?

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Yes, exactly. Now, to be clear, it skews more towards B2B because obviously, as a junior, we want you to work within an office and across from someone here, and not with someone in say the Sydney office. But yeah, there are times when a junior consultant might be staffed on a project for a luxury fashion house in France and do sort of the American component of that project. It’s just that the project is led from France.

MC: Namaan Mian

So, the industries and sectors that you serve within your business lines have all seen either a lot of disruption in the last three to five years, or growth has been rapidly accelerating in those sectors. Would you agree with that assessment, and has that translated into exponential growth for the firm as well?

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Yeah. Everyone joins as a generalist, and you honestly organically develop a specialization, usually by the senior consultant level. You just did well on a project, or you enjoyed a project, and next time one of those comes around, you get staffed on it because you did well. I specialize in the B2B side of things, particularly for private equity clients. It’s been a wild two to three years, for several reasons.

The first one is obviously COVID. In the beginning when no one knew what was going on and no one knew what the impact would be, there was, in some ways, a flight to industrials or chemicals, because they were seen as a safe investment, something that could withstand a restaurant being closed or something like that. And then after that, once we moved past the initial shock of COVID, everything was all screwed up with the supply chain and prices were going crazy, so it became another challenge to try and understand what the actual value of a company was.

And now, today, there is the challenge that a lot of chemicals are either petroleum or natural gas based or rely heavily on energy that comes from the two of those. So, there’s a whole other chapter of trying to understand how that impacts whatever business we might be looking at. And that’s what, in my opinion, makes consulting and particularly strategy consulting and due diligence interesting – it’s relatable to everything that’s going on in the world and it keeps the work you’re doing relevant in some way.

MC: Namaan Mian

Absolutely. There’s never a boring day – things are constantly evolving.

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Exactly!

MC: Namaan Mian

Keith, you mentioned that you get a chance to informally specialize when you hit that senior consultant level. How long does it take somebody to become a senior consultant? How many years of experience do you need? Do you need an MBA? Put another way, what’s the point where you hit that senior consultant role and get to decide where and how you want to specialize?

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

As we mentioned in the beginning, we are a French-founded firm, and we’ve expanded and have lost some of the French character. And I think the important word in that sentence is “some” because we have kept some of the French culture, at least in the way we approach our teams and our work and our careers.

One of the main things a French firm might do differently from an American firm is they generally hire for a career. They hire with the expectation, or at least the hope, that you will make a full career at the company and grow with the company and spend a long time there. And we take the same approach here in the New York office. Obviously, not everyone stays forever. But we hire people with the hope that someday they become a partner. A lot of the partners at Advancy started as junior consultants.

With that in mind, if we want to take that approach to our people development, we must develop the people internally, both in terms of responsibility, but also from the point of view that we must treat them well so that they stay. We don’t run the two years then you go get your MBA model and we don’t run the you must be a junior consultant for two years model. When you’re ready to be promoted – when you’ve shown you can handle additional responsibility, and you’ve shown that you want to have additional responsibility – you’ll be promoted right away. What that means is people tend to move up the ranks of Advancy very quickly.

For example, people that we hired two years ago have already been promoted to senior consultants. That timeline is, they were promoted from junior consultant to junior II to consultant to consultant II and now they’re promoted to senior consultant. And that’s very fast, because they’ve only been here for about two years. And that’s not something you’ll see in other companies. So, yeah, promotions happen very quickly because we take a different approach to career development than say a larger, more American centric firm.

MC: Namaan Mian

I love that. It’s less rigid and more personalized and tailored. Not the stereotypical up or out model.

So, you’ve talked through some of the levels and positions at Advancy. Can you talk to me about the types of roles the firm is hiring for? Is it all the above? Are you targeting certain levels? Are you hiring in only certain offices? Can you talk to us about the firm’s recruiting strategy and who fits the mold for Advancy?

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

To preface my answer, in the last two years, we’ve seen enormous growth, particularly in the New York office. We’ve grown the team here tremendously from just Sylvestre and me to about 20 consultants. And we’ve done that both through promotions, like I just spoke about, but also through hiring experienced hires. And business does not show any signs of slowing down, at least in the areas that we play. And I think we’ll continue with that model of hiring at all levels.

Obviously, when we’re recruiting at schools, it tends to skew more towards the junior levels – junior consultants and consultants, PhDs in some cases – those types of roles. But that doesn’t mean we’re not recruiting for senior consultants or managers. It’s just a matter of someone having the experience that translates to the type of work we do and having the interest in helping to build something.

MC: Namaan Mian

So, it’d be fair to say you’re hiring for all consulting roles at all levels?

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Yes.

MC: Namaan Mian

Wonderful. When you go to campus, is there a certain type of student profile that sticks out? I think firms talk a big game, saying, ‘Hey, we’ll look at any background, we’ll look at any type of student.’ Is that true at Advancy? Are you just as apt to hire a liberal arts student as you are to hire an engineering student? Or are there certain backgrounds that really would engender me to the firm as a candidate?

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

That’s a good question and it’s difficult to answer. On the one hand, we do look for candidates that are comfortable with numbers, either through an engineering or math or science or business degree simply because so much of what we do is based on numbers and on facts. So, we do tend to skew towards people that have comfort with numbers.

Now, that said, just because someone has a history degree doesn’t disqualify them. If they’re comfortable with numbers, we’re perfectly happy recruiting them. For example, I have a degree in finance and before consulting went back to school and started studying history. So, I don’t come from that background. Sylvestre is a former PhD in physics, which by itself isn’t super translatable to consulting. We don’t come across a lot of fundamental physics in our projects. As you can see, we are open to any type of candidate. They just tend to be people that are more comfortable with numbers.

MC: Namaan Mian

If I could dig a little bit deeper on that, is there a certain mindset or personality type that you think would fit in better at the firm? Or does it not matter?

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

That’s a very good question. When I look around, that’s really the thing that sets people apart and makes them successful at Advancy. First, we’re all smart. Some of us are smarter than others, but we’re all smart enough to do the work. I always tell candidates and junior consultants, the thing that sets people apart, and particularly at the junior levels, is an eagerness to learn about things and master things on a project. And I can see it when I look at people who have progressed quickly at Advancy. That’s what sets them apart.

Every project they start on, they want to understand things, they want to take on responsibility and sort of master a topic. And there’s really a snowball effect in that. Once you approach something like that, you suck up a ton of information, and you do well. Then on the next project, you’re given a little bit more, and it really allows you to grow tremendously.

Personally, I think that’s the most important trait to being a successful consultant, that eagerness to learn, because the nature of our work is that every three to five weeks, the topic changes. And you spend the beginning of it just learning. If you don’t have that sort of approach to your work, you’ll be frustrated. And it’s also what makes the job so interesting.

MC: Namaan Mian

Great answer. Sounds like the optimal Advancy candidate has a tenacity to grab onto a subject and not let go until they’ve understood it.

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Yeah. Because at the end of the day, all we do for a living is understand things, think about them, and then explain them to people.

MC: Namaan Mian

I think that’s probably one of the best definitions of consulting I’ve ever heard! Keith, talk to me about Advancy’s model, your approach to the work.

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Yeah. I think generally consulting gets a bad rap from the fact that a lot of recommendations or analyses are not grounded in hard facts and are more high-level directional and trend driven. Here at Advancy, we tend to take the very opposite approach. Everything is grounded in a hard number and a fact.

Our projects don’t have buzzwords, they don’t have arrows going up and to the right. They’re very much, ‘This is the reality of the market.’ We know that because these are the facts of the market, this person’s capacity and utilization rates are this and this and that’s why. And less of ‘go digital’, ‘go Bitcoin’, or something. We don’t follow trends, we report what is going on, what that means, and how you should approach the market because of that.

MC: Namaan Mian

It sounds very sober minded and sober headed.

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Yeah. I think that’s what our clients appreciate about us. They know when they hire us, they will get the important facts, they will get the important information, and they won’t have to comb through 20 pages of arrows and fancy graphics and stuff to figure out what we’re trying to say.

MC: Namaan Mian

‘Hey, tell me what’s going on and tell me what it means to me, and then tell me what I should do about it.’

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Exactly.

MC: Namaan Mian

Well, we’ve been talking a lot about the firm, the work it does, the candidates that you’re looking for, and what the opportunities at the firm are. Let’s transition a little bit and talk about the interview process.

Let’s say I am fortunate enough to pass the initial screening. What does the interview process look like? Can you break that down? What can I expect as a candidate?

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

There are four steps, technically, and two real steps in my opinion. So, the first round is an online assessment. It’s part math assessment and part logic, and you do it on your own time. It generally takes about 20 minutes. That’s just for us to weed out people that would never fit in at Advancy.

The second round is a short behavioral conversation with some of the junior consultants and consultants here in the New York office. We do that primarily to get a feel for the fit of the person. It’s junior consultants and consultants because at the end of the day, they are going to be their friends in some way.

MC: Namaan Mian

They are your future colleagues.

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Yeah, exactly. And they’ll work with them all day every day. That’s just a 20-minute conversation on the phone where you explain your background and things like that. Then the first sort of big round is an interview – part behavioral, part case study – with a senior consultant or a manager. That interview tends to be more interviewer-led. It’s really trying to understand if you can do a case and handle the numbers. It’s very straightforward. The entire interview, both the behavioral and the case, normally take about an hour and a half or two hours.

And then the final round is an interview with Sylvestre, the partner here in the New York office. His interview is also part behavioral, part case. But his case tends to be more interviewee-driven and open ended because he’s a partner. He’s not going to sit there and do multiplication with you for hours. He wants to get a sense if you have business acumen that is good enough for consulting.

MC: Namaan Mian

Absolutely. You mentioned that business acumen is a key factor for success. Are there a couple other skills that you would recommend people hone before entering the interview process?

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

The honest answer is no. When we recruit people, I always tell them that 95% of what you must do at work, you will learn at work. What we really look for is what I was speaking about before, someone who wants to master something, and someone who wants to be the expert in the field. That’s what we try to get a sense of during the interview process. Part of getting a sense of that is, ‘Was the person prepared? Do they really want to do this?’ In terms of preparation, my only recommendation would be to know your story and practice the cases.

MC: Namaan Mian

Simple but effective.

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Yeah.

MC: Namaan Mian

Is that the advice that you would go back and give yourself when you were in the recruiting process? Or was there something else that you wish that you would have known before you either joined Advancy or just joined the industry in general?

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

I would give myself that advice first. Honestly, I’m not great at case interviews and I needed to practice them a lot. And if I were interviewing again, I would have to practice them a lot. But it’s a necessary evil of consulting and something you must do.

The other advice I would give myself is, just come in with an openness and a desire to suck everything up. As I spend more and more time in consulting, I find myself going back to things I learned on projects from five years ago that I thought were something I would do once. Those learnings could be industry-related or ways of doing analyses. I wish I had paid more attention to what I was doing in some ways and retained some of those things, because you end up using things you learned before, every day.

MC: Namaan Mian

That’s a good insight. One project isn’t self-contained.

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Yeah.

MC: Namaan Mian

You can translate the learnings and apply them elsewhere. And if you’re paying attention as you go, “future you” will thank you.

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Yeah, exactly.

MC: Namaan Mian

Well, Keith, you mentioned at the top of our conversation that you were the second employee in the New York office which means that you have played a big role in setting the culture of that office.

Can you talk to me a little bit about what the culture of the New York office specifically is like? Is there a big difference between the culture at Advancy New York and Advancy Paris or Advancy Sydney? What sets the offices apart, and specifically New York?

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Yeah. First, every office has its own culture. And that’s natural in that there are A) different country cultures, and B) different groups of people. In the New York office, you’re right in that Sylvestre and I have tried to shape the culture in a certain way. And that’s because both of us have worked in different workplace environments before as well as lived in various countries and understand how culture can impact people. And when we started recruiting people and setting the tone here, one of the things we tried to do was build a culture that is just a nice place to work. And what I mean by that is a couple of things.

The first is that we take our work very seriously, but we don’t take ourselves seriously. People are always joking and laughing all the time. Having a relaxed atmosphere is the first thing. The second thing is, we are very, very, very anti-face time. So, if you’re on my project and you don’t have work to do, I’ll know you don’t have work to do. And if I see you in the office, I’m going to get mad at you. If there’s nothing to do, we’re not here and people go home.

The third thing, I think, is broader in the sense of friendliness. We’ve tried to make it a place where people are interested to come and feel like they’re helping to shape what we’re building, whether that be through planning events we might have or suggesting ways we can change the way we do things. It’s a very open environment that’s open to everyone’s suggestions, including at the junior consultant level. We are starting to get big, but we’re still small enough that we can adapt and can take into consideration people’s feelings and the way they like to do things.

MC: Namaan Mian

One of the things you mentioned that I think is key, at least from the outside looking in, is the anti-face time element. I think that is a hallmark of a culture that’s focused on strategy work, because you don’t have to bill your consultants out for a certain number of hours, right? You charge a flat rate to solve the problem. And that gives folks some flexibility. I think that’s a key difference between pure-play strategy firms and some other types of consulting that our readers may be considering.

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Yes. When the project’s done and the work is done, your time in the office is done. And we take that very seriously. And the other thing I’ll just mention in terms of hours is we also take very seriously that weekends are protected. So, while more senior people might work weekends, we’ve never made anyone else work a weekend. And we take that very seriously. It again comes back to the idea that we hire people with the hope that they become partners someday. If we want people to do that, they need to have the endurance to do consulting for the long term. And if we burn through people by making them work seven days a week, that won’t work for anybody. So, we take taking a breath very seriously.

MC: Namaan Mian

It’s not good for them, not good for the firm, and not good for the clients either!

How can folks find out more about the firm? Where can they apply? I’m sure by this point some of our readers are saying, ‘This sounds like my kind of firm. How do I apply for a role or see what opportunities are available?’

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

There are a couple of things I would suggest. I’ll split the answer into people in school and people not in school.

For people in school, the best way to apply is through Handshake or whatever your school’s career center website is. We recently expanded our recruiting to more schools – I think we’re up to 25 – top private schools, Ivy League, Stanford, etc. But we’re also active at the bigger state schools with good science or engineering programs. If you’re at one of those schools, the easiest way to apply is just through Handshake. It will go directly to HR, and they’ll review.

For people that are not in that situation, there are three ways to apply. The first is through the website, which is like applying for any job. The second is to drop your résumé and a cover letter to [email protected]. But the third, which is better, is just reaching out to one of us. We’re always eager to speak with people, both myself, Sylvestre, and Lu, who’s a principal here in the office, but also all the junior consultants.

In addition, junior consultants have the freedom to say, ‘Hey, I spoke to this person. They seem smart; we should give them an interview.’ It’s gotten us a lot of good candidates before. Junior consultants very much have that power in the recruiting process. Reaching out to them and saying, ‘Hey, I’m interested in Advancy’ is a great way to get introduced to us, but also, for us to introduce ourselves to you.

MC: Namaan Mian

You heard it from the man himself. Networking makes a difference!

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Yeah, it does!

MC: Namaan Mian

Well, Keith, thanks so much for joining us today and sharing more about Advancy and the firm’s recruiting process with us. We really appreciate it.

Advancy: Keith Fogerty

Yeah. Thank you.

 

Additional Resources:

• Advancy Firm Profile
• Consulting recruiting in 2022: In Good Times or Bad, Consulting Carries On
• Consulting Resume: Complete Guide
• Case Interview: Complete Prep Guide