2012: Year in review

What a year! 2012 has been fantastic here at MC. At our year-end dinner last week, over a fantastic red bubbly wine and gourmet fare, we reflected on all of the great things we’ve accomplished in the last 12 months. As we reminisced, we thought, “wouldn’t that be a great post?” Lo and behold, it IS a great post…and you’re about to read it!

We don’t know how MC existed before the Manic Monday Newsletter, our monthly newsletter for subscribers only that features exclusive content, insider tips, and sneak peeks on upcoming products and services. We launched in the summer and have seen reader engagement fly through the roof ever since. If you haven’t joined the club, subscribe  here.

Arguably our biggest hit this year, The Consulting Roadmap was launched as a FREE tool you get when you subscribe. People LOVED this! We’re thinking we’ll keep giving it away as a freebie for a while…at least until we come up with our next big idea.

Our new ebooks turned the site upside down–in a phenomenal way. We went from 1 basic ebook offering (only 96 pages) to 3 outstanding resources (with 450+ pages and 3 toolkits) that are now considered core products for any consulting candidate.

The Resume and Cover Letter Bible was the first to hit the shelves in May, with 70+ pages on tricks of the trade, examples, and step-by-step specifics on how to create the world’s best resumes and cover letters. We included 24 best-in-class templates you can actually use to create your resume and/or cover letter from scratch.

Then we crafted the Consultant’s Networking Bible, with everything you need to know about networking plus a database with 2500+ email address and phone numbers for consultants, recruiters, and HR contacts. We launched in July.

Our third work of genius was a new and improved version of our classic – The Consulting Bible 3rd edition, expanded to over 300 pages, 4 usable frameworks, and 16 practice cases. In addition to being sold on our site (launched in September), with this book we stepped out of our backyard and made our debut on Kindle.

In conjunction with The Consulting Bible, in September we also launched the Consulting Case Bank – a database of 550+ consulting interview practice cases and PSTs from b-schools, case books, firms, and real-live interview rounds at top firms.

In June, we offered free resume reviews–where we scan your resume in 10 minutes and give you an honest assessment of where you need help.  We helped the first 50 and had over 200 email requests swarm our inbox in under an hour. (That was a busy 2 weeks!)

In addition, over the summer we re-imagined the way we do interview prep – packaging our prep into 2 high-impact courses (the 4-hour Interview Mastery and 10-hour Consulting Bootcamp) that give a major edge over just doing cases over and over.  We also added the Power Half Hour, which 100+ of you have utilized to meet with us for a fast-paced resume review or networking strategy session. As a result, those of you that worked with Jenny Rae got offers at firms including:

• McKinsey
• Bain
• BCG
• Booz & Company
• Booz Allen Hamilton
• LEK
• Monitor
• Oliver Wyman
• Deloitte Consulting
• PwC Advisory
• Ernst & Young
• NERA
• Capgemini
• Seabury Consulting
• Ocean Strategy
• …and other boutiques in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia

We launched our affiliate program for Consulting Clubs and took MC on the road with our first Interview Blitzes in San Francisco and London.  We passed 1000 likes on our Facebook page, answered hundreds of questions from readers in FAQ posts and in personal emails, and added dozens of new articles to the site. We all agree, our top 5 posts were:

1. 2012 consulting salaries – This was one of our most-read articles on the site – with data on salaries, signing bonuses, relocation, and retirement at 15+ firms. Look for our 2013 Salaries post next month!

2. Hero stories – We gave you a framework for preparing to talk about yourself with measured confidence in interviews. We showed you how, with 4 hero stories and 2 challenge stories, you’ll be prepared to answer any type of experience question that you get.

3. 9 networking myths…busted – All of those things you’ve been tricked into believing about networking, like “there’s no strategy to networking” and “introverts are horrible networkers,” were debunked in this all-time favorite.

4. August Reader FAQ – All of our FAQs are amazing because we’re answering questions from consulting candidates in the game right now. However, our August post was particularly memorable because we answered one of the questions we get often – why your resume must be no more than 1 page.

5.  Collin gets his dream job as a healthcare consultant – As part of our Life As A Consultant series, where we interview undergrads, MBAs, and experienced professionals who made it into the industry, we showcased Collin’s story about landing his dream job in healthcare.

All of this is amazing, right? What’s the driving force behind all of this new and amazing stuff? Her name is Jenny Rae, and she’s the new Managing Director here at MC. She’s actually been managing all of the services for MC since 2010.  After growing the site’s readers and revenues by 400% in under 2 years, she officially stepped into the MD role in May of this year. On top of everything she launched on the site, she also added a new face to her own family with the birth of her son in July – but never missed a beat. With her creative energy and consulting expertise, and backed by an extraordinary team, Jenny Rae is taking MC to the next level. We hope you’ve noticed! We know these fans have–

“Your blog has been a tremendous research tool for me in the past year as I am trying to break into the consulting industry.” -James

“Fantastic site.” -Jake

“Thank you very much for your help. It’s been really useful in my preparation. I would certainly recommend you to anyone who has a passion to get into consulting.” -George

Please join us by congratulating Jenny Rae on her new role – email her or leave a comment here!

What’s planned for next year?

2013 is going to be all about our Consulting Bootcamp program. We’ll work with small and large groups of consulting wannabes during 1-hour, 2-hour and full-day consulting prep courses, both live and virtual. You’ll find us in cities around the globe – our current plan is to hit Boston, Singapore, and San Francisco.  Want to keep in touch?  Sign up here.

With our super-popular courses driving accelerated growth of our interview prep business—especially at crunch time during the fall recruiting season—we expect to quickly exceed capacity of our current staff this coming year. There just aren’t enough hours in the day! To make sure we can support you and your busy schedules, we’re planning to expand our team of interview experts to include 1-2 hand-picked consultants from MBB, Big Four, and other top firms. Interested in applying to provide prep services?  Send us an email.

You can look forward to expanded services and a surge in connectivity around people who are interested in consulting jobs—whether it’s for interview prep, case practice, networking, or job opportunities. We want to create communities where you can connect with other people like you, get answers to your questions, and start bringing your dream to life. We’ll run competitions to gather your votes and ideas as we build a next-generation platform. Have ideas now? Send them our way!

We’re also planning a site redesign—to make it easier to find archived articles and engage with us. There will be more contests, more free give-aways, and lots more free stuff for our subscribers. Don’t miss out – subscribe now!

Thank you to our clients, our subscribers, and our readers for making 2012 such a great year. We hope it was successful for you—our loyal reader base of pre-, post- and per-se consultants. For MC – it was our best year so far…but you haven’t seen ANYTHING yet.

Happy Holidays!