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The Associates Handbook

How to think, work and communicate like a top consultant. The tricks I wish someone had told me on day one in Consulting. Six+ years at Bain, written down to help nail your first two years at work.

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More articles

Turn your hypotheses into a syntesis

Turning analysis into an answer is an active step, you can drive. Here is the test I applied to every piece of work that crossed my desk. Can somebody look at the output of your analysis for ten seconds and understand the insight? If not, the analysis is not done

3 min read

Build a workplan and get the data you need

How to turn a hypothesis into execution, what to do when you have no data, and how to pivot when the hypothesis breaks. A good workplan keeps you aligned and focused. A bad one creates rework and confusion. Start from evidence, not intuition Build an issue tree for each part

4 min read

Stop typing and pick up the phone

Past the third round of an email-thread, a five-minute call ends what emails will not. There is a point in every email exchange where the format stops helping. Usually it is past the third reply, when both sides are clarifying rather than deciding, and each message is getting

1 min read

Structure the problem and build a hypothesis

MECE, answer-first thinking, and the habits that make a first hypothesis useful. Once you understand the problem, break the question into its major components. The goal is a structure that is MECE: mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive. Clean, non-overlapping buckets that together cover everything that matters. This structure

4 min read

Understand the problem before you touch the data

You can only deliver a good result when you understand the Problem. During the interview, you have been trained to do that. Apply this knowledge now. Before you open Excel or start building slides, build a working model of the company you are working for. What exactly is the product

3 min read

How to search in Outlook

Emails in your Inbox are inefficient. So, you archive old Emails. But once you've archived everything, you need to learn to query well. Most people browse folders. It is slow, and it only works if you filed the thing where you now think you filed it. Search instead,

1 min read

How a case works, and what you'll do as an Associate

The Case is the basic unit of consulting work. A Consulting team is tasked with cracking the case. Consulting is a service business. A client faces a tough problem and lacks the internal resources to solve it, so they buy external, specialised help. You are always a service provider to

4 min read