1) Why work in management consultancy?
Management consultancy is full of variety and allows you fast personal growth: in just a few years you can get to know a wide range of sectors, business models, subjects and people. In addition, being a management consultant enables you to understand specific operational and company management problems within an integrated logical framework. Such valuable opportunities are not available to those who join a company and are assigned precise and limited tasks.
And if you later decide to change profession, all doors are open to you: companies, merchant banking and entrepreneurship. In any case, you will have acquired a valuable network of personal contacts and a wealth of experience.
2) Why choose MBS Consulting?
Those who have chosen to work for us say that MBS Consulting provides an optimum balance of the various elements that make consultancy work enjoyable. In terms of the interest and degree of sophistication in the projects dealt with, MBS Consulting has no reason to envy the big consultancy corporations. Thanks to its reduced size, at MBS Consulting you count as a person, team building is easy and there is total openness regarding the most human and personal aspects. In addition, even the youngest and most inexperienced have direct access to the entire company's management and know-how, with no filters or barriers when you join.
Alessandro says: "I didn't know the consulting world before coming to MBS. I was offered a challenge, that of following a path of rapid personal and professional growth within a team of young professionals. And I was in the first team from the very start. I soon realised that there were no reserves in MBS, only true professionals who fight together with passion, pride and determination. How? By demonstrating competence and responsibility with their clients and showing extreme respect and consideration for their colleagues. I choose to pull on the MBS shirt every day."
Ilaria says: "Being a consultant in MBS means growing professionally from the very outset thanks to the opportunity to work with competent, bright and helpful people who have a strong spirit of cooperation and have helped me get the very best from my competences. In just a few months I feel I have learnt a lot and not only from a work point of view, in that MBS is not only a group of consultants, but above all a group of people for you to compare yourself with and from whom you can learn many 'lessons in life'."
Paolo says: "Because MBS offers the chance of a stimulating profession in a balanced environment that pays great attention to personal values. After 16 years in MBS I can say that I have built up exceptional professional expertise, working with people of great worth. My message to young people who are getting to know us for the first time is that it is they themselves who have to choose us for our values and our skills, rather than us choosing them."
3) What is MBS Consulting's positioning?
MBS Consulting has its roots in strategic consultancy, with a strong focus on managing change, which in recent years has been swift and radical. As a company this has led us to pay great attention to new business opportunities, to crossovers between different disciplines and to ever more intense and creative customer relations. The kind of project dealt with (strategy, change management), brings MBS Consulting close to the Anglo-Saxon professional tradition which in Italy it shares with larger firms such as McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group and Value Partners.
With regard to other aspects, MBS Consulting may be considered as a consultancy firm, with its own management style and a customer approach that goes right through to involvement in the operating and implementation phases and to integration with a company's management.
4) Where does MBS Consulting excel?
MBS Consulting stands out for its ability to define strategic models together with corporate clients, then taking them through to implementation by integrating operationally with management and assuming joint responsibility for results. MBS Consulting therefore ensures that plans are actually feasible and stakes its own reputation on their effective implementation.
The skills of MBS Consulting teams are particularly valuable when it comes to deal management, in cases where companies need support in developing their own business through engagement in strategic partnerships.
5) How do we work in MBS Consulting??
In line with the special nature of our company, the degree of flexibility and autonomy in terms of working hours and locations is extremely high. Assessment of each person's performance is strictly related to results and the undertakings given to customers and colleagues, and certainly does not depend on the number of working hours spent in the office. In addition, apart from the skills of their members, there is no idea of hierarchy within our teams. There is no right to carry out particular activities, which are assigned to whoever demonstrates the specific ability to carry them out (in this sense, any initiative is well received).
6) How does a project work?
The objectives and methods that apply to a project are agreed on with the client during the commercial phase, which is usually managed by the partners. Once the launch has been decided on, the team of consultants who will be working on the project is set up. Carrying out a project requires a close relationship with our client, involving interviews and meetings with the working group and the company's management, and this normally implies our presence at his premises. A project concludes with a final presentation to top management.
7) What kind of people work at MBS Consulting?
The role of the consultant is not an easy one. It is based solely on the client's perception of us as credible and authoritative, without taking anything for granted beforehand. This is particularly true at MBS Consulting, which started out as a consultancy boutique, and must therefore offer clients exemplary quality on a broad range of fronts, without the cover provided by a large international brand. We believe that we have put together a highly respected team, comprising bright people, who are also aware of the responsibility that stems from their role. Professionals who respect and value clients, their requirements and any difficulties that may crop up, they are able to pick up on and grasp the opportunities that arise in dealing with others.
8) What qualities are needed to join MBS Consulting?
Applications are welcome from recent graduates in business management or engineering and young managers with two or three years' business experience.
We're looking for people who are open-minded, intelligent, reliable, curious to learn something new and willing to travel. Strong-willed, creative people who are direct, inquisitive and well-organized. People who are inspiring, sincere and friendly - the kind of colleagues it's a pleasure to work with. The kind of people that enjoy intellectual challenges, but not competition for its own sake.
9) How does the selection process work?
The quality of the people that we bring to clients is the most important factor in our success. This means that we choose new colleagues with a great deal of care. We use a co-optation method: a final proposal is made exclusively to those candidates we consider to have the professional potential needed to represent MBS Consulting in dealings with clients and the necessary qualities to be good team members.
The first step is to send us a résumé, which we will carefully assess. In cases where essential elements are missing (for example, a first-class degree), we send a letter of thanks. If the résumé is good, the applicant is invited to attend a first interview, at which various aspects are considered: ability and speed in problem solving; numerical quickness; ability to get on with people; and personal qualities.
Those who pass the first interview, attend three more. A candidate who receives a favourable opinion from all the interviewers is invited to attend a recruiting day, during which he or she will meet the MBS Consulting partners.
A candidate who has passed the seven interviews will then receive an offer of employment, including details of the training program, career path and salary offered by MBS Consulting.
10) How do you make an application?
The selection of candidates is a very important and serious undertaking to which we devote a great deal of attention. Send us your résumé and a letter of application.
11) What's the career path at MBS Consulting?
Recent graduates and people with one or two years' work experience start their careers at MBS Consulting as business analysts. A new recruit first joins a project team and is assigned quantitative and business analysis tasks. After about two or three years in this position, most people then become associates, with responsibility for managing parts or phases of a project and members of a client's staff. As an associate, you spend about three years honing your skills in the areas of project management and human resources, both within MBS Consulting and externally. At the end of this phase you become an engagement manager, with responsibility for one or more consultancy projects. Engagement managers fulfil the vital role of planning, managing and overseeing all aspects of a project: methodologies, programming activities, developing solutions, management of the MBS Consulting consultants and management of relations with clients and their human resources.
The final step on the career ladder is to become a partner, which is open to engagement managers who demonstrate a flair for developing the company, both in terms of our business and the internal growth of the organisation.
12) What's the training program for new entrants?
There are many assessment criteria for our work: problem solving; communication skills; authoritativeness; the ability to work in a team; capacity to focus on objectives; and project management skills. They vary according to the role. And to these classic consultancy qualities we add some of our own: honesty, transparency, sensitivity and ethics. These are vital for us.
13) What's the training program for new entrants?
First of all, a brief training course is given on the basic methodologies used in project development. Then, before beginning a project, the most senior consultants explain the characteristics of the sector and the client's company and provide support in furthering MBS Consulting's knowledge of the specific field. In addition, all our consultants attend monthly training meetings on methodologies and projects and on the sectors in which MBS Consulting operates - bearing in mind that the nitty gritty of training takes place on the job.
