Where consulting is hot

So I have been collecting information from google analytics since I started this site and finally have over 23,000 hits. I think that this is a big enough sample size to start drawing a few conclusions.

Before I give you some data, it has to come with a caveat that traffic to my blog probably isn't the BEST indication of who is interested in consulting, although since you probably have to dig a little bit to find me, it might be a good indication of who is really serious about consulting and is searching hard for information.

First, the US is by far the biggest reader of my blog, which probably has to do with a few things....high levels of education and interest in consulting, my blog is written in the English language and is relevant to US recruiting. The next biggest reader is the UK with about 33% of US readership, then surprisingly Turkey is a close third, followed by India, Switzerland,France, Canada, Australia, Germany and Russia.

I will breakdown the interest within the US in a little more detailed fashion. I will use 1 as the nationwide average for hits...so a score of 5 would be five times the average hit rate for a state. Here's the data:

NY- 14.5
MA- 6.6
CA- 5.3
IL- 4.1
MI- 2.9
TX- 2.2
PA- 1.6
VA- 1.3
MD- 1.3
GA- 1.3

It all makes pretty good sense when you think about the target schools for consulting firms and where they are located...Columbia, NYU, Cornell, etc in NY; Harvard and MIT in MA, Stanford and some of the tech heavy colleges in CA; Northwestern and U of Chicago in IL; U of Mich and Ross in MI....I'm a little surprised that PA didn't score higher with all of the Wharton folks that end up with consulting gigs, but the data is the data.

Just thought I'd share a bit of that with you to let you know where your competition is coming from. Looks like the stiffest local competition is for those of us in NY and MA...lucky us!

Consulting in 2010

Happy New Year to all the consultant-wannabes out there! Like you, I am hoping that 2010 will be a much better year than 2009 in terms of getting a job in management/strategy consulting. 2009 was definitely better than 2008 and I'm sure everyone is hoping that trend will continue.

While things on my end have been pretty quiet on the consulting front there are a few new developments. I have decided to continue to help run the consulting club in 2010 and will continue to run a 12 week mini-MBA class. I think this was a really beneficial experience for a lot of folks in '09 and helped some of my colleagues get jobs in a tough environment. As an aside, the feedback from the top firms was very positive regarding our applicants this year..."they were better prepared for interviews than any group in the past." While I can't take credit for that, I think everything we did last year contributed to the success of our club members so I am anxious to help out again this year.

As we move into a new year, I am curious as to what people want to know. I am trying to build up a reading list for this year to get a little more knowledge under my belt and am glad to hear suggestions about what material I should look into....any ideas? Also, any ideas on what to post about or what kind of info I can provide is appreciated. I'd love to spend more time providing helpful information, but just want to make sure what I'm posting is actually useful to others.

Thanks for the input...it's what keeps me going!