At the end of 2019, the WHU MBA Consulting Club was launched as a student club on the Düsseldorf campus. The initiative aims to bring together talented MBA candidates who are interested in a career in consulting and to offer them exchange and network possibilities.
1. Who can become part of the WHU MBA Consulting Club and what qualities should interested individuals bring with them?
In principle, anyone who has studied or is studying for an MBA at WHU can join the MBA Consulting Club. Although the focus is on active students, we deliberately do not want to limit the circle of participants to those.
Members must bring an interest in consulting work and a pleasure in solving exciting business cases. Of course, a healthy dose of thirst for knowledge, pleasure in networking and openness to peer-to-peer learning are also an advantage.
2. What makes you different from the Consulting Clubs of other business schools?
Compared to other internationally renowned business schools, WHU has not had a Consulting Club for the MBA program so far. The new founding allows us to design a program that we can tailor to the requirements and profiles of our fellow students without being influenced by the past. We see ourselves as a "user-oriented" club, which in an agile way incorporates the students’ wishes in our program. For example, we conducted a survey among all MBA students that we used as a basis for our program planning. Furthermore, we see the WHU MBA Consulting Club as a platform that allows all interested students to actively participate in shaping the program. We place a strong focus on peer-to-peer learning and bring in internal and external experts. We offer WHU MBA students a chance to exchange information about the consulting profession, to share experiences and to prepare together for a career start.
3. On April 1, you held your kick-off event - not as planned at the Düsseldorf campus, but online because of the corona crisis. How did that work?
Due to the corona crisis, we unfortunately had to postpone our kick-off event planned for March. However, since we did not want to keep the students waiting for an uncertain time, we moved the kick-off event to a virtual one, following the example of the school. True to our new hashtag #wekeepWHUrunning we organized the event as a digital conference. With over 50 participants, it was a complete success. The virtual setting also brought some advantages. The participants could join flexibly from anywhere in the world, no matter where they were. At the beginning, everyone toasted together with cold drinks from their home fridge. Afterwards, we started the event with a short PowerPoint presentation. It was important for us that every board member and the two founders had their say and could be seen in the camera. The presentation was followed by an interactive Kahoot Quiz. Finally, there was an exciting Q&A session where we not only answered questions but also discussed trends and developments in consulting.
4. What other events do you have planned for the near future?
We plan regular events every week. Every Wednesday evening, we meet, currently virtually, to discuss current events in the consulting industry and train in small groups to solve cases. In this way, we pan to prepare ourselves optimally for the upcoming application processes at leading consulting firms.
Besides, we have monthly events on tips and tricks from the consulting industry, topics such as MS Office training (PowerPoint, Excel) and expert presentations.
5. What opportunities do you see as an initiative to grow and contribute to society, especially in times like the current corona crisis?
Currently, all students are confronted with the situation of virtually attending lectures from home. There is no exchange on campus. In addition, many students have had to pause the application process due to the ban on contact. With our platform, we currently offer the possibility to stay in contact, to exchange information about exciting topics and to prepare each other for the upcoming interviews. In this way, we are sending out the signal that things are continuing despite the crisis and that we can still be close to each other using digital tools. We also see corona as an opportunity to support each other even more.