Goal Setting Full Time & Internship Recruiting Graduate School Resume Tailoring Interview Mastery Powerful Networking

Early Career

For young adults—from college students to professionals in their twenties—entering recruitment processes for full-time or internship positions, we work closely on resume enhancement, cover letter drafting and forming a robust list of networking channels and positions to apply to. From there we take great pride in preparing clients for interviews, focusing equally on content—speaking with confidence about each item on one’s resume—as well as fundamental interview skills such as confidence, posture, body language, length of response, and use of specific examples. We reinforce this skill building with our rigorous mock interview practice.

For clients interested in the hyper-competitive Consulting and Finance recruiting processes, we help in our signature style, improving chances for job offers by cultivating earnest demonstrated interest, including internships and summer pursuits, before rigorously working with candidates to polish their resumes and prepare for interviews. Our experienced coaches are equipped to delve deeply into mock technical interviews in Finance and Case Interviews in Consulting.

Whether it be positions in public policy, non profit, media or biotech—or myriad other tracks—we help young adults improve their chances at entering careers they covet.

Our Early Career Coaching practice begins with a thoughtful brainstorm of one’s potential Medium Term and Long Term paths. We allow each candidate, from college age to their early thirties, to reflect on their most meaningful personal and professional goals for the 2-5 year timeframe, as well as 10 years out. Through this exercise we’ve seen brilliant revelations, including goals such as:

• General Manager of a Major League Baseball team by age 30

• Work in top tier management consulting

• Land at Harvard Business School in 2 years

• Work at a company focused on sustainability

• Work in private equity / investment banking

• Work at a startup in product, project management, or program management

• Work at a large commercial real estate development firm

• Work in special education - seek graduate school credentials

• Manage a team

• Be in year 5 at new fulfilling company, promoted twice since starting

There are no limits to hyper-personal goals!

Want to work for Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, or Bain Consulting? Apply from their websites and your resume will be “officially considered” alongside 100,000 others. Not a great play. 

Students at selective colleges and graduate programs have a better path: On Campus Recruiting. The odds are still competitive—300 people submitting for a McKinsey drop, 30 selected for interviews, 6 extended job offers, as an example—but this is a more feasible path through which our candidates have been enormously successful. Our coaching prepares college and graduate candidates by:

• In the years before applying, crafting a compelling narrative toward an industry, to increase chances of being selected for interviews. This guidance includes: selection of major(s), previous summer experiences to magnify interest in a given career path, extracurricular choices to show demonstrated interest, and resume tailoring to best convey the candidate’s compelling story. 

• Scouting on campus recruiting openings via Handshake, 12Twenty, Brightspace, and custom interfaces at various schools. We coach candidates on timing—windows for coveted company “drops” can sometimes be open for only two weeks, with timelines moving earlier and earlier for Investment Banking and Consulting. We prepare our candidates to have all pieces ready for when these windows open, including guidance on maximizing chances of landing an interview.

Not at a school where your dream employer recruits? Rather than submit via company websites, LinkedIn, Indeed, etc, our candidates have found success through powerful networking, leveraging our coaching to get their resume into the right hands. 

After our Goal Setting exercise, we work backward to ask important questions. Is graduate school right for you? Would it help get from A to B? If the answer is yes, we begin our thoughtful Graduate School Coaching, narrowing down which fields and which schools—from broad categories like law school to more granular focuses like a Masters in Special Education. In many cases, we advise candidates on not only the graduate school application process but also:

• Building a strong candidacy for a given type of graduate school / selective tier over the 1+ year before applying, in service of a compelling (S)he’s the one who… narrative

• Program list formation

• Resume tailoring - a major part of one’s application

• Personal statement coaching

• Cultivating strong letters of recommendation 

In the age of ChatGPT, mundane resumes are everywhere. Add to that the complication that after passing screens, a resume may only be in front of a recruiter for 30 seconds before being tossed or advancing to the “good pile”. Lakhani Coaching helps candidates get into the good pile, then stand out from the good pile. Our hands on guidance to make resumes most compelling includes: 

• Intentional structure, allocating space and organization to areas where we want the eyes to gravitate

• Powerful verbs and descriptions

• Maximizing specificity and reducing jargon. Hunting for the most compelling examples from one’s experiences

• Highlighting relevant aspects of one’s educational history, from key papers to coursework to research experience to extracurricular involvement

• Mirroring simplified resume content to the candidate’s LinkedIn then streamlining that profile for most impact

Supposing I’m new to it, can I study all night tonight and be a black diamond skier tomorrow? Of course not. Similarly, interviewing is a skill. Through our coaching, we’ve seen time and again that this skill can be developed with the right guidance, and mastered with enough repetitions, including through mock interviews. 

Consulting Case Interview Prep:

From multi-step cases—advise a sports events company, strategically and financially, in organizing a 100,000 attendee 1 week mini-Olympics—to classic structured estimates—approximate the size of the Chinese market for laptops—to mental math—how long will it take a startup growing at 25% per year to be at three times its current earnings—our consulting case interview prep builds the muscles around strategy consulting by treating it like training in a sport. Our process includes:

• Problem-based approach: conducting numerous cases of all types, then debriefing strengths and improvement areas, drawing from past cases administered by Bain, McKinsey, BCG, Accenture, Deloitte and others. 

• Surveying: Getting to know a wide variety of strategy and defense/government cases. No two cases are the same – practice builds skill

• Preparation: Creating a dedicated notes file to document instruction, including screenshots and takeaways from structured responses to various cases

• Refining: Numerous mock case interviews, including the opportunity to be recorded, to improve technique

Investment Banking Superday:

A Super Day typically involves several rounds of interviews, often with senior bankers, and focuses on both technical and behavioral aspects. Our coaching focuses on:

• Technicals Interviews 

• Accounting: Plugging any holes in discussing the three financial statements (Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement)

• Valuation Techniques: Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis, comparable company analysis, and precedent transactions

• M&A and LBOs: Understand basics of mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, and be ready to walk through a DCF or LBO model

• Market Knowledge: Stay updated on recent deals, market trends, and any major financial news. Have a view on current market conditions

• Behavioral Interviews

• Storytelling: why investment banking, why this firm, and what makes you a strong fit for the role

• Strengths and Weaknesses: Prepare for this question, citing unique examples

• Deal Experience: prepare to discuss involvement in any deals or projects 

• Teamwork and Leadership: prepare examples 

• Attention to Detail: prepare revelatory anecdotes

• Resilience and Work Ethic: prepare examples of your readiness for the demanding role and long hours

Through our rigorous mock interview process—including asides for instruction and creation of technical study materials—we set our candidates up to land coveted investment banking roles. 

A seminal 2016 LinkedIn study laid bare what we’ve known for years: 85% of jobs are filled through referrals or personal connections. We help candidates make sense of these referrals—an introduction is not a job offer; it is simply someone willing to talk, and if you can impress them, they may be willing to forward your resume to someone who is hiring. 

At Lakhani Coaching, we embrace this power in networking, helping our candidates develop a thorough Leads List—professionals with one degree of separation who may be willing to help a candidate network—and preparing candidates to write pointed emails, make diplomatic asks, and have powerful, respectful networking conversations that may lead to a door opening. Our process includes:

• Leads List: combing friends and family contacts for professionals who can help a candidate learn about a field/company, with possibilities for introductions to others in positions to hire

• Correspondence: supporting the candidate in drafting and editing powerful, brief networking emails, including a specific ask, to maximize chances of response and engagement

• Mocks: much like our mock interview practice, we help candidates engage in “real” exchanges with their coach to simulate networking meetings, including sharp questions to ask and making a pointed, respectful ask 

• Resume and LinkedIn: before/after a networking meeting, we recommend that candidates share a copy of their tailored resume, crafted to be as strong as possible to encourage the contact to forward it to a hiring manager

Through the power of tapping into one’s network, we’ve seen our Early Career Coaching candidates thrive, even in challenging job markets.