Please see below for answers to the most commonly asked questions.
We carefully review each online application and invite promising applicants to attend an individual interview. These interviews usually last about 45 minutes and take place in Central London.
Subsequently, we invite successful candidates to attend a group case interview, where they tackle a business case-study taken from a real-life scenario. These interviews usually last about an hour and involve groups of 4-6 candidates. They allow us to see how our candidates work as part of a team.
Through this recruitment process, we collect as much information as possible about each candidate and assess their compatibility with our programme. If successful, you will receive an email to discuss the project(s) we can possibly offer to you in the next project cycle. We welcome you to discuss your expectations and goals with us before accepting an offer. As a volunteer, you are welcome to leave at any point.
Please note that we make every effort to create opportunities for as many volunteers as possible.
No previous work experience is required to join our team. First Step Consulting primarily aims to help young people break the vicious 'no experience, no job' cycle. Please feel free to submit an application at your earliest convenience.
All university students and recent graduates are welcome to apply to join our team. However, we would like to underline that international students, who are on Tier 4 Student visa, are not allowed to work for more than 20 hours per week in the UK during their studies. This is strictly prohibited by law. Voluntary work counts towards the 20 hours per week working limit and it is your responsibility to make sure that you do not exceed this. Once again, the expected workload is around 10-12 hours a week and we ask our volunteers to spend no more than 15 hours on their projects in any week.
In case of any doubts, please contact us.
Professionals are always welcome to join our community. You can either mentor university students and recent graduates in our team or work on one of our consulting projects as a pro bono consultant. Please remember that our pro bono consultants are expected to spend a minimum of 10 hours a week to contribute to their projects and meet their colleagues once a week in Central London.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
Yes, we are legally required to see your proof of identity (e.g. your passport) and make a copy of it. If you are currently a university student, we also require you to provide an official document issued by your university to verify your student status, such as a certificate of attendance letter.
Finally, we ask our pro bono consultants to sign a confidentiality agreement before they start working on their projects. The privacy and confidentiality of our clients is highly important to us.
We work with clients of all shapes and sizes from many different industries. Our consultants commonly help ambitious organisations improve their market position, explore investment opportunities, and revise their business strategies. For a full range of project specific examples, please see our client case studies.
There are three project cycles per year, starting in late September, January and June. The duration of a standard project is usually around ten weeks. Applications are open year-round, but we encourage you to apply at your earliest convenience so that we can discuss your application in detail.
As a not-for-profit social enterprise, our guiding mission is to help volunteers of all backgrounds and age groups gain career-enhancing work experience – primarily ambitious university students and recent graduates with a wide range of prior experience. In order to achieve our mission, we need to maintain the autonomy to select, train, and work with volunteers of our own choosing. Therefore we intentionally do not ask our clients to budget for the remuneration of our volunteers – meaning that all of our pro bono consultants work on a voluntary basis. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us.
First Step Consulting has pioneered a new model of management consulting that is the first of its kind. We recruit and professionally train ambitious and hardworking volunteers from many different backgrounds and age groups to work with us on consulting projects. Supported by our dedicated volunteers, we help an eclectic mix of clients develop effective business strategies.
This model uniquely equips us to serve organisations of all sizes, from early-stage ventures to large enterprises, as it allows us to minimise unnecessary expenses and bring more value to our clients for a fraction of the cost.
For more information about what makes us different, please visit www.firststepconsulting.co.uk/our-difference
We work closely with our clients to understand their specific needs and conduct extensive research to gather a wealth of information for each client. In every project, our team meticulously analyse research findings and provide clients with practical recommendations. To learn about what we offer to clients, please see: www.firststepconsulting.co.uk/services
Our range of services includes:
– Growth Discovery
– Market Entry Strategy
– Employer Branding
– Customer Strategy
– Product Positioning
– Competitive Intelligence
– Global Expansion
– Health Technology Economics
– Brand Strategy
– Fundraising Strategy
First Step Consulting adopts an industry agnostic approach and our pioneering business model enables us to serve clients of all shapes and sizes. For more information, please see: www.firststepconsulting.co.uk/who-we-serve
Since our inception in 2014, we have managed to successfully deliver over 40 major management consulting projects. To see the wide range of projects we have previously worked on, please take a look at our client case studies: www.firststepconsulting.co.uk/past-projects
In order to protect their confidentiality, we do not disclose any reference which may reveal the identity of our clients in any case study. For more information, please see: www.firststepconsulting.co.uk/client-confidentiality
We are happy to answer your questions. Please follow the link below to tell us about your organisation and outline your enquiry: www.firststepconsulting.co.uk/submit-rfi
You will be contacted shortly.
We look for our mentors to become role models to ambitious university students and recent graduates volunteering with our team. Our mentors share their knowledge, experience and expertise to help support the career progression of these volunteers. This can be done in several ways, from holding group mentoring sessions, pairing up one-on-one with one of our volunteers or running a training session aimed at developing valuable skills. Our mentors sometimes even organise workplace insights by inviting volunteers to visit their company. For further details, please see www.firststepconsulting.co.uk/mentoring
The amount of time which you dedicate to the mentoring sessions is determined at your own convenience. We seek to work flexibly with our mentors and do not ask for a fixed commitment. You can meet with us periodically or sporadically, and the sessions usually last between 45-60 minutes.
We believe professionals with a number of years of full-time experience can reflect on their own career paths more effectively and easily. This is required to be able to share useful suggestions and insights with our ambitious volunteers. At the same time, we understand that entry level professionals often feel that they should fully focus on their own professional development at the start of their career. Despite this, please don’t hesitate to make contact with us even if you have less than two years professional work experience, as there may be alternative ways for you to support our mission.
Please feel free to contact us at your earliest convenience. We aim to organise mentoring sessions throughout the year.
Please fill out the contact form at www.firststepconsulting.co.uk/get-involved. We will contact you shortly to answer your questions and to tell you more about our programme.
We primarily aim to help ambitious university students and recent graduates aged 25 or under to get a better start in their professional life by gaining career-enhancing work experience. Our volunteers work with us on challenging management consultancy projects in their spare time, gaining an insight into the working world and developing transferable skills valued by employers.
At the same time, we strive to help purposeful organisations gain access to high quality management consulting services. Traditional consulting firms normally work with highly resourced corporations. First Step Consulting has pioneered a new model of management consulting that enables us to serve clients of all shapes and sizes.
Since our first project cycle in January 2015, we have rigorously selected, trained and guided over three hundred volunteers through our programme. See what our former volunteers say about their experience: www.firststepconsulting.co.uk/testimonials
We are happy to cooperate with all inquisitive university students and recent graduates who are proficient in English. To submit your application please visit www.firststepconsulting.co.uk/publish-articles
For general enquiries and more information, please fill out the contact form at www.firststepconsulting.co.uk/contact
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