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How do you help someone get out of depression?
All hail our new supreme leader! Viva la Trump!
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Bain & Company Hi all, I am interested in making the move to the Middle East, however starting from august/September. What do you think are the prospects for the future in the region? Do you envisage a hiring freeze or are companies still going strong? Thanks!McKinsey & Company Boston Consulting Group Kearney Bain & Company
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Is the rug being pulled out from under S&O?
any fishes in Memphis, TN ?
Top consulting firms right there!!
Rising Star
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Chief
It's critical. It obscures the reality from the client that you're really not doing anything for them, but the visuals maintain the fiction that you are.
Truer words were never spoken
It is pretty important from a storytelling perspective. Folks use slide to condense complex concepts.
If you’re struggling, start your presentation in Word as an outline. Use headers to state each slide’s hypothesis or main focus, then add no more than four supporting bullets. Once the structure is clear, expand each point into the final slide content.
Pro
I was like you. Volunteer to help out on decks, trial by fire.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Never start from scratch. Especially if you are at Deloitte there is surely a slide repository or decks you can search to get you halfway there
- Ensure formatting is consistent
- When in doubt, ask a LLM for feedback or a shell for structuring out the story
Chief
You are asking if an eye candy needs to look good.
1) Be good at writing, persuasive writing specifically
2) Get good at utilizing ChatGPT to make your writing more concise
3) Get a really good dossier of GREAT, GREAT examples of ppt pitch decks and proposals etc that were really successful with clients that you can pick and choose from.
I pitch to Fortune CXO’s a lot and very rarely create pitch materials from scratch. They all like the same crap, so recycle the stuff that works.
Good luck!
Chief
CRITICAL.
Have someone send you a few templates and use those until you get a feel for it.
OP, if you are at Deloitte, DM me your name and I can send you a template deck (it has 200+ reference slides). I think it’s a great starting point so you don’t have to build anything from scratch. It also gives you a good idea of what good looks like (according to Deloitte). Practice makes perfect but also make use of all the resources at your disposal!
In addition to what others have said about compiling reference & template decks, there some decent LinkedIn Learning courses on storytelling and a great one on making infographics in PPT. I learned so many little tips that helped me become better at crafting a compelling message & accenting w/ impactful visuals.
You don’t have a deck team?
Rising Star
It’s almost like a lifeguard who doesn’t know swimming.
You know what, you may just fit in.
Depends on the type of consulting. If tech / implementation don’t need it at all basically
If strategy / financial / commercial yes you need to be able to out together a pretty polished deck
There is an art to communicating information well. It doesn’t hurt to deliver substance with style at the rates we charge.
Very important. It comes with reps and accumulating slides (either you put a lot of time into or someone else did) to pull from
I think there’s a difference between having a reference library even if just mentally and customizing existing slides. The former, invaluable. The latter; generally waste of time imo once basic proficiency at operating the software exists.
Get more examples from your firm or better yet specific team and learn what good looks like. It’s somewhat different everywhere so googling or asking ChatGPT may not yield best results for your specific work and client/stakeholder preferences.
Chief
It depends on a lot of things. It is good to be able to create an effective storyline and be able to create “good enough” slides at a reasonably quick pace- the truly artistic slide craft is not something you have to be amazing at to succeed in consulting.
Practice! :)
Does food appeal matter for a chef?
If you can land a message verbally backed with a memo, then don't waste your time
Rising Star
Got to do it
Master your brand guidelines then when people don’t like your slide say “well it’s per brand standards, soooo”