Booz Allen Hamilton: An insider guide - Gymkhana

For Your ReferenceConsulting-SpeakTo help prepare you for both your interviews and a possible career in the field,we’ve asked our insiders to give us the most up-to-date consulting jargon.Beware: Unauthorized use of these terms has been known to seriously offendevery known species of consultant.2x2. Pronounced “two by two,” this is a favorite consulting tool used to analyzea number of items along two dimensions. It’s basically a graph with X and Yaxes that cross in the middle, creating four different sectors. Don’t be surprisedif you’re asked to produce one of these during your interview.Benchmark. Here’s another standard-issue item from the consulting toolbox.Benchmarks are levels of performance or output against which you can evaluatethe performance of something else. A benchmark study is an analysis of theperformance of a number of companies along specified dimensions. Forexample, a software firm might hire a consulting firm to do a benchmark studyon how much other firms are spending on customer service.BHAG. Big Hairy Audacious Goal. This buzzword comes from the book Built toLast (see next entry).Built to Last. A book written by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, in whichthey destroy the myth that the core product is more important than the visionthe company espouses. The term now enjoys widespread usage as describing acompany with a strong culture based on a core ideology or identity. Moreloosely, it refers to those firms that want to be around for many decades orcenturies, not just a few years.74