The engagement
What the engagement contains
ECS combines individual strategy, advisory led by Hassan Akram and a dedicated client team, supported by firm-specific preparation, simulations and a private client platform.
Each engagement is scoped around the candidate’s priorities, target firms and recruitment calendar, following the Private Diagnostic.
Individual advisory. Parent or sponsor welcome.
After the diagnosis
The Diagnostic names the constraint. For a candidate in a live cycle it is usually the stage being lost; for a candidate earlier on it can be a positioning problem that needs more than one cycle, which is where Multi-Year Family Advisory comes in. Losing at the written application, at the screening tests or in the room are three different problems, and treating them as one is how a year gets spent.
What is included
What the family receives
- One-to-one advisory sessions led by Hassan Akram, supported by the ECS client team.
- A written advisory plan setting out the diagnosis, the sequence of work and the firms in scope.
- Application and written-evidence work firm by firm, reviewed line by line.
- Interview, assessment-centre and written-test rehearsal against the real format.
- A record of every session, with assigned actions tracked to completion.
- Access to the ECS frameworks, drills and preparation materials used inside the engagement.
- Parent or sponsor involvement at whatever level the candidate has agreed.
One place to see what matters now
The plan identifies three priorities for the week, in sequence, and is reviewed as recruitment results and deadlines change. Candidates can return to the document or exercise they were working on between sessions.
Preparation built around the route
Six suites, mapped to route rather than subject. The candidate is pointed at the part that moves their constraint, not handed all six.
Corporate law
Training contract and vacation scheme routes into the Magic Circle and the US firms in London: written applications, Watson Glaser, case exercises, partner interviews and the assessment centre.
Investment banking
Spring weeks, summer internships and full-time analyst routes into the bulge bracket and the elite boutiques, including the technical rounds and the superday.
Buy-side and markets
Private equity, secondaries and markets processes, including the modelling and investment judgement sponsor interviews probe.
Venture capital
The sourcing, diligence and thesis work a venture interview is built on.
Strategy consulting
Case interviews, written cases and structured problem solving for MBB and tier-two firms.
Commercial fluency
The cross-route work: turning the news cycle into commercial articulation that holds up under follow-up questions.
Rehearsal under the real conditions
More than 88 simulators, 22 best practice guides and four mock vacation schemes, rehearsed under the conditions of the live process.
Between the sessions
A connected cycle of preparation
Each session sets the direction for the work between sessions:
- 01Diagnosis and judgementHassan Akram identifies the selection or positioning priority and decides how to approach it, revisiting it as the evidence changes.
- 02Written intelligenceA session note records the assessment, decisions and next priorities.
- 03Assigned work and feedbackSpecific tasks with a clear standard for completion, reviewed and pressure-tested against the demands of the live process.
- 04Iteration and the next sessionThe plan is reviewed as deadlines, recruitment results and the candidate’s position change, and the next session builds on the work and feedback.
The plan, session record, assigned work and feedback stay together in the private client platform.
The work itself
What a session actually produces
A real, anonymised note from a live advisory session: the assessment, decisions, assigned work and focus for the next session.
Read the full work sample
Hassan's judgement
You have enough material for a convincing Why Corporate Law answer. The issue is no longer finding more reasons. It is making the existing reasoning easier to retrieve, easier to trust and easier to use under pressure.
The chronology is also much clearer. The FIA report gives you a credible starting point. Fox and IndyCar develop the commercial logic. What is still missing is a genuine Confirm experience. We should not write one into the story before it exists.
Current priorityFinish the evidence we already have, verify the factual claims, then turn the live reasoning into writing that is shorter and easier to deploy.
What changed
The session narrowed the problem.
Confirm
We should not invent a neat third stage simply because the framework would look more complete.
At the moment, Begin and Develop are real. Confirm is not. That is fine. The contract-review exercise is designed to create legitimate exposure and test the motivation rather than manufacture evidence after the fact.
Before the next session
What I want you to do.
- 1Complete the contract reviewArrange around 30 minutes with a legal contact and review a public or mock SPA. Focus on two or three clauses.Done looks like You can explain what each side wants, how the clause allocates risk, what you initially missed and whether the work genuinely strengthened your motivation.Send ECS A short note with the clauses and your reflections.
- 2Write the full Why Corporate Law answerBuild the complete chronology using Begin, Develop and Confirm.Done looks like Confirm only appears if the contract review has actually happened and earned its place.Send ECS The full written answer.
- 3Write the short versionCompress the strongest reasoning into 150 to 200 words.Done looks like It still sounds like you and the chronology survives the cut.Send ECS The short written answer.
What we will do next
- 1Decide whether the contract review genuinely earns the Confirm slot.
- 2Finalise the full Why Corporate Law story and cut it into application-ready versions.
- 3Audit the work experience section against your stronger live reasoning.
- 4Pressure-test retrieval and commercial judgement under tighter conditions.
Measure of progressOne accurate, personal and chronologically coherent Why Corporate Law story that works naturally in an interview and can be shortened without losing its logic.
For the parent or sponsor
How the family stays informed
A shared starting point
Parents and sponsors are welcome at the Private Diagnostic.
An agreed scope
The diagnosis, sequence of work and firms in scope are agreed in writing.
Progress grounded in the work
Assigned work, written feedback and recruitment results inform the next intervention.
Agreed family involvement
What is shared with parents or sponsors is agreed with the candidate at the start. The candidate retains ownership of their work and decisions.
What a parent is buying, and what their role is in it, is set out for families on the briefing for families and sponsors.
Judgement, coordination and continuity
Hassan Akram leads the advisory and conducts every Private Diagnostic. The ECS client team supports day-to-day coordination and continuity.
Strategic judgement focuses on thedecisions that matter most: which firms are genuinely in reach this cycle, which application to hold back, what a rejection actually indicates, and when a candidate is ready.
Across recruitment cycles
Continuity with a clear purpose
For a brief spanning a year, the plan connects the recruitment calendar with positioning, applications, assessments and interviews. Across later cycles, the work can move to internship performance, conversion and the next role.
Continued support is scoped around the next need. Scope, duration and phasing are agreed in writing; a multi-year relationship does not require a multi-year commitment upfront. Read about multi-year family advisory. Karam Kahlon’s engagement, from the University of Exeter to an HSBC investment banking internship and the Blackstone Spring Insight Programme, ran four years on that basis.
ECS combines individual strategy, advisory led by Hassan Akram and a dedicated client team, supported by firm-specific preparation, simulations and a private client platform.
Individual advisory. Parent or sponsor welcome.
Related reading: how the one-to-one advisory works, the Private Careers Advisory decision page, inside the ECS Private Client Portal and the documented track record.