Consulting Recruiting Made Easier, By Design
Maanil Dodani (MMM ‘25) applied lessons learned in MMM to re-envision the Kellogg Consulting Club and make it a formidable asset for consulting recruitment.
When it comes to consulting recruiting, there are so many different components to manage that it can be hard to keep track of everything. The process can be even more challenging for international students, said Maanil Dodani (MMM '25), who joined the MMM program from India.
For Dodani (MMM '25), co-president of Northwestern University’s Kellogg Consulting Club (KCC), this complexity presented an opportunity to apply principles from the MBA + MS in Design Innovation (MMM) program, a dual-degree program between Northwestern Engineering and the Kellogg School of Management.
“I’ve always believed design can simplify the complex,” Dodani said. “The recruitment journey is intense, but design can bring structure, clarity, and confidence at every step of the way.”
Armed with lessons from Research - Design - Build (RDB) and a background in branding and design, Dodani set out to transform the KCC to help stressed-out students trying to navigate the five-month recruitment gauntlet.
The result was a comprehensive rebrand of the KCC with one clear goal in mind: consulting, made easier for everyone.
At the core of KCC’s transformation is a new digital platform built on Coda that streamlines the end-to-end consulting recruitment process. It replaces the inefficiencies of scattered Slack threads and email chains with a single, integrated dashboard.
Students can now seamlessly manage coffee chats, register for on- and off-campus events, and be automatically matched with peers for case practice, eliminating scheduling friction and improving the quality of preparation.
In a first-of-its-kind initiative, the KCC team partnered with consulting clubs at Columbia, Harvard, MIT, the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale to bring its students onto the platform. This unprecedented cross-school collaboration created a broader, more connected ecosystem that empowers students to find casing partners beyond their own schools and elevates peer learning across campuses.
Dodani partnered with full-time Kellogg student Deb Bhattacharjee (MBA ’25) to build and launch the platform.
“The goal was to completely rethink the process flow for KCC, rooted in the real pain points we faced during our own recruiting journeys," Bhattacharjee said. "Maanil's design instincts brought a clarity and user-centered focus that made the platform feel intuitive from day one. As someone with a technical background, I really valued collaborating with someone who pushed me to adopt a user-first approach. We played to each other’s strengths and built something stronger together than either of us could’ve done alone.”
The rebrand went beyond technology. Dodani and the KCC team reimagined every aspect of the club's communication, from presentation decks to curriculum materials.
For Dodani, the rebrand was about more than just aesthetics. It was about applying the human-centered design principles he learned in the MMM program and through RDB.
“What I took away from RDB was that solving a problem while keeping the desired emotional response front and center is key,” Dodani said. “You're building some of the skills to be successful in this process as you work your way through the MBA, so we're literally building the plane as we fly it.”
As he gets ready to graduate, Dodani said he hopes the rebrand's impact will extend far beyond his time at Kellogg.
“I hope this inspires the next generation of the club to use design to create an experience that helps make consulting more accessible,”Dodani said. “Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. I’d like the KCC brand to work hard for the students, not the other way around.”
Editor's note: The header image shows a limited display of the platform to protect student information.