Running a company on a concentrated model requires a cadre of managers who possess the capacity and taste to work with the intensity demanded of top executives today. At the same time, corporate reorganizations have deprived companies of an internal supply of managerial workers. When restructurings eradicated workplace training and purged the middle rungs of the corporate ladder, they also forced companies to look beyond their walls for managerial talent—to elite colleges, business schools, and of course to management-consulting firms.
That is to say: The administrative techniques that management consultants invented created a huge demand for precisely the services that the consultants supply. R ead: The secret shame of middle-class Americans. Many executives have consulting backgrounds themselves. Management consultants who stay with their firms also do very well.
These facts give management consulting a powerful charisma for students and recent graduates of elite colleges and universities. Today, management consulting sits beside finance as the most popular first job for graduates of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Stanford graduates choose among consulting, finance, and tech. Harvard Business School, which sent zero graduates to McKinsey prior to , now regularly sends nearly a quarter of its graduating class into consulting , while Wharton graduates are 10 times more likely to work in consulting than in manufacturing.
The incomes that management consultants secure renders these numbers unsurprising. McKinsey pays B. The firm continues to perform its own eliteness, with the application process involving famously rigorous analytic interviews—which test formal problem-solving skills but no substantive knowledge certainly not of any concrete industry or business —so that getting hired has in itself become a mark of accomplishment at top colleges.
McKinsey also continues aggressively to recruit the most elite graduates, treating Rhodes or Marshall Scholarships as equivalent to M. Meanwhile, the firm expressly emphasizes its internal meritocracy. A recent survey of business-school graduates found that it demands longer hours than any employer of M.
McKinsey also hopes that its meritocratic excellence will legitimate its activities in the eyes of the broader world. Pete Buttigieg fit the McKinsey profile perfectly. It is therefore no surprise that when Buttigieg eventually did disclose his clients, the companies were indeed benign. Meritocrats like Buttigieg changed not just corporate strategies but also corporate values.
Particular industries, and still more individual companies, may be committed to distinctive, concrete goals and ideals. Executives who rose up through these companies, on the mid-century model, were embedded in their firms and embraced these values, so that they might even have come to view profits as a salutary side effect of running their businesses well.
When management consulting untethered executives from particular industries or firms and tied them instead to management in general, it also led them to embrace the one thing common to all corporations: making money for shareholders. Executives raised on the new, untethered model of management aim exclusively and directly at profit: their education, their career arc, and their professional role conspire to isolate them from other workers and train them single-mindedly on the bottom line.
Buttigieg carries this worldview into his politics. What he offers America is intellect and elite credentials—a combination that McKinsey has taught him and others like him to believe should more than compensate for an obvious deficit of directly relevant experience. This is a dangerous belief.
Technocratic management, no matter how brilliant, cannot unwind the structural inequalities that are dismantling the American middle class. To think that it can is to be insensible of the real harms that technocratic elites, at McKinsey and other management-consulting firms, have done to America. McKinsey looks for personal impact, entrepreneurial drive, problem-solving skills, and leadership qualities in its candidates.
The firm conducts three types of interviews—experience interview, problem-solving interview, and expertise interview. McKinsey differentiates itself from its two big rivals in its problem-solving test PST , conducted either in person or online, which is used to pare down the applicants pool. For candidates for consultant positions, it is a multiple-choice test of 26 questions to test for analytical skills. It also uses a pressure test to find out whether a candidate can handle stress.
Read: How I got into McKinsey. Two rounds of interviews are conducted. Bain also looks to assessing problem-solving skills, leadership skills, results delivery in previous positions, and passion and entrepreneurial drive. Besides experience interview and case interview, Bain also conducts an in-depth written case interview, for which the candidate is given some time to prepare.
How does the selection process vary between these three firms? The difference in the selection process is mainly in the type of case interviews that the firms conduct for job applicants. While McKinsey prefers an interviewer-led approach, BCG and Bain take a candidate-led approach see our blog: How to prepare for case interviews.
Although McKinsey is said to be going for the interviewer-led approach, this may be only for the earlier rounds, and generally, the more senior the interviewer, the less the proportion of interviewer-led interviews.
But these format preferences are based on publicly shared information. McKinsey sets great store by its fit interviews, two or three of which candidates may face, and which tend to be more intense that similar interviews at BCG and Bain.
It tries to find out whether the candidate really believes in what she is saying. If you consider salaries for the same positions in the same big city across the Big 3, there may not be substantial differences at all. Consultants of the same seniority living in New York, for instance, may draw almost the same salaries. However, differences in salaries are usually seen between consultants in the same firm working in different cities and those at different levels.
Add signing bonus, relocation allowance, retirement benefits, and even profit-sharing in some countries along with health insurance and relocation benefits.
Consulting salary grows at 5 percent annually on average. Exit opportunities are numerous for MBB alumni, including top leadership positions such as CEO or vice president at Fortune companies.
They will also have the confidence to launch and ensure the success of a new business venture. Note: Estimated salaries based on field reports by the source website.
Significant organizational and operational culture differences exist among the Big 3, though there are some similarities, too. All three insist on equally demanding work ethos from their employees. In all three, consultants are each allotted one project at a time, for better focus, and they can expect to travel at least four days a week for most of their tenures and to work long hours when they are their home office. Additionally, McKinsey consultants, more than those of the other two firms, are likely to find themselves part of the staff at offices of client organizations around the world.
McKinsey consultants are more likely to have to travel more frequently: many of them visit about eight countries during their tenure, according to one estimate.
To mention a similarity, MBB consultants work with mostly C-level executives, and this is why these firms recruit candidates from top schools to maintain high standards of professionalism and sophistication. Operationally, the fuddy-duddy in the pack is certainly McKinsey, with its traditional, formal, and hierarchical approaches.
In the middle, BCG is flatter and thrives on camaraderie and a collaborative work style among its consultants. Teamwork is a big thing at BCG, too, but individual contributions are also valued. When it comes to getting a hang of new trends in the economy, BCG comes out on top.
Free Resume Course Download resume templates and watch in-depth, step-by-step resume advice videos. Log in. Submit your review. Bad Poor Average Good Excellent.
Share your experience with the CaseCoach community Please enter valid text. Your name Please enter valid name. Private feedback for the CaseCoach team optional Please enter valid text. Dismiss Submit. You're subscribed! Categories Applications Careers Firms Interview tips. How to prepare for Financial Services case interviews. Case interviews have been a long-standing feature of the interview process of many financial institutions. This article was written by Wasim Tahir, a former Oliver […].
We are all aware of the tragic toll that the coronavirus is claiming on those with poor health, poor access to healthcare, an unsteady income, […]. Oliver Wyman is a leading management consulting firm with offices in 60 cities across nearly 30 countries and employing over 5, people.
0コメント