Attila
Senior Associate
I’m from Budapest and trained as a medical doctor. I have studied and worked throughout Europe, but when I joined McKinsey I wanted to discover more of the world. I’ve worked in the Middle East, Japan, the United States, and Canada.
"My personal brand has certainly been enhanced by the McKinsey brand. It helps you find new opportunities if you want to move on."
McKinsey gives me freedom to explore
We work hard, but we have a lot of freedom to pursue what we want to do. You can choose the project pretty freely—health care, oil and gas, automotive, banking – and you can move to different countries. McKinsey is big and it’s growing, so you always have a couple of hundred client studies starting at any given point in time.
I have been involved in studies where my medical knowledge has been an advantage. But even within health care, you have a chance to try many different things. For example, I have been involved in studies ranging from pharmaceutical marketing in Europe to health system development in the Middle East, product development in Japan, a merger for a medical device company in the United States, and strategy development for German and United Kingdom hospitals.
I’ve learned to challenge myself
There are a lot of people with a non-business background at McKinsey and I am one of them. Someone who wanted to do something good in the world, but hadn’t quite figured out what before McKinsey. McKinsey has taught me to push myself. Every new role at McKinsey requires different skill sets. Every new level challenges you to get out of your comfort zone. After a couple of years of associate work, you are ready to manage people and be responsible for the overall direction of a study.
I think McKinsey is still the place for me because of this continuous professional development – and also because there are still so many things I would like to see and projects I would like to try. I would like to work on some projects in global public health, in our nonprofit sector. I would also like to explore research and development within health care, and do strategic work in medical device industries.
Growing into a thought partner to executives
When I start on a project I usually know something about the subject, but not enough, so I start reading and talking to experts at McKinsey. I’ve learned how to use McKinsey’s resources to quickly get comfortable sitting with people who have been involved in it for several decades. As time goes on, you become a thought partner of the senior executive on strategic issues.