Sunny
Associate
Thinking like a consultant
"I’ve learned that when something looks impossible, you get positive, think creatively and find a way to make it work."
Before I joined the firm, I had a very critical attitude when discussing ideas and projects. I focused on the problems—all the reasons something wasn’t working or couldn’t work. In my previous jobs, I was usually complimented for this quality, and people often agreed with my analysis of a situation. But McKinsey people don’t approach things that way. Of course we think critically, but we rarely say something cannot be done, even among ourselves. I’ve learned that when something looks impossible, you get positive, think creatively, and find a way to make it work. McKinsey consultants are people who say, “Okay. We can do it.”
Why McKinsey
Before joining McKinsey, I worked as a systems engineer and as a sales specialist for a high-tech corporation. Then in 2005, I spent two months as a McKinsey summer associate, developing sales and marketing strategy for a global software company. I was familiar with the software industry, but I had not dealt with global marketing before. It was a great learning experience, and I saw that McKinsey provides opportunities to work on many different topics, across all kinds of industries. I love to be challenged by my work, and McKinsey looked like the place where I could challenge myself the most, learn the most, and develop the most. So after the summer program, I finished my M.B.A. and joined the firm.
Knowledge resources
On my first engagement as an associate, I worked on product development and quality control for a consumer electronics company. This was the first time I learned about design-to-value and design-to-cost—strategies related to product design. As I learned about these concepts, I was surprised to find McKinsey had so many experts who could help, and I began to appreciate the richness of McKinsey’s knowledge resources. And not just the knowledge our own people have— the firm’s knowledge database is also amazing.
Keys to working at McKinsey
The biggest challenge that I had in the first project was prioritizing things. I was the kind of person who makes a “to-do” list and crosses things off one by one. But my engagement manager helped me to focus on what was important and the other associate on the project taught me to be flexible.