Back to Careers in Switzerland
Career ladder
Many paths to success
The rapid turn around of projects and the breadth of opportunities means that our consultants often take varied paths through their careers here—and beyond.
- 1997
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- 1999
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- 2003
- 2004
- 2005
- 2006
- 2007
- 2008
- 2009
- 2010
- 2011
- 2012
- Intern
- Junior
Fellow
- Fellow
- Fellow
Analyst
- Associate
- Senior
Associate
- Engagement
Manager
- Associate
Principal
- Principal
- Director
[2008] Intern
I spent 10 weeks as an intern in the Zurich office. Straight after the 3-day induction I joined my first project, helping a supermarket optimize its selling space. As an intern, you have the same tasks as other team members, but you get much more coaching. Your team leader ensures you have lots of client contact and challenges you to start taking leadership.
[2011] Fellow
As I studied for a Masters degree, I was able to join McKinsey as a Fellow, rather than a Junior Fellow. I joined McKinsey Switzerland’s Fellow Program after my Masters degree. As I wanted to specialize straight away, I joined the Corporate Finance Practice. I’ll spend 2 or 3 years gaining business experience and then consider applying for an office transfer or the global rotation program so I can spend time working in other countries.
[2006] Fellow
I joined McKinsey after taking part in a workshop with McKinsey consultants during my computer science studies at university. Even as a junior consultant, I got the chance to try out my knowledge for real. I wasn’t doing admin; I had responsibility for my own particular parts of a project. But I wasn’t left to fend for myself; my colleagues guided me throughout every project.
[2008] Associate
After becoming an associate, I was given greater responsibility within my team, for example, coaching younger team members. After working in six different industries during my time at McKinsey, it was at this point that I began to focus on telecom, financial services and media. In late 2008, I took an educational leave of absence to study for a PhD in artificial intelligence.
[2012] Senior Associate
A few months after returning from my educational leave, I became a junior engagement manager. I was the spider in the web pulling together the skills and expertise that a client needs, coordinating the team, and driving the project. I saw how senior people make decisions and learned a huge amount from them.
[2009] Associate
As a recruit with no experience of business, I started out by going on McKinsey’s mini-MBA course. It provided an intensive introduction to consulting and covered most of the topics I would study in a normal MBA. Afterwards, as an associate, I was staffed on a variety of projects and experienced a broad range of topics and industries, including banking, insurance and pharmaceuticals.
[2009] Senior Associate
During my time as a senior associate, I mainly worked on projects to which engagement managers were assigned for only 50% of their time. This meant I had to perform many EM duties, leading projects and work streams independently. This allowed me to increase my individuality and also prepared me well for the later part of my time as a senior associate, when I was staffed in junior EM roles and become more heavily involved in team, client and project management.
[2012] Engagement Manager
In addition to the hands on experience gained from my junior EM roles, I visited a dedicated 3-day course to prepare for my transition to engagement manager. As an engagement manager, I am in the driving seat, responsible for leading problem solving, involving the client, managing and developing my team members, and managing other McKinsey resources. My goal is to bring the best solution to the client while making the project a valuable experience for everyone concerned.
[2004] Fellow Analyst
After completing my MSc, I couldn’t decide which PhD to do. Doing a PhD would have meant studying one topic in depth, but I wanted to get experience of different topics and learn how business works, so I accepted an offer from McKinsey. I spent my first 3 years doing projects across the board: insurance, high tech, banking, automotive.
[2007] Associate
As an associate, you lead a key part of a client project, have direct contact with senior clients and work highly independently. I followed my passion for industrial work and focused on material cost reduction projects in the automotive and high-tech sectors. I also applied for the Swiss Office’s 80 percent program so that I had more time for my passion of teaching ski instructors.
[2008] Senior Associate
After applying for a transfer to Scandinavia to experience a different professional culture. I spent five months in Finland and a year in Sweden working with media and telecom companies.
[2009] Engagement Manager
After I returned to Zurich, I was promoted to Engagement Manager (EM). One of my projects presented an unusual challenge: optimizing technical processes at a chemical plant. We identified enormous cost-saving potential for the plant, shrinking its raw material requirement by adapting its chemical processes. I also transferred to McKinsey’s San Francisco Office for a year.
[2012] Associate Principal
As an AP, I work on several client studies at a time and can combine my twin passions for operations and people development. I am involved in lots of procurement training for clients and I coach and mentor client teams. Based on my projects as an EM, I’m now also a core member of McKinsey’s green operations group.