How can I build the business knowledge I need to be a successful consultant?
You don’t need a business background to succeed at McKinsey. More than one-third of McKinsey consultants don’t have business degrees, and about half don’t have MBAs. Our mini-MBA program will help you learn what you need to know about business. In this intensive course, you and other new consultants will learn core skills in subjects such as microeconomics, accounting, finance, marketing, and business strategy, taught by professors from the world’s top business schools. Beyond the formal training programs, you will learn quickly by working with other McKinsey consultants on client engagements, and you will find that McKinsey has a supportive environment, with both formal and informal mentoring to promote development.
Why do people with law degrees come to McKinsey?
McKinsey allows you to use your legal training to make an immediate and dramatic impact. Consultants need the very skills that lead to success in law school, including strong leadership and communication skills and the ability to address multiple conflicting points of view to solve complex problems. At McKinsey, you also have the opportunity to advance more rapidly than you might in the legal profession. Whereas it can take years for new associates at a law firm to advance to a position of responsibility, new McKinsey consultants frequently find themselves directly advising CEOs and other leaders within months of joining the firm. McKinsey has a long-standing interest in attracting and retaining lawyers. In fact, Marvin Bower, the father of the modern McKinsey organization, was a lawyer, and he built McKinsey based on the professional principles he learned from his experience in law. Today, more than 250 consultants at McKinsey have law degrees. They joined McKinsey at various points in their careers—some immediately after law school and some after practicing law for years.
How do consultants with master’s degrees fit in at McKinsey? Where would I start?
Consultants with master’s degrees represent a broad spectrum of experience. Your role upon beginning your career at McKinsey depends on your academic and professional background.
Generally, if you are pursuing a master’s degree and you earned an undergraduate degree fewer than 4 years ago, you will be considered for a business analyst position. If you hold a bachelor’s degree and have at least 4 years of work experience, or you completed or expect to complete your master’s program 4 years from the time you received your bachelor’s degree, you will join as an associate.
We understand that the additional training you received and the expertise you developed by attaining a master’s degree add value to your work as a McKinsey consultant. McKinsey was the first consulting firm to systematically hire consultants with advanced professional degrees outside of business; currently, more than 3,000 of our consultants worldwide hold master’s degrees in fields other than business. Often, because of their professional experience, business analysts with master’s degrees show promise immediately, putting them on a fast track for promotion to associate.
At McKinsey, consultants advance based on performance—not background or tenure—so if you perform well, you’ll be considered for early promotion. Here are some example scenarios for possible entry points to a career at McKinsey. If you are interested in the German office and hold a bachelor’s degree and completed a 1-year master’s program, you will join as a fellow. If you are interested in joining the UK and Ireland office with a master’s degree, you will typically join as a business analyst. If you are interested in a North American office and hold a bachelor’s degree and have at least 4 years of work experience, or you completed or expect to complete your master’s program 4 years from the time you received your bachelor’s degree, you will join as an associate.
Why does McKinsey hire MDs?
Nearly 200 McKinsey consultants around the world have medical degrees. Some joined the firm right out of medical school, others after years of leading clinical departments at major medical centers. McKinsey has found that the consulting world needs many of the same attributes and skills that contribute to MDs’ success in medicine, including being intellectually curious, creative, and analytically talented. MDs bring their teams not only relevant skills but also a valuable clinical perspective that allows them to approach healthcare problems distinctively. On healthcare projects, MDs understand the context deeply from day one and can speak the language of medicine with clients and external experts.
What role do MDs play at McKinsey?
McKinsey typically hires MDs as generalist consultants into an associate role, the same roles as their colleagues with MBAs. While most McKinsey MDs focus on healthcare over time, all McKinsey consultants, regardless of background, are encouraged to pursue a range of interests across a wide array of industries and countries. On McKinsey teams, MDs find many opportunities to contribute their medical knowledge, but the strong problem-solving and people skills developed during their medical careers are often their most important assets.
What do McKinsey MDs find most rewarding about consulting?
Practicing medicine can be fulfilling, emotional work. As a physician, you establish relationships with individuals and often see your influence immediately. Performing a difficult surgery, diagnosing a disease accurately, or giving hope to patients and their families can bring tremendous satisfaction. McKinsey offers a different kind of satisfaction. Rather than influencing one patient at a time, you can help shape the systems and strategies that have much broader impact. We help our clients tackle some of their toughest problems. As a consultant, you have the potential to help shape the way healthcare decisions are made—decisions that influence the care of thousands or even millions of patients. Additionally, McKinsey MDs enjoy the opportunity for learning and personal development. Through the combination of diverse and challenging client work, high-quality training programs, and one-on-one apprenticeship, McKinsey creates an unparalleled learning environment that most McKinsey MDs value greatly. Finally, McKinsey MDs greatly enjoy their colleagues; McKinsey is a diverse, talented, and engaging group of people who do their best work as part of a team.
Why do people with PhDs come to McKinsey?
Currently, there are more than 1,400 consultants with PhDs at McKinsey globally, and most say they came to McKinsey to broaden their horizons beyond the academic setting. As consultants, they find they can apply their problem-solving skills in new ways, work in fun and stimulating team settings, and make a measurable impact more quickly and more often. Many came from careers in basic research, where they often worked in isolation and where it can take years to achieve tangible results. As McKinsey consultants, they work through their clients’ problems in months or even weeks rather than years. To solve those problems, they work side by side with other consultants and with their clients. As in academia, the environment at McKinsey is intellectually stimulating and competitive, but it’s also ever changing and supportive. PhDs who come to McKinsey appreciate the chance to tackle a new challenge with each engagement, and they develop personally and professionally as they go, with mentoring support, on-the-job training, and more formal learning opportunities such as mini-MBA and leadership courses. For someone who has spent years conducting research within the same field, coming to McKinsey offers the chance to branch out—to explore new industries and new ways of thinking. Many consultants with PhDs in fields such as pharmaceuticals or high-tech go on to work in those areas, but some choose to enter industries they might never have been exposed to before joining McKinsey, including media, private equity, consumer goods, and banking.
How will a career with McKinsey be different from academia?
Every McKinsey engagement demands the same qualities you need to succeed in academia: strong problem-solving skills, intellectual curiosity, and the drive to achieve results. The difference is, at McKinsey you’ll be working with and presenting your findings to business, government, or social-sector leaders. McKinsey consultants learn to solve problems quickly and make fast decisions, even when they don’t have all the information about a particular subject. Consultants with PhDs say one of the biggest challenges—and most attractive aspects—of a career with McKinsey is this shift in thinking. In the academic setting, they grew accustomed to diving deep into a subject, often spending years gathering and analyzing data. At McKinsey, consultants learn to work with the most important information, whittle a problem down to its core, and offer a solution that helps a client make better decisions, often when it’s not a clear-cut, easy answer.
Joining McKinsey would be a major career change for me. How can I ensure my success in the long term?
Consultants with advanced professional degrees outside of business are elected to partner at McKinsey just as often as consultants with MBAs. We want you to succeed, and we’ll support your growth with formal training and development programs to continually strengthen your business and leadership skills. Our apprenticeship model ensures you’ll always have experienced consultants to turn to for advice or insight. Expectations are high—McKinsey consultants handle some of the most sensitive, critical issues faced by the world’s top organizations—but they’re also clear. You’ll know your responsibilities before beginning each client engagement, and when you need help, you can turn to one of your fellow consultants or one of our 30,000 plus alumni worldwide. You’ll grow with each engagement, but you’ll be the one directing that growth. We understand that not everyone wants to become a partner. If you find another opportunity that interests you, we’ll support you as you pursue it. You’ll take the skills and knowledge you built at McKinsey with you into your chosen field, and you’ll stay connected as part of the global McKinsey alumni network.
How can I use my experience and expertise when I join?
McKinsey can enable you to build skills in new industries and functional areas as well as use and build on the skills and experience you have already gained. After building on your core consulting skills, you can choose to craft a program that leverages your background, experience, and knowledge by serving clients on topics close to your background area, or you can choose to focus your program on completely new client topics. In either case, you should be prepared to increase your knowledge base of new industries and functional topics.