I actually got my first exposure to McKinsey as a client in 2018. It was my first job, and we were building a new telco brand from the ground up. We didn’t know what we wanted to build or how to build it, and we hired McKinsey to help us bring the vision to life.
I worked with McKinsey for about a year and a half, and I thoroughly enjoyed my experience as a client. I was impressed with how McKinsey structured the plan for us and showed us how it could be a reality. I liked the ideas the team proposed. At that time, I remember thinking how much I loved working with these people and how I wanted to be one of them.
I spent some time getting my masters’, and then joined the firm about seven months ago as an analyst with a focus on user experience design.
My role at the firm
My educational background is in computer science and human computer interaction, and I have always had a strong interest in user experience. In my role at the firm, I am helping clients with user experience design. I focus mostly on Leap by McKinsey projects, which helps organizations imagine, build, and scale new and early-stage businesses. We work with mostly established organizations to build entirely new digital businesses that drive their growth.
My job is to understand the clients, their potential users, and what those users want and need from the business. I interview clients and users, hold workshops, and conduct research to create a cohesive, comprehensive, clear picture of the user so we can build on that. I create customer journeys, user personas, value positions and so on with the customer to get everyone on the same page and to help ensure the product is a success.
From there we design the solution to establish how the product will look and feel and how the users will interact with it, and then the developers start building.
Learning at McKinsey
If you are a life-long learner—or even if you just want to make sure you can do your job well—I would be surprised if there is a place that offers more training than McKinsey. We have a professional development group here that finds the best certifications, training, and materials for each field, and then makes it easily accessible.
If you want to build a skill, for example, in user interaction, you can just search for opportunities, apply to the ones that interest you, and go and learn. At so many organizations, any time you want to do any kind of professional development, you have all this red tape to deal with, and you often get turned down because of budgeting or time issues. It’s not like that here. For example, if you are rolling on to a new study, and you want to beef up your knowledge beforehand, you can just do it.
Aside from the formal training, the firm is brimming with knowledge and resources from other studies and the work people have done. If you are new, you can just search a database and find information or contacts who can help you.
The benefits of being in tech at McKinsey
In my experience, when you work in a tech role in a company, even at the tech giants, you are focused on one problem, and you go round and round with it. That’s your life every day. At McKinsey, you work on many different challenging problems. You solve one problem, and you are on to the next one. I like that variety and not being locked into one specific area. It feels good to see results so quickly too.
At McKinsey, you really do work with the best people, solving the toughest problems, and you learn so much in the process.
More about me
At the firm, I am involved with Forward, which is a free, six-month online learning journey that equips young talent with must-have practical skills to help them succeed at work, and I have facilitated some design thinking workshops for the program. It has been great to give back in this way and help people build up their skills and knowledge.
Outside of work, aerial skills are a hobby of mine, and I love all forms of the exercise. It's so much fun and it provides great exercise, so whenever I want to de-stress, I go to a class. I also love to read. Most important, however, is family, so every weekend I can, I go back home to be with my family.