MBB consulting careers

presidenttttt

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McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and Bain & Company (MBB) are regarded as the best 3 strategy firms.

I’d love to hear from anyone they has worked at any of them and is willing to share their experience of working there and the hiring process.

Thank you
 
Not worked there but at other consulting firms.

If you're working for those guys its all consuming work. All nighters, weekends, 18 hour days. Lots of travel. Well paid but you'll be kissing goodbye to a personal/ family life. Easier ways to make lots of money I'd imagine.

Try linked in - make contact with people working there and ask them direct.
 
By chance, was this your motivation for asking? https://www.cityam.com/bain-mckinsey-and-bcg-outgun-big-four-with-huge-salaries-and-bonuses/

There is plenty of material online about their hiring processes.

I haven't worked for a consultancy firm but I've worked enough with them over the years. As @deanpark said it so well: it's all consuming, goodbye to family life, easier ways to make money...
At 23 with a good degree and a job offer from the likes of these. Put your head down, make €200k plus a year for 5 years, live like a student, be financially secure for life.

What easier ways to make money.
 
At 23 with a good degree and a job offer from the likes of these. Put your head down, make €200k plus a year for 5 years, live like a student, be financially secure for life.

What easier ways to make money.
Where are you getting 200k a year at 23 from?
 
Don't forget you need a more than a good degree (or probably MBA) from a "top tier" college to make it into the "top tier" firms. Then the relentless churn starts...
 
By chance, was this your motivation for asking? https://www.cityam.com/bain-mckinsey-and-bcg-outgun-big-four-with-huge-salaries-and-bonuses/

There is plenty of material online about their hiring processes.

I haven't worked for a consultancy firm but I've worked enough with them over the years. As @deanpark said it so well: it's all consuming, goodbye to family life, easier ways to make money...
It's weird that the article says that US salaries reported are much higher than UK, but then doesn't give the UK ones.

I feel like this is a bit clickbaity. In demand graduate roles in the HCOL parts of the US offer big salaries, it's not just MBB thing. If you want those money straight out of college, the question should be "Should I move to the US to pursue finance/tech/business", not "Should I go work for MBB".

In general, I would say that consulting is a great way for a graduate to get a step up and secure an awesome next job. It's a means to an end, not something you get in to for the money while actually working as a consultant.
 
Where are you getting 200k a year at 23 from?
I thought back to my own days and doubled it.

Googling I see that things haven't moved on as much as I thought. Everything I read about increasing inequality and rewards being channelled to the top is a bit exaggerated perhaps.
 
I didn’t ask on the basis of that article. I would rather like to be 23 again though. To my knowledge the US salaries are considerably ahead of European ones in the consulting space.

Exploring career options….
 
The average grad salary in Ireland is around €32k. Safe to say, the big accounting and consultancy firms would pay more.

To me, the big issue with working for any of these companies is when you leave. Most employers, in industry, tech and accounting would have a reluctance to hire someone who worked for a number of years as a "consultant" for junior/mid level roles simply because they lack practical day to day "get it fixed" type skills. If you get in to a big consultancy firm, get qualified as an accountant or work in some of the specialised areas such as IT security, then it can be different and you could become an attractive hire in the future.
 
From my experience of being quite familiar with this path in Ireland (albeit not MBB):

Of the MBB trio, I believe only McKinsey is in Ireland, and their graduate intake is pretty small each year. Accenture and the Big 4 are the main players in town.

There's a perception that consulting is all about strategy and advising CEOs. This is what MBB specialise in. The reality is that the big firms in Ireland are primarily there to provide hands-on support to supplement in-house staff in roles a company doesn't want to hire permanent staff for. They're especially popular for IT - the likes of the banks don't want to hire and train a load of IT graduates each year, so they pay Accenture and co. to provide IT graduates instead.

As a result, after a few years these people are often both hands-on and have client facing experience. Everyone I know that has come through consulting has gone on next to high-paying roles in big-tech. Often in product management or sales, but depending on their experience they may be data scientists or software engineers too.

Graduate salaries vary a good bit across the companies. The accounting firms are trying to hire more technical graduates, but seem to struggle with the idea that they are now competing with tech salaries, when they're used to paying their accounting graduates very small money. Accenture seems to be the best paying of the consulting companies, in my opinion because they don't have to justify it to the accountants. A few years ago their graduate salaries were 40k, and they've likely gone up since.
 
Thank you interested21. Is it fair to say each of the big4 are known to have a primary area of focus, often slightly technical, as opposed to the strategy focus of MBB? For example, I’d suggest EY and KPMG for known for finance/audits, Accenture and Deloitte similar but perhaps slightly more heavy on transformation projects?

Peanuts20, makes sense that junior/mid level would be viewed differently to someone coming out off a senior level.
 
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