Is life as a McKinsey, BCG, or Bain consultant glamorous?

hello everyone my name is Kenton kvass - I'm an ex BCG consultant an ex-googler and the founder of rocketbox an online platform that helps students prepare for case interviews in today's rocketbox mini lesson we're gonna talk about a fun topic which is is working at companies like McKinsey BCG and Bain as glamorous as it sometimes seems and I don't even know that we can call this a mini-lesson per se but it's gonna be more a mini insight and some perspective into that question and the reason I wanted to do this is one it's a fun topic to discuss but - it's actually pretty important you want to make sure that you are going into the interviews and and the job for the right reason and so talking about some of the stuff that seems super appealing from the outside and some of the pros and cons of that because actually really useful to have a good understanding of the job and the career path and some of the fun parts and and not so fun parts of it so what we'll do is I will talk about some of the parts of the job that I found super glamorous and then we'll talk about some of the parts of the job that are let's say decidedly less glamorous and then we'll finish by just kind of wrapping up and summing up and before I jump in I will say that these experiences are coloured from my first-hand experience at BCG as well as anecdotal experiences from the rocket blocks panel of expert coaches as well who work at McKinsey and Bain and so got a variety of experiences that are that are calling this this summer so let's go ahead and jump in okay so this is the fun part this question which is what are the glamorous parts of this job there are four things I'm gonna call out I'm sure there's a bunch of other things that you could cite but I think this will cover you know 95 percent of the stuff that most consultants experience the first is hotels so it's no secret that you travel a good amount in this job and one of the great awesome perks that certainly feels glamorous is he stay in a lot of really nice hotels so my team's when I was at BCG had a really strong preference for Starwood Hotels so we're staying and everything from the W Hotel and Seattle to the st. Regis hotels and that feels really glamorous I mean those were really nice hotels and it's fun to to stay in them you kind of feel like you're pampering yourself I even remember one time where all the Starwood Hotels and concei at'll were booked up and for whatever reason we ended up in the Four Seasons which is a super nice hotel I remember was the first time I'd ever seen a TV that was actually embedded into the mirror itself in the bathroom so that certainly felt glamorous and new the second bucket I would highlight here is flights so again you're traveling a lot you're spending time in hotel but some of the flights themselves actually do feel glamorous especially if you enjoy travel and especially once you start traveling like a little further like if you're going you know an hour to maybe you're flying economy or you know kind of Economy Plus type situation but at least when I was at BCG the the rule was once you started flying over three hours on a given flight you were able to fly business class so I remember being I was based out of San Francisco but staffed on a case in New York and in a flying cross country about five six hours depending on the way and you'd be able to fly business class and so those the you know 2,000 $2,500 tickets that you're buying and sitting in first class and that does sound you know and was quite glamorous to be awesome so that was that was kind of excitement the third thing that I would call out is the support that you have internally within these companies the consulting staff at firms like McKinsey BCG Bain whichever one you're here thinking of are supported by it like an army of internal people that help all those functions wrong that consultancy so there's people to help you with travel there's people to help you with market research there's people to help you design your slides and that amount of support that you had as a consultant really did feel glamorous to me because for example you know like if you had a travel issue your schedule changes last-minute for example you can call up a hotline and speak with someone say look here's the situation I need to change this way get a flight repo this is gonna change X&Y you just explain the situation to someone they're super helpful they're friendly and they'll take care of all for you and just send you the details later so you can focus entirely on you know whatever the kind of biggest challenge at hand is for you and then you know I got a flip side like the design team was incredible like you could be working on a set of slides till 10:00 p.m. send it to the design team go to sleep and when you wake up at 7:00 a.m. you've got that same set of slides they're completely redone and reworked so they just look beautiful nice graphics on them everything's aligned perfectly and they're ready for your meeting when you when you wake up that's pretty fantastic I don't know if it's quite glamorous but I actually I actually thought this up then the last bucket I will call out is just kind of all the ad hoc perks that add up over time so you know there's there's training events that you'll go to occasionally or like office off-site and you'll go to a nice hotel and spend like a weekend learning and you know meeting coworkers and and having some fun events as well and that feels really glamorous and then you know on top of that there's also just like there's as you are working through a case you know maybe there is a midpoint check-in with a client that goes well or final presentation it's not uncommon that the partner will take the team out to dinner you usually do nice dinners and so the happy now you are going to great restaurants you're having great food that all can feel very glamorous and very excited okay so we've talked about a lot of things that do make the job and the life of a management consultant glamorous but there are flip sides and quite honestly a lot of the things that make the job so glamorous in some ways are actually the same things that add to a bit of the daily grind and the non glamorous part of the job so thinking about the list we we just talked about let's actually go through them because I think you'll see that the flip side of it as well so the first is hotels well yeah you know no secret here but if you are in a hotel almost by definition you are away from home and overtime you know being away from home friends and family and being on the road every week or every other week for a lot of consultants that tends to kind of wear down and it becomes pretty non-glamorous pretty quickly because you're away from just comforts of home and importantly friends and family the second thing related to that is flights right so if you're taking a flight even if it's business class it's the same thing like time starts adding up you're spending a lot of time in the airport you're spending a lot of time on flights itself occasionally you know like the flight timing doesn't work out so you're like doing things like leaving you know Sunday evenings you can be at the client's I early Monday morning those type of things just start to frankly add up and while the flight itself and the experience might be nice just over time the priority shift and you start you know placing more emphasis on time at home time with friends and with family and that's just harder to do when you're constantly on the road so the third one support teams I mean let's be honest I don't this one I don't think actually has many flip downsides like the support teams at these firms are incredible the support from the design team the research team travel team etc is all great so I don't actually think there's any downsides of that the fourth bucket we talked about the ad hoc perks again very similar to two flights and hotels it's the same thing like they're all these ad hoc perks extra dinners out at great restaurants weekend retreats training retreats office retreats all this stuff the challenge is just the same it comes back to the fact that if you already have a job or you're on the road quite frequently and you're travelling in you're away from home and friends and family an additional weekend retreat no matter how nice it is or an office retreat or another dinner out with their team even if it's at a great michelin-starred restaurant it's gonna just start to feel like time away from friends and family and so as priorities change those things that that seem to add a lot of glamour can also be non glamorous as well now it's not true for a hundred percent of consultants I think some people really really love that lifestyle and those type of events and overtime their priorities don't change and that's totally fine and that's great as well but for a majority of consultants I think if you you sit them down and talk to them the the biggest things that kind of become non glamorous overall it's like the travel and the events associated with that just the fact that it it not in and of itself isn't nice and glamorous but that it really just starts to detract away from other things that they start prioritizing in their life like home time and friends and family okay so we've talked about the parts of the job that are obviously glamorous nice hotels nice flights and then the flipside of those aspects as well which leads to some of the non glamorous aspects of the job on the road a lot away from home and friends and family well let's put all that stuff aside and talk about I think really the two things that are at the heart of the matter and the first is the work itself if you are at somewhere like McKinsey or BCG or vein a work is gonna be challenging you're gonna be doing it on tight timelines with demanding clients with demanding partners and the challenges themselves that you're trying to solve and be really tough but if you work on a case like that in an environment like that for 12 weeks straight and get to a really great recommendation and get to present that to the senior management and you know the CEO at the end of the case that will be incredibly rewarding and have high impact and yeah maybe that is glamorous I'm not sure if it is or not but operating that level is certainly cool and it will be probably one of the most important parts of your experience overall the second thing is your teammates Consulting is is kind of a high-touch job where you are collaborating really closely with a small group of people on a really tough problem and the chance to interact with really smart ambitious creative fun people that you are gonna have as part of your teammates at these companies is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and the chance to learn from them and work alongside them and teach them something is going to be incredibly rewarding as well now I don't know if it's glamorous or not but I would say that it is going to have a much bigger impact on your overall happiness and how you think back on an experience like this than any of the flights or hotels or ad hoc perks that we talked about at the end of the day what's really gonna matter is the work that you did and the teammates that you did it with and everything else will probably fade away into the distance so thank you again for watching this rocket blocks mini insight as opposed to mini-lesson we have great videos on the interviewing process coming out weekly so if you haven't subscribed already please do so below there's a red big red button down there that you can click and one that'll pop up here on screen momentarily as well thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time you

Channel: rocketblocks

Views: 381,090

Rating: 4.725317 out of 5

Keywords: consulting, mckinsey, bcg, bain, consulting lifestyle, management consulting job, management consulting lifestyle

Id: Yqdx_uPNzFo

Length: 12min 15sec (735 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 21 2017